Fundamentals of Marxism Leninism (Otto Kuusinen)

Fundamentals of Marxism Leninism
Author	Otto Kuusinen
Publisher	Foreign Languages Publishing House
First published	1960 Moscow
Type	Book

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

The first edition of Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism was highly acclaimed by the Soviet and international Communist press. A great many propagandists and teachers of Marxism acknowledged its value as a useful educational aid, easy to understand while being at the same time a competent scientific exposition of the fundamentals of Marx-ism-Leninism as an integral science. The book was translated into many languages (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, etc.).

The present, second edition, while preserving the structure and main content of the first edition, has been enriched by the valuable new ideas of the most outstanding work of modern Marxist-Leninist thought—the Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union—and by the basic propositions of the other documents of the Twenty-Second Congress of the C.P.S.U. Account has also been taken of the very important conclusions and appraisals of the Meeting of Representatives of Communist and Work-ers’ Parties held in 1960. To avoid increasing the size of the book many passages have had to be shortened although this was not otherwise required by the content of the previ-ous text. During the work on the present edition attention has been paid to many sugges-tions contained in reviews of the book and also in letters from readers.

The main work of preparing the second edition has been carried out by O. V. Kuusinen (leader of the group of authors), Y. A. Arbatov, A. S. Belyakov, S. L. Vygodsky, A. G. Mileikovsky and L. M. Sheidin.

Work on the revision of individual chapters has also been carried out by F. M. Burlatsky, N. I. Ivanov, B. M. Leibzon, A. A. Makarovsky, and Y. P. Sitkovsky.

THE MARXIST-LENINIST WORLD OUTLOOK

Introductory Remarks

"Marx’s teaching is all-powerful because it is true." – Lenin

Mastery of the fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism requires serious and thoughtful study and, consequently, much work and time. What are the fruits of such a study?

Put briefly, the answer is that it gives us an integral world outlook, the most progres-sive outlook of our time, one in which the cardinal components of the great teachings of Marx and Lenin are blended in a harmonious, integral system. In this book they are pre-sented in the following order:

Marxist-Leninist philosophy, including the materialist conception of history;

Marxist-Leninist economic theory;

the theory and tactics of the international communist movement, including the Marxist-Leninist appraisal of the most important mass trends in the present-day democ-ratic movement;

the theory of socialism and communism.

It need hardly be said that one book cannot encompass all the wealth of Marxism-Leninism. This book deals only with its fundamentals.

There are various kinds of world outlook, whether progressive or reactionary. Some of the latter are based on ancient beliefs and superstitions and seek to persuade religious-minded people that they must remain blindly dependent upon some supernatural being and his vicars and anointed regents on earth. Other philosophies, while not openly as-serting the existence of a deity and even avowing faith in science, resort to subtle but false arguments in an effort to destroy man’s conviction of the real existence of the ma-terial world.

That is the method used by the exponents of the most fashionable trends in modern idealism. Many of them do not themselves believe in the existence of supernatural forces but, influenced by the traditional conventions and prejudices of bourgeois society, are unwilling to close all doors against belief in the supernatural. New discoveries in sci-ence, they say, cast doubt on the materiality of nature. And the theologians and clerics support them, on the assumption that people who can be induced to believe in the non-materiality of nature are capable of believing anything.

Not everything that imitates science is real science, just as not everything that glit-ters is gold. And particularly in our time many varieties of idealist philosophy eagerly assume a scientific guise in order to conceal their anti-scientific substance. In reality, they fear the weighty evidence of scientific facts and seek to hush up or distort these facts.

Marxism-Leninism has great merits that distinguish it from all other philosophical systems.

It does not recognise the existence of any supernatural forces or creators. It rests squarely on reality, on the real world in which we live. It liberates mankind, once and for all, from superstition and age-old spiritual bondage. It encourages independent, free and consistent thought.

Marxism-Leninism regards the world such as it actually is, without adding an in-vented hell or paradise. It proceeds from the fact that all nature, including man himself, consists of matter with its different properties.

Nature, as well as all its individual phenomena, is in constant process of develop-ment. The laws of that development have not been ordained by God and do not depend on man’s will. They are intrinsic in nature itself and are fully knowable. There are no inherently unknowable things in the world; there are only things which are still un-known, but which man will increasingly get to know.

The Marxist-Leninist world outlook stems from science itself and trusts science, as long as science is not divorced from reality and practice.

Marxism-Leninism teaches that not only the development of nature, but the devel-opment of human society too, takes place in accordance with objective laws that are in-dependent of man’s will.

By revealing the basic laws of social development, Marxism raised history to the level of a genuine science capable of explaining the nature of every social system and the development of society from one social system to another. That was a tremendous victory for scientific thought.

Bourgeois sociologists, economists and historians could not refute the materialist conception of history, nor oppose to it a theory acceptable to the majority of bourgeois scientists. Yet many bourgeois scientists obstinately repudiate historical materialism. Why? Because it refutes the “eternity” of the capitalist system. For if the transition of society from one system to another takes place in accordance with objective laws, then it must follow that the capitalist system is bound to give way to another, more progressive social structure. And that is something not only the capitalists, but the scientists depend-ent on them materially and spiritually find it hard and bitter to acknowledge.

Never in the history of class society has the ruling class believed in the inevitable doom of its system. The slave-owners felt sure their system would last for ever, for had it not been established by divine will? The feudal lords who superseded them likewise believed their system had been established by divine will and for all time. But they were forced to give way to the bourgeoisie, and then it was its turn to seek comfort in the illu-sion that capitalism was “eternal” and “unassailable”. And many learned sociologists and historians, reluctant to break with capitalism, try in every possible way to refute the fact that the development and change of social systems follow intrinsic laws that do not depend on the will of the ruling classes and their ideologists.

Hence, bourgeois ideologists wage war on the Marxist conception of history not be-cause it is wrong, but precisely because it is true.

By revealing the laws governing the operation and development of the forces of na-ture and society, genuine science can always foresee the new. The Marxist science of the

laws of social development enables us not only to chart a correct path through the laby-rinth of social contradictions, but to predict the course events will take, the direction of historical progress and the next stages of social advance.

Thus, Marxism-Leninism gives us an instrument with which to look into the future and see the outlines of impending historical changes. This “time telescope” has revealed to us the magnificent future of humanity freed from the yoke of capitalism, from the last exploiting system. But when progressive science invites bourgeois scientists (who claim that “nothing can be predicted”) to apply the Marxist “time telescope”, they simply shut their eyes—they are afraid to look into the future.

But Marxists have no fear of the future. They represent the class to which the future belongs and have no use for illusions, which are shattered the moment they come into contact with the facts, with science.

Headed by Lenin, the Russian Marxists foresaw the socialist revolution in Russia as a task which history had matured. Accordingly, they rallied the working class for deci-sive struggle against the exploiting system, organised the storming of its bastions and achieved complete victory.

The Marxists-Leninists of the Soviet Union foresaw the possibility of building so-cialism in their vast country, rallied the working people for the accomplishment of that great task and led them to the victory of socialism.

The Marxists-Leninists of the Soviet Union and other countries foresaw the prob-ability of a second world war being unleashed by fascist Germany. They warned all the nations and predicted Germany’s defeat. During the Second World War, it was chiefly the heroic efforts of the Soviet people and its glorious army that routed the forces of the German aggressor and his allies.

The Marxists-Leninists of the People’s Democracies foresaw the possibility and his-toric necessity of overthrowing capitalist rule in their countries, of establishing the power of the working people, led by the working class, and carrying out the necessary socialist changes. Alive to these pressing needs of social development, they led the peo-ple along the path of building socialism, in which they have already achieved consider-able success. Led by the working class and the Communist Party, People’s China has risen to its full gigantic stature, has defeated its external and internal enemies and has coped with the difficult problem of a bourgeois-democratic revolution. It has launched a bold plan of socialist construction and is devoting the utmost energy to its fulfilment.

Crucial developments in the first half of the century thus provide irrefutable proof that the Communists, armed with the Marxist theory, on the whole, correctly predicted the general course of history. The truth of the Marxist-Leninist conception of history has been fully borne out in practice.

But the Marxist-Leninist theory is not a dogma, it is a guide to action. Like life it-self, this theory does not stand still but develops and becomes richer as the historical conditions alter and new tasks arise in the struggle of the progressive forces of mankind. Genuine Marxism-Leninism is always living, creative Marxism-Leninism. A powerful contribution to the creative development of Marxism-Leninism is the new Programme of

the C.P.S.U. It is the fruit of the collective theoretical work of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and of its Leninist Central Committee.

The Marxist-Leninist theory illumines the path ahead. One has only to know how to apply it correctly. Without the Marxist-Leninist theory, even progressively-minded peo-ple have to grope in the dark, without a genuine and profound understanding of the events taking place around them.

Marxist-Leninist theory provides a scientific basis for revolutionary policy. He who bases his policy on subjective desires remains either a futile dreamer or risks being thrust into the background by history. For history does not conform to man’s wishes if these are not in accordance with the laws of history. That is why Lenin emphasised the need for a sober scientific analysis of objective situations and the objective course of evolution as the basis for defining the political line of the Party and for subsequently carrying it out with all revolutionary determination. Marx said:

“We must take things as they are, that is, uphold the revolutionary cause in a form that corresponds to the changed circumstances.”1*  

• See list of quoted literature.

The Marxist theory, which has grown out of the revolutionary experience and revo-lutionary thought of all nations, corresponds to the historical mission of the working class as the vanguard and leader of the great movement for emancipation of all the op-pressed and exploited. In the proletariat the Marxist world outlook has found its material weapon, just as the proletariat has found in Marxism its spiritual weapon.

Marxism-Leninism therefore represents a most valuable source of strength for all working people, for every progressive man or woman who wants to acquire a correct understanding of the world, who does not want to be at the mercy of circumstances but a conscious contributor to the events that are unfolding in the world. There are already millions of such men and women, and their number is increasing all the time. Ever wider numbers of ordinary people are coming into motion—-they do not want to live without a purpose, they want to be conscious and active participants in historical progress. For them Marxism-Leninism is an inestimable aid and guide. That applies in particular to the young generation—Marxism-Leninism enables them to reach more quickly the political maturity that comes with experience of life and helps them to direct their youthful ener-gies along the correct path of serving mankind.

The Marxist-Leninist world outlook is also a true compass in every sphere of scien-tific endeavour, not only in the social but also in the natural sciences. For is it not true that a correct understanding of the world and its general laws, interrelations and proc-esses greatly helps the natural scientist in his creative research? That understanding is provided by Marxism-Leninism.

It is no accident that their research experiences are now leading many eminent scien-tists either fully to accept Marxism, or tacitly to adopt some of its elements, in order to gain a more profound knowledge of the secrets of nature and be in a better position to serve the interests of humanity.

The Marxist-Leninist outlook opens up splendid prospects to workers in the arts and literature. It directs their creative efforts towards a deeper and richer reflection of reality through artistic media. Without the beneficial influence of a clear, progressive world outlook, the work of contemporary writers and artists is at the best anaemic.

Whereas bourgeois literature is more and more succumbing to moods of hopeless-ness and unrelieved pessimism, the work of progressive writers and poets is imbued with a life-asserting optimism. Their artistic creation is inspired by faith in a brighter future and calls for the building of that future.

Whereas Western bourgeois ideology is caught in a desperate crisis of disbelief in man and the future of civilisation, the Marxist-Leninist world outlook inspires a desire to work for noble social ideals.

Thorough mastery of Marxism-Leninism gives one a profound conviction not only of the correctness of the workers’ cause, but of the historical inevitability of the coming triumph of socialism throughout the world. Marxism-Leninism is a source of strength, even to the weak; a source of steadfast political .principle. It instils the unshakable ideo-logical conviction that enables one to withstand all trials and ordeals.

Millions in every part of the world have already drawn from this rich source the great ideals of their movement, and the boundless energy needed to translate these ideals into life.

Life without a progressive world outlook—can any intelligent person accept that to-day? Worse still is to depend on wretched substitutes for a world outlook that are satis-factory only to inferior minds.

It is a thousand times better to make the effort necessary for thoroughly mastering the fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism and so acquire the spiritual wealth and superior-ity needed in the struggle against the dark forces of the imperialist enemies of mankind.

PART ONE THE PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE MARXIST-LENINIST WORLD OUTLOOK CHAPTER 1 PHILOSOPHICAL MATERIALISM

The indestructible foundation of the whole edifice of Marxism-Leninism is its phi-losophy—dialectical and historical materialism.

That philosophy regards the world as it actually is, views it in the light of the data provided by progressive science and social practice. Marxist philosophical materialism is the logical outcome of scientific knowledge gained over the centuries.

1. The Development of Progressive Materialist Science in Struggle Against Reaction and Ignorance

The history of science has been marked by the ceaseless struggle of progressive sci-entists and philosophers against ignorance and superstition, against political and ideo-logical reaction. In every exploiting class society there are forces, the reactionary social classes, that stand to lose by the dissemination of progressive scientific views. In the past they either directly opposed science and persecuted progressive scientists and phi-losophers—even burning them at the stake or imprisoning them—or sought to distort scientific discoveries so as to deprive them of their progressive, materialistic implica-tions.

In ancient Greece, the materialist philosopher Anaxagoras was banished from Ath-ens as an atheist. The works of the outstanding materialist philosopher Democritus, one of the founders of the atomic theory of matter, who rejected divine intervention in nature and human affairs, were subjected to destruction during several centuries, as a result of which not one of them has come down to us.

The ancient Greek materialist philosopher Epicurus, a disciple of Democritus, who sought to liberate man from fear of God and to assert the validity of science, was for two thousand years anathematised by the leaders of the Church, who falsely depicted him as an enemy of morality and disseminator of vice.

After Christianity had been made the state religion of Rome, the memorials of an-cient civilisation were ruthlessly wiped out by the priests and monks. In particular, in 391 A. D. a horde of fanatical Christians tore down the ancient cathedral of Serapis and destroyed what was left of the greatest library of the ancient world, that of Alexandria. Pope Gregory I (590-604), an inveterate enemy of secular science and learning, de-stroyed many valuable works of ancient authors, notably the works of materialist phi-losophers.

The Inquisition, the papal invention for suppressing all opposition to the Catholic Church, savagely persecuted all progressive thinkers. In 1600, on the orders of the In-

quisition, Giordano Bruno, the great philosopher and scientist who upheld the Coperni-can doctrine, was burnt at the stake. In 1619, another great thinker, Lucilio Vanini, was done to death in Toulouse, France—on the orders of the Inquisition, his tongue was torn out and he was then burnt at the stake. The Inquisition tried to force Galileo, the famous Italian astronomer who upheld the Copernican theory, to renounce his views. Voltaire, the great French philosopher of the Enlightenment, was imprisoned in the Bastille, and another eighteenth-century French materialist philosopher, Diderot, was also sent to prison.

It should not be imagined that the struggle of the reactionaries against science was confined to ancient or medieval times. It is being waged in the capitalist era too. The capitalist class is interested in promoting the natural sciences—physics, chemistry, mathematics, etc.—that are closely connected with technical advance, but it is not at all interested in spreading the materialist philosophy, the scientific world outlook that en-ables men correctly to apprehend reality and to know how to react to it in their activities. That is why bourgeois ideologists do everything they can to prevent people from draw-ing materialist and atheistic conclusions from scientific discoveries, for they consider such conclusions dangerous to capitalist domination.

Marxism-Leninism and its philosophy, dialectical and historical materialism, are es-pecially hateful to the reactionary bourgeoisie. A veritable army of bourgeois professors specialise in “refuting” Marxism.

True, in our day the reactionary bourgeoisie does not burn progressive scientists and philosophers at the stake. But it has other means of exerting pressure on them: dismissal from universities and scientific institutions, factual deprival of opportunities to publish their works, moral and political discrediting, etc. In recent years, all these methods of combating “dangerous thoughts” have been widely employed in the United States and a number of other countries. By these methods and by the propaganda of reactionary ide-ology, the ruling class “conditions” people’s minds, instilling ideas it wants them to ac-cept and obstructing the spread of progressive, materialist ideas.

But thorny as the path of science and materialist philosophy is, and despite the many ordeals they have to face in an exploiting society, they are able, in the end, to surmount all obstacles and make steady headway.

The strength of progressive materialist science and philosophy resides in the fact that they reveal the laws of nature and society, teach us to apply these laws in the inter-ests of mankind and dispel the darkness of ignorance with the light of genuine knowl-edge.

2. Materialism and Idealism

Philosophy deals with the most general features of the world outlook.

Materialist philosophy is based on recognition of the existence of nature—the stars, the sun, the earth with its mountains and valleys, seas and forests, animals, and human beings endowed with consciousness, with the ability to think. There are no supernatural phenomena or forces, nor can there be. Man is only a particle of multiform nature, and

consciousness is a property, a faculty, of man. Nature exists objectively, that is, outside and independent of the human mind.

But there are philosophers who deny this. They assert that only mind, thought, spirit, or idea are primary, while the physical world is derived from and dependent on the spirit.

The question of the relation of the human mind to material being is the fundamental question of all varieties of philosophy, including the most recent. Which is primary—being or thinking? Philosophers are divided into two great camps according to how they answer this question.

Those who consider that the material basis—nature—is primary and regard thought, spirit, as a property of matter, belong to the camp of materialism. Those who maintain that thought, spirit or idea existed before nature and that nature is, in one way or another, the creation of spirit and dependent upon it, comprise the camp of idealism. That is the only philosophical meaning of the terms “idealism” and “materialism”.

From the most ancient times a fierce, undying struggle has been waged between the supporters of the materialist and idealist views. In fact, the whole history of philosophy is the history of the struggle between these two camps, these two parties in philosophy—materialism and idealism.

Spontaneous Materialism

In their practical activities men do not doubt that the objects around them and the phenomena of nature exist independently of their consciousness. This means that spon-taneously they adopt the standpoint of materialism,

The spontaneous materialism “of any healthy person who has not been an inmate of a lunatic asylum or a pupil of the idealist philosophers,” Lenin wrote, “consists in the view that things, the environment, the world, exist independently of our sensations, of our consciousness, of our Self, and of man in general.”2

Man cannot live by ideas and concepts alone, cannot subsist on his own sensations, the products of his imagination. In practice this is perfectly well known to everyone, including the philosophers who invent idealistic theories inferring the existence of mate-rial things from sensations, concepts and ideas. Time and again they have had to ac-knowledge that they live in defiance of their own philosophy, and that if there were no material things in the world, people would die of starvation.

This spontaneous, unconscious materialism is characteristic of the vast majority of natural scientists. They do not as a rule delve into philosophical problems, but spontane-ously follow the logic of the scientific facts with which they have to deal. Nature, the subject of their research, reveals at every step the materiality of the phenomena they in-vestigate. For whatever the field of investigation— celestial bodies or molecules and atoms, electricity and magnetism or plant and animal life—the scientist is always deal-ing with objective processes, with material things and their properties, with laws of na-ture that exist independently of the human mind.

In bourgeois society only the boldest and most consistent scientists openly proclaim

themselves adherents of philosophical materialism. Most scientists are under such strong pressure from official bourgeois ideology, the Church, idealist philosophy and other en-vironmental factors, that they do not venture openly to side with materialism, waver and often make idealist statements or reservations. However, in their scientific studies they find themselves compelled, by the very character of the subject matter, to express what are basically materialist views.

There is the example of T. H. Huxley, the nineteenth-century English naturalist. He did not call himself a materialist, but in his studies in zoology, comparative anatomy, anthropology and evolution, he upheld materialist views, stating that philosophical ideal-ism leads only to confusion and ignorance. Engels described scientists of this type as “shamefaced materialists”, and Lenin said that Huxley’s anti-materialist reservations were only a fig-leaf to cover up his spontaneous natural-scientific materialism.

Often enough, modern natural scientists who attempt a philosophical interpretation of their scientific discoveries arrive at idealistic conclusions. But as long as they keep to the scientific field, to practical work in the laboratory, factory or experimental farm—as long as they do not indulge in philosophical theorising, but concern themselves with the natural phenomena they are investigating, they behave like spontaneous materialists.

One of the greatest physicists of our time, the late Albert Einstein, was influenced by idealism in some of his philosophical conceptions, but in the realm of science he is known for his theory of relativity, the real content of which is materialistic.

Another eminent scientist, Max Planck, founder of modern quantum physics, al-though he, too, did not call himself a materialist, in his work on physics and philosophy defended the idea of a “healthy world outlook” that recognises the existence of nature independent of the human mind. Planck combated philosophical idealism and was, in fact if not in name, a materialist.

Not infrequently, however, idealism adversely affects the scientist’s interpretation of his scientific data. This makes it evident that spontaneous materialism is an inadequate defence against idealism. Only conscious acceptance of dialectical materialism is a reli-able safeguard against idealist errors.

Materialism—a Progressive Philosophy

Unlike spontaneous or naive materialism, philosophical materialism scientifically substantiates, elaborates and consistently applies materialist conceptions based on the findings of progressive science and social practice.

Materialist philosophy is an effective weapon against the pernicious influence of spiritual reaction. It provides a guide throughout life, showing the correct way of solving the philosophical problems that agitate men’s minds.

For centuries the Church has tried to instil contempt for earthly life and fear of God. It taught people, and above all the mass of oppressed humanity, that their destiny was to toil and pray, that happiness was unattainable in this “vale of tears”, that it could be achieved only in the next world, as the reward for obedience and meekness. The Church threatened with the wrath of God and torment in hell those who dared rise against the

divinely established rule of the exploiters.

The great historic service rendered by materialist philosophy is that it helped man to break free of all superstitions. Ever since ancient times it has taught him not to fear death, not to fear gods and other supernatural forces.

It teaches us not to hope for happiness beyond the grave, but to prize life on earth and strive to improve it. For the first time materialism gave man the realisation of his dignity and intellect, proclaiming that man was not a worm condemned to crawl in the dust, but nature’s supreme creation capable of mastering the forces of nature and making them serve him. Materialism is imbued with the utmost faith in the human intellect, in the power of knowledge, in man’s ability to fathom all the secrets of the world around him, and to create a social system based on reason and justice.

The idealists often calumniate materialism, presenting it as “an uncanny, a sinister, a nightmare view of life” (William James). Actually, it is idealism, especially its latter-day versions, that is a philosophy of gloom. It is idealism, not materialism, that denies man’s ability to acquire knowledge and preaches distrust in science. It is idealism, not material-ism, that extols the cult of death. It is idealism that has always been the ideological source for the most abhorrent manifestations of anti-humanism—racist theories and fas-cist obscurantism.

Philosophical idealism refuses to recognise the reality of the external material world, repudiating it and proclaiming it unreal and advancing instead an imagined, non-material world.

In contrast, materialism gives us a true picture of the world without any superfluous additions in the shape of spirit, God, the creator of the world, etc. Materialists do not expect aid from supernatural forces. Their faith is in man, in his ability to transform the world by his own efforts and make it worthy of himself.

Materialism is in its very essence an optimistic, life-asserting and radiant philoso-phy, entirely alien to pessimism and Weltschmerz. That is why, as a rule, it is the world outlook of progressive social groups and classes. Its supporters fearlessly look ahead and are not tormented by doubts of the justice of their cause.

The advocates of idealism have always sought to slander materialism, maintaining that materialists have no moral values and lofty ideals, these being the prerogative only of supporters of idealist philosophy. In point of fact, the dialectical and historical mate-rialism of Marx and Engels, far from rejecting progressive ideas, moral principles and lofty ideals, lays great emphasis on them. It considers that successful struggle for pro-gress, for a progressive social system, is impossible without noble ideals that inspire men in struggle and bold creative work.

The struggle of the working class and the Communists convincingly refutes the stu-pid idealist lie that materialists are indifferent to ideals. For this struggle is being waged for the highest and noblest ideal of all, communism, and it produces legions of intrepid fighters supremely devoted to that ideal.

Dialectical and Historical Materialism — the Highest Stage in the Development of Philosophical Thought

Modern materialism is the dialectical and historical materialism created by Marx and Engels. It did not appear out of thin air, for the philosophy of Marx and Engels is the culmination of a long process of development of philosophical thought.

Materialism arose about 2,500 years ago in China, India and Greece. Materialist phi-losophical thought in these countries was closely linked with the everyday experience of their peoples, with the first rudiments of the knowledge of nature. But science was only just coming into being then, and the ancient materialist philosophers’ conceptions of the world, though they contained many brilliant conjectures, lacked a solid scientific basis and remained extremely naive.

The materialism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was much more mature, for progress in the natural sciences and technology stimulated philosophical thought. At the same time, materialist philosophy stimulated the study of nature. For instance, the view of Francis Bacon, the seventeenth-century English materialist, that experiment is the basis of knowledge, and his statement that knowledge is power, greatly stimulated the development of the natural sciences.

In this period the biggest advances were made in mathematics and the mechanics of terrestrial and celestial bodies. This laid its imprint on the philosophical generalisations of materialists, including their conception of matter and motion. A very important part in the development of the new form of materialism was played by the physics of the seven-teenth century French philosopher Rene Descartes, who was a materialist as regards his conception of nature, the mechanistic theory of man advanced by the English materialist Thomas Hobbes, and, in particular, the mechanics of Isaac Newton. The materialist phi-losophers regarded all phenomena of nature and social life from the standpoint of me-chanics and by its aid hoped to explain these phenomena. Hence their materialism came to be known as mechanical materialism. Its exponents in the eighteenth century were John Toland and Joseph Priestley in England, Julien la Mettrie, Paul Holbach, Claude-Adrien Helvétius and Denis Diderot in France.

This close connection of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century materialism with the natural sciences was its positive aspect. But it also had its defects. Engels pointed to three basic limitations.

First, its mechanistic approach. In those days mechanics was the model science for the materialist philosophers and this limited their field of vision. They tried to reduce all processes, all types of motion to mechanical motion, failing to understand the peculiari-ties of organic nature and the specific features and laws of social life.

Their second limitation was an inability to understand and explain development in nature, even when the facts of such development were noticed by them. Their vision of nature as a whole was of something immutable and unchangeable, eternally repeating the same cycle. That view of nature is called metaphysical and, consequently, mechani-cal materialism was a metaphysical doctrine.

Lastly, these materialists, like all the materialists before Marx, were unable to apply

materialism in interpreting social affairs. They failed to see its material basis and con-sidered that the transition of society from lower to higher forms was due to progress in knowledge, a change in the views and ideas prevailing in the society. Such an explana-tion, however, is an idealist one.

Moreover, the pre-Marxian materialists did not understand the part played by the practical-critical, revolutionary activity of classes, of the masses, in changing reality, in refashioning social life. True, they insisted on the need for replacing the feudal system by the bourgeois system, but at the same time they rejected the struggle of the masses for a new social order. Their fear of mass struggle was indicative of their bourgeois class limitation.

A step forward was made by the early nineteenth-century German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach and, more especially, by the Russian revolutionary democrats Alex-ander Herzen, Vissarion Belinsky, Nikolai Chernyshevsky and Nikolai Dobrolyubov. Feuerbach was able, to a certain extent, to overcome the mechanistic limitations of his eighteenth-century predecessors, but shared their other defects. Furthermore his philoso-phy was divorced from practical social and political activity. The Russian materialists, on the other hand, endeavoured to combine their materialist understanding of nature with dialectics; that was their outstanding achievement.

More, as ideologists of the revolutionary Russian peasantry, they saw in philosophi-cal theory not only an explanation of what exists, but a method of reforming, refashion-ing the existing for the benefit of the people.

Materialism reached a new, its highest, stage in the dialectical and historical materi-alism of Marx and Engels, the great teachers and leaders of the proletariat, the most pro-gressive and revolutionary class of modern society. Marx and Engels achieved a verita-ble revolution in philosophy.

Conversant with the highest achievements of contemporary social and natural science, and having mastered and creatively interpreted everything of value in the preceding development of philosophical thought, Marx and Engels created dialectical and historical materialism, a new form of materialism free of the shortcomings of its forerunners.

In Marxist philosophy, materialism is combined with dialectics to form an organic unity. In their development of dialectics, Marx and Engels proceeded from the very rich heritage of social thought, including the achievements of German philosophy, especially the idealist dialectics of Hegel.

They took as their basis also a higher level of science, new discoveries in the natural sciences, of special importance among which were the law of conservation and transformation of energy, the discovery of the cell, and Darwin’s theory of the origin of species. The achievements of natural science provided a strictly scientific foundation for the theory of development, and of the unity and universal interconnection of natural phenomena.

Instead of the one-sided mechanistic view of nature and man, Marx and Engels pre-sented their theory of development, which embraces all spheres of reality and, at the

same time, takes into account the specific character of each: inorganic nature, the or-ganic world, social life, and human consciousness,

Marx and Engels were the first to extend materialism to the understanding of social life. They discovered the material motive forces and laws of social development, thus converting the history of society into a science.

Lastly, they converted materialist philosophy from an abstract theory into an effec-tive means for the transformation of society, into an ideological weapon of the working class in its struggle for socialism and communism.

The philosophical doctrine of Marx and Engels has won wide recognition among the working people in all countries. It is a genuine philosophy of the masses.

3. The Philosophical Concept of Matter

In Marxist philosophical materialism the concept “matter” is used in its broadest sense—to denote everything that exists objectively, that is, independent of our mind and reflected in our sensations. “Matter,” Lenin wrote, “is the objective reality given to us in sensation.”

It is very important to understand this broad meaning of the concept “matter”. Most of the old, pre-Marxian materialists regarded as matter only physical bodies and the tiny particles—atoms or corpuscles—of which these bodies are composed. Democritus and Epicurus, for instance, believed that the world consisted of atoms moving about in empty space, the Void; things were merely combinations of atoms. Subsequently, phys-ics confirmed the ancient materialists’ brilliant conjecture of the atomic structure of mat-ter. The concept of matter as confined only to atoms, however, was an oversimplifica-tion that led to an inadequate understanding of the material world. Yet this view of mat-ter was revived in modern times and persisted in science up to the close of the nineteenth century.

The term “matter” as used in Marxist philosophical materialism designates objective reality in all its multiform manifestations. Matter is not only the tiny particles of which all things are composed. It is the infinite multitude of worlds in an infinite universe; the gaseous and dust clouds of the cosmos; our own solar system with its sun and planets; the earth and everything existing on it. It is, also, radiation, the physical fields that trans-fer the action of one body or particle to another and connect them: electro-magnetic, nu-clear and gravitational fields. Everything existing outside and independent of our mind is of a material nature.

All sciences devoted to the study of objective reality study matter, its different quali-ties and states.

The physical sciences deal with the physical states of matter. Modern physics has established that the atom is a complex structure, and by no means a simple, indivisible and immutable particle, as the old atomists believed. The scientists have also established that the atoms of one element can be converted into the atoms of another element by transformation of atomic nuclei. For instance, uranium atoms placed in a nuclear reactor are converted into plutonium atoms.

The new physical phenomena discovered in the opening years of the century (radio-activity, X-rays, etc.) proved the divisibility and highly complex structure of the atom, led to new theories of the structure of matter and demolished the old concepts of classi-cal physics. On the ground that the atom could not be regarded as an immutable and in-divisible particle of matter, many idealist philosophers and physicists who had suc-cumbed to idealistic delusions drew the conclusion that science had refuted the material-ist conception of nature. There was talk of the “disappearance of matter”. These asser-tions were profoundly erroneous. Marxist philosophical materialism has never commit-ted itself to any one-sided theory of the structure of matter, and has never sought to re-duce matter to some set of unchangeable “bricks of the universe”. It has always under-stood matter to mean one thing and one thing only, namely, objective reality existing outside the human mind and reflected in it. Materialism and idealism hold opposite views on the source of knowledge, on the relation of consciousness to the external world. Materialism teaches that the world exists objectively, and that consciousness is a reflection of the world. The philosophical concept of matter is used to designate the en-tire objective world. As for the physical structure of the world and its physical proper-ties, these are studied by physics, and as science develops our views on the physical structure of matter change. But those changes, however great, cannot shake the proposi-tion of philosophical materialism that there exists an objective world and that physics, like many other sciences, deals with this objective, material world. “For the sole ‘prop-erty’ of matter with whose recognition philosophical materialism is bound up,” Lenin wrote, “is the property of being an objective reality, of existing outside our mind.”3

That understanding of matter is the only correct one. It embraces all the diversity of the material world, without however reducing it to any one form of matter. He who is guided by this Marxist conception will not be misled by the idealist philosophers who assert that the new discoveries in physics are proof of the disappearance of matter.

Matter is uncreatable and indestructible. It is eternally changing, but not a single particle can be reduced to nothingness by any physical, chemical or other processes.

Science provides ample corroboration of this thesis of philosophical materialism. Let us cite one example. Modern physics has established that, under definite conditions, such material particles as the positron and electron disappear to produce quanta (por-tions) of light, photons. Some physicists call this phenomenon the “annihilation of mat-ter” which literally means complete destruction, transformation into nothingness. Ideal-ist philosophers point to this phenomenon as a fresh “proof” of the disappearance of matter. Actually, there is no disappearance: conversion of positrons and electrons into photons is the transition of matter from one state to another, from a solid body to light. Nature knows also the reverse process—conversion of photons into positrons and elec-trons, that is, the conversion of light into solid matter. All these transformations conform to the law of conservation of mass and energy.

The world presents a picture of great diversity: inorganic nature, organic nature, physical phenomena, chemical processes, plant and animal life, social life. Science and materialist philosophy reveal the unity within this diversity. This unity consists in the

fact that all these infinitely diverse processes and phenomena are different states of mat-ter, its different properties and manifestations, Engels said: “The real unity of the world consists in its materiality.”4 It consists also in the fact that consciousness belongs to the same material world in which we live, and not to some other world of the hereafter, that consciousness is a property of matter organised in a special way.

The conviction of the unity of the material world was formed and strengthened in battle against the religious doctrine that divides the world into Earth and Heaven; in bat-tle against dualism, which regards spirit and body, mind and matter, as separate and un-connected entities; in battle against philosophical idealism, which sees the unity of the world in its being a product of mind, of spirit.

4. Universal Forms of the Existence of the Material World

Eternal Motion in Nature

Nature and society do not know absolute rest, immobility, immutability. The world presents a picture of constant motion and change.

Motion, change, development is an eternal and inalienable property of matter. “Mo-tion is the mode of existence of matter,” Engels said. “Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, nor can there be.”5 Every material body, every material parti-cle—the molecule, atom or its components—are by their very nature in a constant state of motion and change.

The philosophical understanding of motion implies more than the movement of a body in space. As a mode of existence of matter, motion embraces all the processes and changes taking place in the universe. Among these changes an especially important part is played by the processes of development of matter, the passage of matter from one state to another, higher state, marked by new features and properties.

There are no permanently fixed, ossified things in the world, only things undergoing change, processes. This means that nowhere is there absolute rest, a state that would preclude motion. There is only relative rest. A body may be in a state of rest only in rela-tion to a definite point on the earth’s surface. But that body moves with the movement of the earth, with the movement of the entire solar system. Besides, its component parts, molecules and atoms, are in motion too, and complex processes are at work within these components. In short, the state of rest is only relative. Only motion is absolute, without exceptions.

Forms of Motion of Matter

Corresponding to the diversity of matter is the diversity of its forms of motion. The simplest form of the motion of matter is mechanical movement of a body in space. A more complex form is thermal processes, the random motion of molecules that make up a physical body. Science has established that light, electro-magnetic radiation and intra-nuclear processes are also specific forms of matter in motion. Another form of motion is seen in chemical processes of the transformation of matter by combination and recombi-nation of atoms and molecules. The life of organic nature, the physiological processes in

plants and animals, the evolution of species—these too are specific manifestations of the universal property of matter, viz., motion.

A much more complex form of motion is seen in human social life: the development of material production, economic life, etc.

Since the end of the nineteenth century, scientists have discovered and successfully studied a number of new, previously unknown forms of matter in motion: motion of atomic particles around the nucleus, intricate transformation processes within the atomic nucleus, etc. It can be safely assumed that science will discover still more forms of mat-ter in motion.

The various forms of motion are not isolated from one another, but are intercon-nected and become transformed one into another. Thus thermal processes can give rise to chemical transformations and light phenomena. At a definite stage of development, chemical processes led to the formation of proteins and the enzyme systems associated with them. This was the basis of the origin of life, that is, of the biological form of the motion of matter.

One form of motion can pass into another and this has found expression notably in the fundamental law of natural science, viz., the law of transformation and conservation of energy.

Different forms of motion correspond to different stages in the development and complication of matter. The lower, simpler forms become constituent parts of the higher, more complex forms. Nevertheless, there is a qualitative difference between the differ-ent forms of motion, and the higher forms cannot be reduced to the lower forms. For instance, physiological processes include mechanical motion—the movement in space of elements taking part in these processes—but they cannot be reduced to, and are not ex-hausted by, the mechanical movement of these elements.

The old, pre-Marxian mechanistic materialists believed that all life, in nature and human society, could be reduced to the mechanical movement of bodies and particles in space. Marxist philosophical materialism, with its broad view of motion as change in general, overcomes the narrow and oversimplified mechanistic conception of the motion of matter.

Space and Time

Matter can move only in space and time. All bodies, including man himself, and all material processes taking place in the objectively existing world, occupy a definite place in space. They are located near or far from one another; separated by distance; a moving body proceeds along a definite path. All this expresses the property of material things and processes known as extension.

Space is a universal mode of the existence of matter. There is not and cannot be mat-ter without space, just as there cannot be space without matter. The difference between the extension of an individual body and that of the whole material world is that the for-mer is limited, finite, that is, has a beginning and end, whereas the material world is lim-itless, infinite.

Distances in the universe are incomparably greater than the distances we are accus-tomed to on the earth. Modern telescopes enable us to detect stellar systems the light from which takes hundreds of millions of years to reach the earth, though light travels at a speed of 300,000 kilometres a second. But even these magnitudes, being finite, do not give us a real picture of the vastness of the universe, which is infinite. Its infinitude lies beyond the bounds of imagination and can only be expressed as a scientific concept.

The existence of physical bodies and of man himself has a duration in time—minutes, hours, days, etc. Everything in the world undergoes change. Every body, every phenomenon of nature, has its past, present and future. These are expressions of time. Time, like space, is a universal mode of the existence of matter. Every individual thing, every process, and the material world as a whole, exist in time.

But again there is a difference between the duration of existence of an individual thing and of nature as a whole: the existence of individual things is restricted in time, while nature as a whole exists eternally. Every thing arises, undergoes change and sub-sequently ceases to exist. Nature, on the other hand, has no beginning and no end. Indi-vidual things are transient, but the connected finite things constitute an eternal nature that knows neither beginning nor end.

The figures relating to the age of the earth and the development of life on earth strike the imagination. Man, as we know him today, appeared about 50,000 or 70,000 years ago. The transition forms from ape to man arose about a million years ago. The first primitive forms of plant and animal life appeared more than a thousand million years ago, and the earth itself several thousand million years ago. Such is the time scale of the earth’s history. But neither these figures, nor even bigger magnitudes, can give us a real conception of the eternity of nature, for that eternity implies its infinite existence in time; it implies that nature has always existed and always will exist.

Space and time are interconnected as modes of the existence of the objective world and are inseparable from matter in motion.

That was convincingly demonstrated by one of the greatest scientific theories of our time, Einstein’s theory of relativity. It refuted the view previously prevailing in physics that space is independent of matter, an unchanging void into which material bodies had been inserted by some external force, and that time flows at a uniform rate and does not depend on the motion of matter.

Space and time, being universal modes of the existence of matter, are absolute; noth-ing can exist outside of time and space. But their properties are changeable: space and time relations depend on the speed of motion of matter; the properties of space and time change in various parts of the universe in accordance with the distribution and motion of material masses. In that sense, space and time are relative.

Attempts to Deny the Objective Existence of Space and Time

Man’s day-to-day experience over the centuries and scientific data prove that space and time exist objectively, though this is denied by many idealist philosophers.

The German idealist philosopher, Immanuel Kant, claimed there was no such thing

as objective space and time existing independent of our consciousness. In his view, space and time are merely modes of apprehending phenomena. He supposed that it is in the nature of human cognition to perceive all phenomena located in space and taking place in time: if there were no human consciousness, there would be no space or time.

The view of space and time as subjective methods of perceiving phenomena is cur-rent also in modern idealist philosophy, though it is contradictory to, and refuted by, sci-ence, experience and practice.

Let us take this example. If you have to travel from Paris to Moscow you know be-forehand that the distance is 2,500 kilometres—a real, not imaginary distance. To trav-erse it you will need time, and the length of time will depend not on your imagination, but on the objectively existing distance between these two cities, and also on the means of transport. By rail, the journey will take not less than two days; by jet plane it can be covered in a matter of three or four hours.

Science tells us that the world existed prior to man and his consciousness. But if that is so, we must conclude that space and time are independent of human consciousness, because the material world cannot exist otherwise than in space and time.

In our day, when people scientifically and technically equipped are able to penetrate cosmic space, a new blow is being dealt to idealist views of the subjective character of space and time.

The teaching of philosophical materialism that the external world exists in space and time refutes the religious doctrine of a God existing outside of space and time. Theology asserts that God existed before there was a world, that he created nature but remains out-side nature, in an incomprehensible, supernatural “somewhere”. The theologians assert that God alone is infinite and eternal, while nature has a beginning and an end, both in space and time.

Science has conclusively shown the untenability of such fantasies. There is no place for God in the true, scientific conception of the world. The eighteenth-century French astronomer Joseph Lalande remarked that he had searched the skies but did not find any God there.

Nature is its own cause. That thought was expressed in the seventeenth century by the materialist philosopher Spinoza. That materialist formula signifies that nature is in no need of a creator standing above it, that nature itself possesses the attributes of infin-ity and eternity which the theologians falsely ascribe to God.

By proving the uncreatedness, eternity and infinity of nature, the Marxist materialist philosophy provides a firm basis for atheism.

5. Consciousness—a Property of Matter Organised in a Special Way

Thinking—a Result of the Evolution of Living Matter

The ability to think, characteristic of man, and found also in an elementary form in the higher animals, is the product of a long historical development along the paths of the increasingly complex reflection of the external and internal world by living beings.

The material basis of life is protein, a complex product of the development of mat-

ter. Protein compounds, especially in the form of enzyme systems, play a decisive part in metabolism, the basis of the vital activity of every organism. Associated with metabo-lism are other features of life: reproduction, irritability, etc. Irritability enables living beings to respond to influences of the internal and external environment by adaptive re-actions. This is an elementary form of reflex activity. In the higher stages of the devel-opment of the organic world, this property of irritability, which is characteristic of the simplest organisms, becomes the basis for higher nervous activity, and what is called psychic activity.

Even in unicellular organisms there is a differentiation of elements particularly sen-sitive to various external stimuli. With the appearance of multicellular animals, speciali-sation of the cells of the organism occurs, with the appearance of special groups of cells (receptors) that are capable of receiving external stimuli and of converting the energy of stimulation into excitation. As the animal organism grows more complex, these cells gradually evolve into the nervous system and its central organ, the brain.

The nervous system is an organ which by its structures and processes reflects all the diverse energetic and spatial-temporal properties of the external world, at the same time co-ordinating the work of organs within the organism itself.

In vertebrates, the central nervous system is composed of the spinal cord and the brain with its various divisions. In most fish, the brain is relatively small, with hardly any development of the cerebral hemispheres. In amphibia, the brain is bigger and there are the beginnings of the forebrain, the basis for the development of the cerebral hemi-spheres. In reptiles, the brain is still more developed and the surface of the hemispheres for the first time shows nerve cells from which the cortex is formed. In birds, the cere-bral hemispheres are still bigger, but the cortex little developed. The hemispheres are much more developed in mammals, owing to the development and complexity of the cortex. The higher mammals have an extensive cortex with many irregular ridges and fissures, and the hemispheres cover all the other parts of the brain.

The highest development of the brain, and especially of its cortex, is to be found in man. The cerebral cortex constitutes an apparatus in constant interaction with the entire nervous system and is the organ of higher nervous activity, of the highest and most complex forms of connection with the external environment. Ivan Pavlov, the great Rus-sian physiologist, said: “Mental activity is the result of the physiological activity of a definite brain mass.”6 This is the conclusion drawn by all modern natural science.

The excitation of the sensory nerve-endings resulting from external and internal stimuli is transmitted through the centripetal nerves to the appropriate parts of the brain. From there impulses are carried by the centrifugal nerves to various organs of the body, stimulating their activity. What we have is a reflex action of the given organ, and the whole organism, to one or another stimulus.

For example, when you draw your hand away from something hot, that is a reflex action. It is of the kind that psychologists call unconditioned reflexes. They are innate both in animals and man.

These unconditioned reflexes (defensive, food, etc.) are the basis for conditioned re-

flexes, which are formed in the course of individual experience. For instance, a dog se-cretes saliva when it grabs a piece of meat; that is an unconditioned reflex. But saliva-tion can be caused by the sight or smell of meat, or even by the sight of a person who usually feeds the animal. Analysis of this and similar phenomena enabled Pavlov to prove that if feeding is accompanied by a flash of light or the sound of a bell, a new type of reflex response can be developed—the dog will secrete saliva on seeing the light or hearing the bell. Pavlov called these conditioned reflexes, because they are produced by combining some conditional stimulus (light, sound, etc.) with an unconditioned stimulus that evokes a reflex action.

Conditioned reflexes are temporary nerve connections. They arise under definite conditions and last for a longer or shorter period without the aid of unconditioned stim-uli. Their importance is due to the fact that they enable organisms to adapt themselves to changed conditions of their environment. It is well known, for instance, that many wild animals show no alarm on seeing human beings for the first time. Only when man be-gins to hunt them do they change their behaviour, hiding themselves as soon as they see or sense him. They have acquired a new, conditioned reflex, and a very useful one for them: the sight of a man immediately evokes an unconditioned defensive reflex, the sig-nal for purposive adaptive reaction.

It has been found that any object or natural phenomenon, if combined with uncondi-tioned reflexes, can serve as a signal for conditioned reflex activity. This system of sig-nals, common to both animals and man, Pavlov called the first signalling system.

At the same time, Pavlov emphasised the specific character of the higher nervous activity of man as compared with animals. He showed that speech is a new system of signals characteristic only of man, and one that becomes a source of conditioned reflex activity. This system, peculiar to man, Pavlov called the second signalling system.

A fundamental aspect of Pavlov’s discovery of signalling activity is that the adapta-tion of living beings to impending, i.e., future, events, which had always been the pre-rogative of idealist psychology, henceforth became an object of materialist scientific investigation.

Pavlov discovered the physiological laws of higher nervous activity in animals and man, and he showed the features common to both and the fundamental difference be-tween them. His work has laid a sound scientific basis for an understanding of human mental activity.

The Role of Labour and Speech in the Development of Human Thought

Mental activity in man has its precursor in the rudimentary forms of this activity in animals. But the qualitative differences between them must also be seen. The human mind, human thought, is the highest stage in the development of the mental activity. The labour activity of man as a social being has determined the extremely high level of his mental life, his thinking.

The great English scientist, Charles Darwin, proved that man and the anthropoid apes have common ancestors. In the distant past, man’s animal ancestors were marked

by the high development of their fore limbs. They learned to walk erect and began to use natural objects as tools to procure food and to defend themselves. Subsequently, they proceeded to fashion tools, and this marked the gradual transformation of the animal to the human being. The use of tools enabled man to master such a natural force as fire and made it possible for him to improve and vary his food, which in turn helped to develop his brain.

The use of tools changed man’s relation to nature. The animal passively adapts itself to nature, making use of what nature itself provides. In contrast, man adapts himself to nature actively—he purposively changes nature, creating for himself conditions of exis-tence that he does not find ready-made. Labour has played a decisive part in the devel-opment and perfection of man’s brain; in a certain sense, man and his brain have been created by labour.

The tremendous progress in man’s adaptation to the conditions of his environment, which took the form of changing the external world, only became possible through an extensive development of the human brain’s capacity to appraise the results of behav-iour, of labour activity. A powerful impetus to the development of this capacity was given when the ancestor of modern man made the first tool. In its turn, the capacity of the brain to appreciate the results of the labour process served also as the physiological basis for a rapid improvement of the instruments of labour themselves.

This more complex interaction of man and nature led to more complex relationships between men themselves For collective labour, men had to associate with one another, and for this the limited stock of sounds that had sufficed for animals was no longer ade-quate. In the course of labour activities, the human throat gradually developed and changed. Man learned to pronounce articulate sounds, which gradually developed into words, language. Joint labour would have been impossible without the faculty of speech.

Without words, concepts of things, and their relation to one another could not have arisen; human thought would have been impossible. The emergence and development of speech, in its turn, influenced the development of the brain.

Thus man’s social labour, and later, in association with it, speech, were the decisive factors influencing the development of the brain, the development of the capacity to think.

Consciousness Is a Property of the Brain

Consciousness is a product of the activity of the human brain, which is connected with the intricate complex of sensory organs. In essence, consciousness is a reflection of the material world. It is a manifold process that includes various types of mental activity, such as sensation, perception, conception, thought, feeling and will. Without the proper functioning of the brain there can be no normal mental activity. Derangement of this functioning by illness, say, or alcohol, impairs the capacity for sound mental activity. Sleep is a partial, temporary inhibition of the activity of the cerebral cortex as a whole—thinking ceases and consciousness is obscured. Recent achievements in influencing se-lectively and in any desired direction human mental states and pathological emotions by

means of various drugs once again proves the primary character of the material cerebral processes underlying the formation of consciousness.

But from these correct materialist views it does not follow that thought is a sub-stance secreted by the brain. The nineteenth-century German materialist Karl Vogt de-fined thought as a special substance secreted by the brain, just as our salivary glands secrete saliva or the liver bile. That was a vulgar conception of the nature of thought. Mental activity, consciousness, thought, is a special property of matter, but not a special kind of matter.

On the fundamental question of philosophy we counterpose consciousness and mat-ter, spirit and nature. Matter is everything that exists independent and outside of our consciousness, and it is therefore a gross error to regard consciousness as part of matter. Lenin said: “To say that thought is material is to make a false step, a step towards con-fusing materialism and idealism.”7 And indeed, if thought is the same thing as matter, that removes all difference between matter and thinking; it makes them identical,

The idealist opponents of Marxism persist in ascribing to it the view that conscious-ness is of a material nature. They do so in order to make it easier to “refute” Marxist phi-losophical materialism. It is a time-honoured device—first to ascribe some absurdity to your opponent and then to subject it to “annihilating” criticism.

Actually, this identification of consciousness and matter belongs not to dialectical, but to the vulgar materialism. Marxist materialist philosophy has always combated this view, always drawing a distinction between consciousness—the reflection of the mate-rial world—and matter itself.

But this difference should not be exaggerated, not made into an absolute break. Such a break between consciousness and matter is characteristic of psychophysical parallel-ism, which maintains that thought, consciousness, are processes taking place parallel to, but independent of, material processes occurring in the brain. Science rejects that stand-point. It proves that human mental activity is only a special aspect of the vital activity of the organism, a special function of the brain.

Dialectical materialism rejects any break between consciousness and matter. For such a break would, in essence, signify a return to the primitive, ignorant views of early human history, when all the phenomena of life were explained as due to a soul that was supposed to enter the body and control it.

In solving the psychophysical problem, i.e., the problem of relation between man's mental activity and its organ, the brain (as a material organ, a physical body), one must see both the difference and the connection between them. It is important to bear the dif-ference in mind, because identifying consciousness with matter leads to a sheer absurd-ity. But neither should consciousness be separated from the brain, for consciousness is a function of the brain, i.e., of matter organised in a special way.

6. Opponents of Philosophical Materialism

By recognising the material unity of the world, Marxist philosophical materialism adopts the standpoint of philosophical monism (from the Greek monos, meaning one).

Marxist philosophical materialism is a consistent and harmonious doctrine because its explanation of all phenomena proceeds from a single material basis.

But there are other philosophical doctrines that are not ready to admit either the pri-macy of matter or the primacy of spirit. Their underlying philosophical principle is dual-ism (from the Latin duo, meaning two), and they seek to prove that the world has two primary bases, independent of each other and absolutely different in nature—matter and spirit, body and consciousness, nature and idea. Such was the view of Descartes.

Butt dualism is incapable of explaining the well-known fact that influences affecting the human body cause changes in consciousness, and, conversely, that thought can result in bodily motion. The standpoint of philosophical dualism is inconsistent and half-hearted, and, as a rule, leads to idealism.

The idealist philosophers who seek to explain the world from a single but idealist basis are monists too. Their monism, however, rests on an erroneous, anti-scientific foundation, since it takes as its starting-point that idea, thought, consciousness are pri-mary, and nature physical things, the human body are secondary and derived from the spiritual basis. In their opinion, everything is consciousness or the product of conscious-ness.

Objective Idealism

The idealist view of the world in its most primitive, but still most widespread, form, finds expression in the religious doctrine of a non-material spirit, or deity, which is sup-posed to have existed before the physical universe and to have created it. The whole his-tory of science refutes such views. For science has proved beyond doubt that mental phenomena and processes arise at a very high stage in the development of matter and are necessarily associated with definite material processes in the cerebral cortex and nervous system. There can be no mental phenomena without these material, physiological proc-esses. Hence, the religious doctrine of mind existing prior to matter and nature is false and completely at variance with reality.

A more subtle and abstract form of these views is to be found in the idealist philoso-phical systems. The creators of these systems asserted that the basis of all things must be sought in spiritual or non-material causes, elements or essences that existed before the appearance of material things. Such views were propounded by the great idealist phi-losophers, Plato, Leibniz and Hegel, who made a considerable contribution to the devel-opment of philosophical thought. Plato called these non-material causes “forms” or “ideas”. Leibniz considered that the ultimate basis of all things lay in a peculiar kind of spiritual “atoms” of being—spiritually active “units” (monads). Hegel saw the ultimate basis of all things in the “idea” as an objectively existing and self-developing concept. “The idea,” he wrote, “is the true primacy and things are what they are because of the activity of the concepts intrinsic to them and disclosed in them.”8 According to Hegel, nature as a whole is also the product of the concept, the idea—not an ordinary human idea, but one that exists independent of man, the Absolute Idea, which is equivalent to God.

The philosophy of Plato, Leibniz and Hegel is termed objective idealism because it recognises the existence of some “objective” spiritual basis, distinct from human con-sciousness and independent of it.

The views of the objective idealists will not stand criticism. Ideas, concepts exist only in human thought, they reflect the general features and properties of reality itself, they reflect generalised characteristics of the material world. Such, for instance, are the concepts man, society, socialism, nation, etc. Concepts, ideas that are supposed to have existed prior to nature and to have produced nature are simply a fantasy of the idealists. Lenin wrote: “...Everybody knows what a human idea is; but an idea independent of man and prior to man, an idea in the abstract, an Absolute Idea, is a theological inven-tion of the idealist Hegel.”9

Subjective Idealism

Besides objective idealism, which derives nature from some divine idea, there is also subjective idealism, which asserts that material things are only the sum total of our sensations, thoughts. This philosophy makes the world part of the consciousness of the subject, i.e., of the cognising human being.

The subjective idealist asks: What do I know of the things around me? And his an-swer is: Only the sensations of colour, taste, odour, density, form, etc. I do not and can-not perceive in things anything more than the sum of these sensations; is it not, then, reasonable to suppose that things are only the sum total of my sensations, and that no things exist outside or independent of sensations?

From this reasoning of the subjective idealists, it follows that man is surrounded not by things, but by complexes of his own sensations, that the whole of nature is merely the sum total of sensations.

That view was expounded early in the eighteenth century by the English bishop Berkeley. He frankly stated that the sole object of his idealist philosophy was to refute materialism and atheism and substantiate the existence of God.

Subjective idealism is a crude distortion of the actual relation between our percep-tions and things. It identifies human perception with the things perceived.

The logical conclusion to be drawn from the basic tenet of subjective idealism is this: things and the perception of them are one and the same. But in that case we must conclude that the whole world is created by myself, by my consciousness, and that all other individuals, including my parents, are only perceptions of my mind and do not ex-ist objectively. Hence, subjective idealism inevitably leads to solipsism (from the Latin words solus meaning alone and ipse meaning self), an absurd philosophy which asserts that only I myself exist, and that the whole world, including all other people, are merely figments of my imagination.

Every form of subjective idealism is bound to lead to solipsistic conclusions, and this is convincing proof of its falseness.

The Attempt to Lay Down a “Third” Line in Philosophy

Besides idealist doctrines that frankly make consciousness the basis the world, there are doctrines that seek to conceal their idealism and create the impression that they stand above both materialism and idealism and represent a “third” line in philosophy. One such trend is positivism.

Positivism arose in the first half of the last century. It has now become one of the most influential philosophical trends in the bourgeois world and has gained currency among natural scientists. The positivists denounce all preceding philosophy as meta-physics, understanding the term to mean futile, scholastic discussion of problems that are beyond the scope of experience and incapable of scientific solution. This, they say, applies above all to the fundamental question of philosophy: which is primary, nature or consciousness? Science, the positivists tell us, must confine itself to such facts as lend themselves to observation and not seek for an underlying basis of them, whether mate-rial or spiritual. Any philosophy that seeks for such a basis is useless. Science can get along very well without philosophy; science is its own philosophy.

The positivists claim they are neither materialists nor idealists, but investigators of empirical facts, men of science. Behind that facade, however, there lurks in fact the phi-losophy of idealism. For by refusing to answer the fundamental question of philosophy and affirming that it cannot be answered by science, the positivists seal themselves off from the material world, isolate themselves within the framework of their own con-sciousness and thus slide into the position of subjective idealism.

That is apparent also because by “facts”—a word much bandied about by them—they understand our perceptions. The positivists maintain that only our sensations and perceptions are immediately given to us, and we should limit ourselves to the study of them.

The bourgeois positivist philosophers insist that they stand “above” materialism and idealism. Actually, they combat materialism together with the idealists, in whose camp they belong. They denounce materialism as metaphysics although Marxist philosophical materialism is irreconcilably opposed to all metaphysics,* including the metaphysics that talks of non-existent “substance”. It rejects both the metaphysics of idealism with its invented “ideal” basis of the world, and the metaphysics of religion with its preaching of a divine being and immortal soul. But Marxist materialism also resolutely rejects the positivists’ attempt to describe as metaphysics the doctrine of a material world existing outside our mind. Positivism ascribes its own sins to others. Under cover of its verbal attacks against an imaginary “materialist metaphysics” it, in effect, propagates the meta-physics of subjective idealism.

• In philosophy, the term “metaphysics” is used to denote two things: firstly, an anti-dialectical view of the world, and, secondly, speculative anti-scientific and scholastic inventions of the “true,” supersensible essence of being. A more detailed account of metaphysics will be found in Chapter 2.

The whole history of philosophy demonstrates that there is not and cannot be any

“third” line in philosophy besides materialism and idealism. The sooner that is realised by the adherents of positivism among Western scientists and technologists, the sooner will they be free from positivist confusion and base themselves on the firm, scientific ground of materialist philosophy.

At the turn of the century, positivism manifested itself as Machism after Ernst Mach, the Austrian physicist and philosopher, also known as empirio-criticism (the criticism of experience).

Mach and his followers, notably his Russian disciple A. Bogdanov, claimed to have overcome the “one-sidedness” of materialism and idealism. But in actual fact Mach’s philosophy was basically a variety of subjective idealism.

Mach affirmed that the primary “elements” of the universe were sense impressions. Every thing is a “complex of elements” (or sense impressions) and the whole of nature, the sum total of “sequences of elements” which are “arranged” by man in thinking about the world. Everything that surrounds us can be reduced to our sense impressions—such is the essence of the Machian understanding of the world.

However, the Machians were careful to conceal the subjective-idealist essence of their views by claiming that these elements (sense impressions) were “neutral”, neither materialist nor idealist, and were neither of a physical nor of a mental character.

The same purpose of masking idealism was served by the claim that their philoso-phy was based entirely on “experience”, and that experience was the source of all knowledge.

The reactionary philosophy of Machism was criticised by Lenin in his book Materi-alism and Empirio-Criticism. Lenin pointed out that the Machians’ reference to “experi-ence” does not make their philosophy a scientific one. For “experience” can be inter-preted in a materialist and an idealist way. The materialist recognises that all our knowl-edge derives from experience, but, at the same time, he emphasises that this experience deals with the external objective world, in other words, our experience has an objective content. The Machian, while agreeing that our knowledge derives from experience, de-nies the existence of objective reality, given in experience. Instead, he maintains that experience is concerned not with the objective world, but merely with our sensations, perceptions and conceptions and our investigation must be confined to these. In short, the Machian in reality adopts the standpoint of subjective idealism.

Lenin also denounced as philosophical trickery the Machian attempt to rise above materialism and idealism by means of such a term as “neutral element”. He wrote:

“Everybody knows what human sensation is; but sensation independent of man, sen-sation prior to man, is nonsense, a lifeless abstraction, an idealist artifice.”10 Lenin showed that these “neutral elements” were in reality sensations, and that a doctrine which sought to make them the basis of the world was subjective idealism.

Did nature exist prior to man, Lenin asked the Machians. If nature is the creation of the human mind, if it can be reduced to sensation then, consequently, man made nature, and not the other way round. Yet we know from the natural sciences that nature existed long before man.

Does man think with the aid of the brain, Lenin asked the Machians. From their doc-trine it follows that the human brain is itself a “complex of elements”, of sensations, that is, a product of man’s mental activity. But in that case we must infer that man thinks without the help of the brain, that the brain is only a “construction” of thought invented in order to provide a better explanation of mental activity.

Do other people exist besides myself, Lenin asked the Machians. The inescapable inference of Machian philosophy is that all other people are merely complexes of sensa-tions, that is, the product of my brain.

The Machian philosophy led to solipsism, and this was conclusive proof of its un-tenability. It enjoyed wide influence at the beginning of the century. In the twenties it gave way to new forms of positivism.

Roots of Idealism

Idealist philosophy gives us an incorrect, distorted view of the world. It misrepre-sents the real relation between thought and its material basis. In some cases it is a result of a deliberate desire to distort or conceal the truth. That is frequently the object in our time, when bourgeois philosophers are eager to curry favour with the ruling class by preaching idealism. But the history of philosophy knows many instances of idealist doc-trines resulting from the “honest error” of philosophers who were sincerely seeking the truth.

The process of cognition (as the reader will learn from Chapter 3) is very complex and has many aspects. Hence, there is always the possibility of a one-sided approach to it, the tendency to exaggerate and absolutise the significance of one or another of its as-pects, making it independent of everything else. That is the procedure of the idealist phi-losophers. The Machians and other subjective idealists, for instance, absolutise the fact that all our knowledge of the surrounding world is derived from sensations, which they divorce from things that give rise to the sensations and then draw the idealist conclusion that the world consists of nothing but sensations.

Lenin pointed out that cognition always contains the possibility deviation from real-ity into fantasy, of the substitution of imaginary interconnections for real ones. Narrow-ness and one-sidedness, subjectivism and subjective blindness—such are the epistemo-logical roots of idealism, that is, its roots in the very process of cognition.

But for these roots to produce a “plant”, for the errors of cognition to be embodied in an idealist philosophical system opposed to materialism and materialist natural sci-ence, requires definite social conditions and, moreover, that these erroneous views should be to the advantage of definite social forces and enjoy their support. A one-sided and subjectivist approach to cognition of the world leads to the swamp of idealism where, Lenin wrote, it is “consolidated by the class interests of the ruling classes”—slave-owners, feudals or bourgeoisie. In this lie the class roots of idealism.

The reactionary nature of philosophical idealism is clearly apparent from its ties with theology, religion. Lenin pointed out that every variety of philosophical idealism is, in the final analysis, subtle defence of theology, of clericalism. Even when it does not

openly announce its leaning towards religion, philosophical idealism, in actual fact, has the same basis as religion. That is why the Church has always zealously supported it and has been hostile to philosophical materialism, persecuting its exponents whenever possi-ble.

7. Contemporary Bourgeois Philosophy

Recent philosophy, Lenin pointed out, is as partisan as philosophy was two thousand years ago. In other words, today as in the past, the philosophers are divided into two mu-tually opposed camps, materialism and idealism. In the final analysis, the struggle be-tween them is an expression of the tendencies and ideologies of opposed social classes and groups. In the modern world a grim struggle is going on between the communist and bourgeois ideologies. The Programme of the C.P.S.U. appraises this struggle as “a re-flection, in the intellectual life of mankind, of the historic process of transition from capitalism to socialism”.11 The reactionary bourgeoisie, of course, wages war not only against the ideas but also against the practice of scientific communism.

The philosophy of dialectical materialism is the ideology of the working class, of the progressive social forces of our time. On the other hand, the different trends in idealist philosophy express the world outlook of the reactionary forces, the imperialist bourgeoi-sie. Anti-communism more and more becomes an inseparable feature of all modern bourgeois ideology. In the philosophical field it finds expression in endless but ineffec-tive attempts to refute the teachings of Marx, Engels and Lenin, to uphold the position of bourgeois philosophy in the struggle against these teachings, and to defend the capitalist order of things.

Modern bourgeois philosophy is split into a multitude of trends and schools, but ba-sically they are merely different variants of open camouflaged idealism, that is, variants of a false and illusory world outlook.

In our day, philosophical idealism has become even more reactionary and decadent than at the close of the last century. Irrationalism has become a fashionable trend; it holds that the universe and life have no rational meaning, and that the human mind is incapable of apprehending reality. Also widespread are diverse doctrines that exploit scientific discoveries for the perversion of science. Lastly, there is the growing influence of outspoken theological doctrines.

Intellectual life in the capitalist countries is characterised by this paradox: science is irresistibly advancing, deepening our knowledge of the material world, and, in co-operation with technology, indefinitely increasing man’s mastery over nature. A genu-inely scientific explanation of phenomena in nature and society is offered by dialectical and historical materialism, the progressive materialist philosophy that has been develop-ing for more than a century. But many philosophers—and sometimes even scientists—continue to insist that the external world has no objective existence, that the statements of science do not contain objective truth, that man cannot know the real nature of things, so that the wisest course is to place one’s trust in the supernatural and accept the teach-ings of the Church.

Why is this? How can intelligent men, including honest-minded scientists, hold ide-alist views that run counter to science and social practice?

The decisive obstacle to acceptance of materialism is the class interest of the bour-geoisie and the anti-communist prejudices of bourgeois intellectuals. If consistently ap-plied, modern scientific materialism, i.e., dialectical and historical materialism, logically leads one to the position of the working class and acceptance of scientific socialism. That is one of the reasons why those who are reluctant to break with the bourgeoisie—and they include scientists—are afraid to adopt materialism. The outspoken, active de-fenders and ideologists of imperialism see in dialectical materialism their relentless theoretical opponent and have made it their aim to refute it by any means. They employ all the media of ideological and moral pressure for this purpose: the press, radio, televi-sion, the class-room and pulpit, learned treatises and journalism. This propaganda is kept up day after day, year after year, and is naturally bound to have its effect.

An examination of the basic trends in modern bourgeois philosophy will reveal some of the other reasons why idealism has proved so tenacious.

Philosophy Against Reason

The pessimism, irrationalism and hostility to a scientific world outlook characteristic of the ideology of the present-day bourgeoisie are very clearly seen in one of the most fashionable philosophical doctrines of the bourgeois world, viz., existentialism. Its foun-der, the German idealist philosopher Martin Heidegger, borrowed much from the doc-trine of Sören Aabye Kierkegaard, the early nineteenth-century Danish mystic. Among other German existentialists, Karl Jaspers is prominent on account of his reactionary, pessimist views. In France existentialism does not constitute an integral trend. Its left tendency is linked with the name of Jean-Paul Sartre (“atheistic existentialism”), and the right tendency with Gabriel Marcel (“Christian existentialism”).

The most general problem raised by the existentialists is that of the meaning of life, of man’s place in the universe, and the path he chooses in life. It is an old problem, but at the present time it has acquired special importance for the many people who feel they must determine their place in the complex and contradictory conditions of bourgeois society and express their attitude to the worldwide struggle between progressive and reactionary forces.

Existentialism, therefore, touches on one of the burning questions of the time, but the solution, it offers is based on a decadent, idealist world outlook. Its starting-point is the consciousness of the individual isolated from and standing opposed to society and living by his own thoughts and feelings. That wrong starting-point predetermines the fallacy of the whole doctrine.

The adherents of existentialism claim that it is a doctrine of being in general; actu-ally, it deals exclusively with the “existence” of the individual. Disregarding the argu-ments of some existentialists about the “hereafter”, or, in other words, about God, the sole reality they recognise is the consciousness that “I exist”. The external world is de-picted as a mystery inaccessible to reason and logical thought. Like all subjective ideal-

ists, the existentialists deny the objective reality of nature, space and time. According to Heidegger, the world exists only inasmuch as man exists: “If there is no existence, nei-ther can the universe exist.”

By contending that the most important thing for man is the fact of his existence, the existentialists indulge in fine-spun reasoning about human existence having an end and man’s whole life being lived in fear of death. The function of philosophy, in their view, is to awaken and keep alive this fear. To philosophise, says Jaspers, is to learn to die.

The existentialists realise, of course, that the easiest way to indoctrinate this feeling of fear is to sever the individual from society, make him feel isolated and helpless. Ac-cordingly, they seek to instil the idea that the individual is “alone” in an alien and hostile world, that in relation to other men his is an “unreal” existence, that society robs him of his individuality.

The existentialists adroitly exploit the indubitable fact, tragically felt by many peo-ple, that capitalist society does oppress the individual, that it does suppress his personal-ity. But the feeling of protest against the oppressive capitalist system arising among a section of the intellectuals is directed by this philosophy along the false path of protest against society as such. For, in the existentialist view, although the individual cannot exist without intercourse with other individuals, he nevertheless remains in complete solitude, and only by withdrawing into himself can he acquire freedom. The existential-ists do not recognise obligations imposed on the individual by the community or gener-ally accepted ethical standards: the hero of existentialist plays and novels is usually a person without firm convictions and often of an amoral nature. All human activity and struggle are futile, the world is a kingdom of absurdity, and all history meaningless.

The subjective-idealist philosophy of existentialism is above all false because it re-duces all reality to the existence of man and his emotions and, at the same time, com-pletely distorts the very nature of man. For man’s life is bound up with society. What has raised him high above the level of the animal world? His life and labour as a mem-ber of society. It is in society that man develops his mind and emotions, will and con-science, acquires a meaning and purpose in life. He who lives a full social life and is inspired by progressive ideas, is concerned with the problem of life, not death—how to shape his life as a useful member of society, what contribution he can make to its pro-gress. But once a person is artificially severed from society, he becomes a trembling, frightened being, always in fear of death and not knowing what to do with his life.

Existentialism involuntarily demonstrates the degree of spiritual emptiness and moral degradation resulting from bourgeois individualism.

The decadent “philosophy of existence” is profoundly reactionary. It has a demoral-ising effect on those who have succumbed to its influence, especially the youth. Its preaching of fear, hopelessness, and the meaninglessness of existence fosters anti-social inclinations and justifies amorality and lack of principle. In certain situations, the exis-tentialist can easily become a pawn of the most reactionary forces and be converted from an hysterical malcontent into a fascist thug. In Germany, existentialism, along with some other reactionary doctrines (neo-Hegelianism, the “philosophy of life”, etc.), played a

definite part in the preparation of fascism. In France the political positions of the exis-tentialists were of a different nature. During the War, Sartre and some other existential-ists actively participated in the Resistance movement, and in the post-war period they repeatedly came forward as supporters of peace and as opponents of the French govern-ment’s war in Algeria. However, continuing to be adherents of extreme individualism, they counterposed the latter to the principles of class solidarity and organisation of the proletariat and its Communist Party.

Pseudo-"Philosophy of Science”

Another philosophical trend that enjoys wide currency in the capitalist world is neo-positivism, or “logical positivism”. In recent times it has most often made its appearance under the name of “analytical philosophy” and it is vociferously advertised by its sup-porters as the “philosophy of science”. At first sight it might appear to be the antithesis of the irrational philosophy of existentialism, but actually it is an idealist doctrine defi-nitely related to existentialism, and shares its pessimism, disbelief in human reason and capacity for cognition.

The basic tenets of neo-positivism were formulated by Bertrand Russell and the Austrian philosophers Wittgenstein, Schlick and Carnap. Its most prominent exponents today are Quain and Pape in the U.S.A. and Ryle and Ayer in Britain. The neo-positivists tried to answer certain questions raised by the rapid development of science and new methods of research, by the appearance of new fields of mathematics and the rise of such an important subject as mathematical logic. They set out to find a reliable criterion of the scientific authenticity of every theory, to apply it to philosophy itself, and to analyse thoroughly the epistemological and logical bases of mathematics, etc. But the neo-positivists formulated these important philosophical and logical problems in such a way as to preclude in advance a materialist solution of them, for from the outset the founders of neo-positivism were convinced opponents of materialism, and especially of Marxist materialism. In the final analysis neo-positivism proved to be nothing but a renovated variety of subjective-idealist philosophy, in particular of Machism, more or less adapted to the modern level of physics, mathematics and logic.

Its underlying idea is that the basic problems of world outlook have no place in phi-losophy, which should deal solely with “logical analysis of language”. These problems, and above all the fundamental problem of philosophy, we are told, are only “pseudo-problems” from the scientific point of view. Philosophy cannot give us any knowledge of the external world and its laws; it should confine itself exclusively to logical analysis of the language of science, that is, analysis of the rules for applying scientific concepts and symbols, the combination of words in sentences, the deduction of one proposition from another, etc., and “semantic analysis”* of the meaning of scientific terms and con-cepts. But though logical analysis of the language o£ science may be important, reduc-ing all philosophy to such analysis is tantamount to abolishing it altogether.

• Semantic—relating to the meaning of words.—Ed.

The neo-positivists are right when they argue that science must he based on the data of experience, on facts. But like the Machians, they refuse to admit the validity of the facts of experience. In their judgement, for instance, the question whether a rose exists objectively is absurd: all that can be said is that I see the red colour of the rose and smell its perfume. Only that fact, they allege, is scientifically valid. In other words, they inter-pret facts to mean not objective things, events or phenomena in the objective world, but sensations, impressions, perceptions and other phenomena of our consciousness. In spite of their own assertion that inquiry into the essence of reality is meaningless, they in fact deny only the material character of the world, thereby, in effect, ascribing to it a spiri-tual character.

What, then, is the function of science? Its primary function, they assert, is only to describe “facts”, i.e., human sensations, for science cannot know the objective world, and knowledge based on experience can have no objective authenticity.

This description of facts, arbitrarily selected, furnishes the material for scientific theories constructed with the aid of logic and mathematics. The neo-positivists assert that in contrast to the empirical sciences, which are based on the data of experience, logic and mathematics rely on a system of axioms and arbitrarily selected rules that are just as conventional as the rules of chess or a game of cards.

The conceptual elements of a theory must not contradict these conventional rules, and that is all that is required for the theory to be accepted as true. In applying this to concrete problems the neo-positivists arrive, for instance, at the anti-scientific conclu-sion that to take the sun, and not the earth, as the centre of the solar system is purely conventional.

Needless to say, such an interpretation of scientific theory deprives science of all value as a method of objective cognition and turns it into a sort of parlour game.

Paradoxical though it may seem, these absurd views, which to all intents and pur-poses negate science, are held by eminent scientists who have made significant contribu-tions to modern learning. The intricate methods employed in modern science, the com-plexity of the phenomena it studies, and the difficulties that arise in explaining some of these phenomena, create the possibility of idealist waverings among scientists, and bourgeois environment helps to turn this possibility into reality.

Thus, the discovery of non-Euclidian geometry (by Lobachevsky, Riemann and oth-ers) reflecting the objective laws of space in conditions different from those we are ac-customed to, led some scientists to conclude that no geometry can be regarded as true and that its basic principles are merely conventional.

The abstract mathematical nature of physical theory, the impossibility of construct-ing graphic models of microparticles, or of directly observing them, are chiefly respon-sible for idealistic interpretations of physical phenomena.

For the physicist cannot observe the microparticles (electrons, protons, mesons, etc.) he studies even with the most powerful optical instruments, nor reproduce them in a model. All the experimental physicist can see is the recordings of his instruments, flashes on the screen, etc. His conclusions about the existence of microparticles and their

properties are founded on complex theoretical arguments and mathematical calculations. When the physicist experiments, he acts as a spontaneous materialist. But his reflections on the general problems of science, in the absence of clear-cut philosophical views, might well lead him to the distorted opinion that the microparticles, with all their proper-ties, do not exist in reality, but are merely a theoretical concept, a “logical” or “seman-tic” construction, or a complex aggregate of symbols created for the express purpose of co-ordinating and predicting the recordings of his instruments.

One of the greatest physicists of our day, Werner Heisenberg, has expressed the opinion that the elementary particle “is not a material particle in space and time but, in a way, only a symbol on whose introduction the laws of nature assume an especially sim-ple form”.12  

As for the theoretical physicist, who is concerned with mathematical treatment of the results of observation obtained by other investigators, the very nature of his work, and the constant replacement of one scientific theory by another, might lead him, if he does not understand dialectics, to the erroneous conclusion that his hypotheses and theo-ries are arbitrary and their underlying principles purely subjective. James Jeans, the dis-tinguished astronomer, held the idealist view that the “objective and material universe is proved to consist of little more than constructs of our own minds”.13

However, though we cannot build models of microparticles, or observe them di-rectly, this in no way refutes their materiality, which consists in the fact of their exis-tence outside and independent of human consciousness. That has been proved by the progress of science and by the technical application of data obtained from the study of microparticles.

Today, as fifty years ago when Lenin wrote his Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, the idealist philosophers play on these difficulties encountered by science, on the vacil-lation of scientists, on their hesitation to uphold and apply the materialist standpoint. That is why the battle against idealism requires knowledge of modern science and ability to solve its problems in the light of dialectical materialism.

Modern positivism has found its way also into the social sciences— sociology, phi-lology, psychology. Its adherents, exponents of what is termed “universal semantics”, claim that social reality depends on what people say about it, and that social evils arrive from wrong conceptions and wrong usage of words. Hence, to change social life one has only to change language, the significance attributed to words. H Stuart Chase, an Ameri-can semanticist, even suggests that words like “capital” and “unemployment”, etc., are meaningless, and that if there were no such “evil” word in our vocabulary as “exploita-tion”, there would be no exploitation.

The neo-positivists reject as unscientific not only “metaphysical” judgements, but also ethical and moral valuations and judgements. Any ethical judgement, they say, is necessarily subjective, that is, is only a personal view, an expression of the emotional outlook of the speaker. From that standpoint, the judgement that aggressive wars are unjust would have to be regarded merely as a subjective opinion, and no more valid than the opposite opinion that aggressive wars are just. Thus, neo-positivism, which is seem-

ingly far removed from politics, proves to be a very suitable instrument for justifying reactionary policies. At the same time, it invites people who are unwilling to abandon ethical principles having objective validity to seek such permanent standards outside the realm of science, primarily in religion.

By disparaging science as incapable of giving us an objective and true picture of the world, the neo-positivists play into the hands of the theologians and fideists, who preach implicit faith in religion. Nor is that denied by the neo-positivists themselves. The well-known idealist physicist, Pascual Jordan, says that “the positivist conception offers new possibilities of granting living space to religion without contradiction from scientific thought”.14

Lenin wrote: “The objective, class role of empirio-criticism consists entirely in ren-dering faithful service to the fideists in their struggle against materialism.”15 These words fully apply to the neo-positivists.

Revival of Medieval Scholasticism

Fideism is being widely and vigorously disseminated in contemporary bourgeois so-ciety. The Church and its diverse organisations have also become more active. Clerical-ism acquires ever greater importance in the political and ideological arsenal of imperial-ism. Ruling class ideologists harp on the argument that “only religion is the serious business of the human race”‘16 and that the only solution of pressing social issues “lies in a more effective infusion into our lives of the spirit of Christianity”.17

Intensified religious propaganda is attended by the spread among bourgeois intellec-tuals, and the bourgeoisie generally, of all manner of mystical doctrines—spiritualism, astrology, chiromancy and other types of superstition.

The class implications of this were revealed by Lenin: “The bourgeoisie, out of fear of the growth and increasing strength of the proletariat, is supporting everything back-ward, moribund and medieval.”18

Medieval philosophy is being revived in the literal sense: the doctrines of Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic philosopher of the Middle Ages, have been resurrected in neo-Thomism, which the Vatican has officially recognised as the philosophy of the Catholic Church.

It might be thought that this preaching of a frankly religious philosophy that at-tempts to re-establish medieval scholastic doctrines as “eternal philosophy”, would have little or no appeal to the scientist. That is not so. Neo-Thomism is a subtle and crafty doctrine and, in the capitalist world, often misleads not only ordinary people, but men of science.

The fundamental basis of neo-Thomist doctrine is recognition of God as the creator and omnipotent ruler of the world. Nature is the “realisation of divine ideas”, and history the “realisation of a divine plan”. But unlike the neo-positivists, existentialists and simi-lar subjective idealist schools, the neo-Thomists recognise that the external world, being a world created by God, has a real existence independent of man and his consciousness and can be known through feeling and reason. In fact, they even criticise existentialist

irrationalism and are loud in defending reason, with which, they affirm, God endowed man in order that he might aspire to know truth.

Such views are readily accepted by people who are not satisfied with the sophistry of positivism and irrationalism, but who are unwilling or unable to accept philosophical materialism. They consider that neo-Thomism successfully blends a correct, healthy atti-tude to scientific cognition with a faith in God that satisfies the religious needs of the individual.

That, however, is entirely erroneous. For neo-Thomism cannot be reconciled with reason and science. Its fundamental idea is that science is subordinate to religion, and knowledge to faith. The neo-Thomists interpret “reason” to mean a mode of thinking that does not transcend the teachings of the Church, and, conversely, denounce as unrea-sonable, as a “revolt against reason”, defence of scientific propositions that contradict religious dogma.

They indicate three ways of arriving at truth: science, philosophy and religion. The lowest of them is science, and the knowledge it provides, we are told, is untrustworthy and restricted to the corporal shell that conceals the genuine spiritual truth of the world, the latter being inaccessible to science though it is partially accessible to philosophy, or “metaphysics”. In contrast to science, philosophy deals with the primary cause of the world, and reaches the conclusion that this first cause is a supreme spiritual principle or divine creator. But supreme truth is reached only through revelation, religious faith, with which all the fundamental conclusions of science and philosophy of importance for a world outlook have to accord.

The ultimate object of theoretical science, according to the neo-Thomists, is to fur-nish evidence of the existence of God, evidence that “Catholicism and science were made for each other”. All the difficulties confronting science, all its unsolved problems, are exploited for the benefit of the dogmas of the Church,

One of the favourite proofs of the divine creation of the world that Catholic philoso-phers put forward is the theory of the “expanding universe”. It is based on the discovery in 1919 of the displacement of the lines towards the red end of the spectrum in the case of radiation reaching us from the very distant galaxies. Science has not yet fully estab-lished the cause of this, but the most probable explanation—the rapid recession of the galaxies from our solar system—was immediately seized on by idealist philosophers as proof that the universe began from a God-created “primordial atom” in which at one time all matter and energy were concentrated.

There is absolutely no scientific justification for that conclusion, if only because we are not justified in extending conclusions based on facts observed now, and confined to a limited portion of the universe, to the whole infinite universe and to a time separated from us by thousands of millions of years.

Nonetheless, this and similar “theories” were used by Pope Pius XII in his address of November 22, 1951, “Proofs of the Existence of God in the Light of Modern Science” for the statement: “Thus, creation in time; and hence a creator, and, consequently, God! That is the admission… we demand of science, the admission our generation expects

from it.”19

That example is typical of how the idealist philosophers and theologians utilise in-completely explained scientific data for idealist and fideist conclusions. Only by firmly adhering to philosophical materialism and consistently applying the dialectical method can the scientist avoid vacillation and steer clear of the traps the idealists set at each dif-ficult point in the advance of science.

The neo-Thomists often claim that unlike the subjective idealists, they lay great stress on moral questions. But the morality they preach is one of meek submission, the doctrine that man should be concerned not so much with life on this earth and his sinful body as with his “immortal soul”, “eternal life”, and God. It is a morality of passive ac-ceptance and, consequently, justification of the existing social evils, exploitation and inequality; a morality that substitutes prayer and appeal to God in place of protest and struggle against social injustice; hence a morality of advantage to the ruling exploiter class.

As regards their social and political doctrine, the neo-Thomists combine attacks on socialism with “criticism” of some of the defects of capitalism. The existing evils of so-ciety, the Catholic philosophers argue, are due to the fact that many people, among them capitalists, have forgotten their religious beliefs and ceased to be good Christians. That type of “criticism” shows that the neo-Thomists have no intention of combating capital-ism and are, in effect, its defenders.

There are many other philosophical trends and schools in the capitalist world—instrumentalism,* neo-realism, phenomenology, personalism, etc.—but all of them come within the framework of idealism and possess the same reactionary features and tenden-cies that are more clearly expressed in the typical idealist doctrines discussed above.

• Instrumentalism, or pragmatism, is discussed in Chapter 3.

Idealist philosophy cannot give us a correct answer to scientific and social problems. Imbued with hostility to the scientific, Marxist world outlook and social progress, it is an expression of the deepening decline of capitalism and the crisis of capitalist culture.

8. Towards a Scientific World Outlook

Bourgeois ideology is in a state of profound crisis. More and more people in the capitalist countries are becoming convinced that bourgeois theories and schools are in-capable of providing a scientific answer to the questions that life raises and they are abandoning the bourgeois world outlook.

Idealist philosophy too is in the grip of a crisis. More and more it runs counter to both the development of science and progressive social movements. It arouses the pro-test of conscientious, honest-minded scientists, as indeed of all those who put the inter-ests of the people and a radiant future for mankind above those of the capitalists.

In the countries which the apologists of imperialism hypocritically call the “free world”, the ideological struggle between the progressive and reactionary world outlooks, between materialism and idealism, is becoming more and more intense. The Marxists

organised in the Communist Parties are in the vanguard of this struggle. Even many bourgeois intellectuals realise the reactionary role of philosophical idealism and have come out in opposition to it.

One example is the progressive American philosopher Barrows Dunham, a coura-geous fighter against spiritual and political reaction and a trenchant critic of retrograde philosophical doctrines and social myths. Dunham exposes the disparagement and deg-radation of philosophy by the pragmatists and positivists and upholds the dignity of phi-losophy, which he regards as the expression of the interests and aspirations of the peo-ple. “To my mind the most endearing thing about philosophy is its source in people,” he writes in his book Giant in Chains. For Dunham, philosophy is not a scholastic analysis of language”, but “the guide of life”, “philosophy is theory of human deliverance”.20

The Japanese philosopher Yanagida Kenjuro, who joined the struggle for peace, for the democratic rights of his people and their liberation from foreign dependence, came to the conclusion that idealist philosophy weakens man and dupes his mind with illu-sions. Kenjuro had the courage to abandon this deceptive philosophy, criticise it and embrace the scientific materialistic outlook. In his book, My Voyage to Truth, he writes:

“The ruins of idealist philosophy have given way to the new, Marxist materialist philosophy, which has gripped the minds of our youth. That is understandable, for the more acute social contradictions become in our occupied country, the clearer do the broad masses see the truth of dialectical materialism.”21

Dunham and Kenjuro are not isolated cases. Many other progressive philosophers and scientists are combating philosophical idealism and defend and propagate dialectical materialism.

Among prominent champions of materialism in the United States are Harry Wells, Howard Selsam, and other Marxists. The well-known progressive philosopher, John Somerville, has done much to acquaint Americans with the Marxist-Leninist world out-look. Other Americans who have helped to expose idealist doctrines and are closely as-sociated with materialist philosophy are Roy Wood Sellars, Corliss Lamont and Paul Grosser. Among British materialists who have earned wide recognition are Maurice Cornforth, John Lewis, Arthur Henry Robertson and such eminent scientists as J. D. Bernal and J. B. S. Haldane, who have made a considerable contribution to the advance of a progressive world outlook. The French and Italian Marxists Roger Garaudy, Jean Canapa, Mario Spinella, Cesare Luporini and many more have rendered valuable ser-vices in disseminating progressive philosophical ideas. The works of Eli de Gortari (Mexico) and H. Theodoridis (Greece) show that in other countries, too, the materialist philosophy is gaining ever increasing support.

Materialism is not only being defended by those who came to adopt it through active social activity and philosophical reflection. It is also winning increasing support among leading representatives of contemporary natural science, for many important discoveries in recent decades have furnished convincing proof of the truth of Marxist philosophical materialism.

Einstein’s theory of relativity demonstrated the inseparable link between space and

time and moving matter and confirmed the dialectical-materialistic view of space and time as modes of the existence of matter. Modern physics, by its disclosure of the intri-cate structure of the atomic nucleus and its discovery of new elementary material parti-cles, provided fresh confirmation of the Marxist materialist thesis that matter is inex-haustible and its forms infinite. Gradually, physicists came to accept the dialectical view of the microparticle as the unity of corpuscular and wave properties.

Progress in physics has been accompanied by progress in chemistry, biology and physiology. Achievements in theoretical natural science have led to immense advances in technology. Three great scientific and technical discoveries—atomic energy, electron-ics and rocket techniques—have ushered in a new era in the history of the productive forces of mankind and have immensely increased man’s power over nature. Artificial earth satellites and man’s travel beyond the bounds of the earth’s atmosphere have ush-ered in a new era, that of the conquest of illimitable cosmic space. The application of the latest physical and chemical methods in biology has made it possible to obtain a deeper insight into the structure of proteins and to come closer towards solving the riddle of life, and in particular towards elucidating the problem of the origin of living beings.

These and other discoveries and achievements confirm the truth of dialectical mate-rialism and often compel positivist-minded scientists to revise their views. This is indi-cated, for example, by the fact that in the closing years of his life Einstein more and more frequently made statements that supported materialism, and that such distinguished scientists as Leopold Infeld and Louis de Broglie, former adherents of positivism, have finally come over to materialism.

Some world-renowned scientists (Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg), for many years the recognised leaders of positivist physics, later began to reject and criticise many of the theses of positivism. Among the scientists and philosophers who support positivism, there are already a number who have begun to waver and are gradually turning to mate-rialism.

The recent discoveries in natural science are of specially great importance because they undermine the old metaphysical world outlook and bring to the fore the dialectical conception of the world. V. I. Lenin, summarising in his Materialism and Empirio-Criticism the new developments in physics in the early years of the century, had every justification to state: “Modern physics is in travail; it is giving birth to dialectical materi-alism.”22 The development of modern physics confirms the correctness of Lenin’s fore-cast.

By its very development, contemporary natural science leads to the acceptance of materialist dialectics. This was realised by such outstanding physicists of our time as Paul Langevin, Frédéric Joliot-Curie and many others. They became determined expo-nents of dialectical materialism.

Ours is a time when successful struggle against reactionary philosophy and ability to defend the materialist world outlook require more than acceptance of materialism; they require that one be an enlightened exponent of dialectical materialism.

CHAPTER 2

MATERIALIST DIALECTICS

Marxist materialist dialectics is the most profound, comprehensive and fruitful the-ory of motion and development. It is a summing up of the many centuries of our cogni-tion of the world, a generalisation of the boundless data of social practice.

Materialist dialectics and philosophical materialism are inseparably connected. They are interwoven, being two aspects of the single philosophical system of Marxism.

By the “art of dialectics” the ancient Greek philosophers meant the ability to estab-lish the truth by means of disputation or discussion that revealed the difference in the views of the disputants. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, German ide-alist philosophers, particularly Hegel, understood by dialectics the development of thought through the contradictions disclosed in thought itself. Hegel gave a careful de-scription of the basic forms of dialectical thought. However, in developing his dialectics he proceeded from an erroneous, idealist point of view, according to which dialectical development was ascribed solely to thought, the spirit, the idea, but not to nature. As Marx said, Hegel’s dialectics was “standing on its head”. To be correctly conceived, dialectics had to be put on its feet. This Marx and Engels did, creating materialist dia-lectics and imparting a new content to the term “dialectics”.

The founders of Marxism, proceeding from the principle of the material unity of the world, began to denote by dialectics the theory of universal connections, of the most general laws of development of all reality. “Dialectics” was thus transformed from Hegel’s idealist doctrine of the motion of thought into a materialist theory of the general laws of the development of being. Thus, the dialectics of development of our notions (subjective dialectics) was found to be a reflection in scientific thought of the dialectics of development of being itself (objective dialectics).

The various branches of science study the forms of motion and laws of different spheres of reality. Dialectics is a special science. It devotes itself to the most general laws of all motion, change and development. The universality of its laws lies in the fact that they operate in nature and society, and that thought itself is governed by them.

Marx and Engels saw in dialectics not only a scientific theory, but also a method of cognition and a guide to action. Knowledge of the general laws of development makes it possible to analyse the past, to understand correctly what is taking place at present and to foresee the future. For this reason it is a method of approach to research and to practi-cal action based on its results.

Throughout its history, dialectics has had to fight against metaphysics, a method of thinking and a world outlook that is hostile to it, and that fight continues today.

In Marxist philosophical literature the word “metaphysics” is used in a different sense to that in pre-Marxian and modern bourgeois philosophical literature. In pre-Marxian literature this Greek word, or rather expression, denoted a special section of philosophy, in which philosophers tried, and still try, to apprehend by purely speculative thought the allegedly immutable eternal essence of things.

In criticising the unscientific, artificial systems of metaphysics, Marx and Engels used the word “metaphysics” to denote the method of investigation and thought em-ployed by the founders of these systems, which was contrary to the dialectical method, instead of using it to denote a section of philosophy or speculative cognition. At present the term is used in Marxist philosophy almost exclusively in the sense given it by Marx and Engels.

The basic defect of metaphysics is its one-sided, limited, inflexible outlook upon the world—its tendency to exaggerate and make absolute individual aspects of phenomena and to ignore other, no less important aspects. The metaphysician, for example, discerns the relative stability, the definiteness of a thing, but does not notice its change and de-velopment. He concentrates his attention on the features that distinguish a particular phenomenon from all others, but he is incapable of discerning its many-sided relations and profound connections with other things and phenomena. He recognises only final answers to all questions confronting science, and does not understand that reality itself is in a state of development and that a scientific proposition possesses meaning only within definite bounds.

The metaphysical method is more or less adequate for day-to-day usage and the lower phases of scientific development, but inevitably breaks down when the attempt is made to use it for explaining complex processes of development. Natural science and socio-political affairs reveal at each step the inadequacy of metaphysics and the need to replace it by dialectics.

In spite of this, metaphysics has not been discarded as obsolete today whether in philosophy or the special sciences.

How to explain the survival of metaphysics? There was a time when scientific thought was in the main not dialectical, but metaphysical. The metaphysical mode of thought as a method of science took final shape and became widespread in the seven-teenth and eighteenth centuries, the time of the emergence of modern science. At that time, natural science was engaged mostly in collecting information about nature, de-scribing different things and phenomena, and classifying nature and its phenomena into distinct classes. In order to describe any particular thing it had to be isolated from the totality of other things, and examined separately. This approach gave rise to the custom of studying things and phenomena a isolation, outside their universal connection. This prevented people from seeing the development of things, their origin from other, differ-ent things. It was thus that the metaphysical mode of thought came into being, viewing things in isolation from one another and ignoring their development. Metaphysics reigned supreme in man's consciousness for a long time and became a tradition of scien-tific thought.

Nothing can justify the application of the metaphysical method in our time. It is a backward method, a backward world outlook, and has a very adverse effect on scientific cognition and socio-political affairs, because it leads easily to gross errors and miscon-ceptions.

A second reason why metaphysics has survived is the hostile attitude which the ide-

ologists of the bourgeoisie have long displayed towards materialist dialectics.

“In its rational form it is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctri-naire professors,” wrote Marx, “because it includes in its comprehension an affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its tran-sient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary.”23

It is not surprising that, under the political and ideological influence of reaction, many scientists and philosophers in the capitalist countries are to this day afraid of dia-lectics, do not know it and do not study it, regard it with prejudice and take their cue from metaphysics.

Marxist materialist dialectics provides a reliable weapon against metaphysics, for a scientific examination of all the phenomena of developing reality.

1. The Universal Connection of Phenomena

The world that surrounds man is the scene of a prodigious diversity of phenomena. The simplest observations show that between these phenomena there are definite and more or less stable connections. A definite permanence, a regularity, is found in the world. Day follows night, and winter is followed by spring. An oak, and not a pine or birch, grows out of an acorn. A chrysalis becomes a butterfly, and never becomes a cat-erpillar again.

Even in distant antiquity people came to realise that the things and phenomena of the surrounding world were bound up with one another and that there was a natural nec-essary connection between them, independent of man’s consciousness and volition.

True, the understanding of this connection was for long impeded by superstitions and religious notions, according to which natural phenomena might be produced by su-pernatural forces or Gods capable of violating the natural connection of things. How-ever, science and materialist philosophy insisted that miracles and supernatural occur-rences did not and could not exist, and that only the natural connection of things and phenomena existed in the world. Gradually, this truth penetrated deeply into the human mind.

In the course of the scientific and philosophical cognition of the world, many forms and manifestations of the universal connection of phenomena were discovered, and con-cepts (categories) arose to express these, such as causality, interaction, necessity, law, accident, essence and appearance, possibility and reality, form and content. This section of Chapter 2 deals chiefly with categories directly associated with the conception of the necessary character of universal connections and the determination of phenomena, i.e., the principle of determinism, which is the corner-stone of any genuinely scientific ex-planation of the world.

The Connection of Cause and Effect

The most familiar form of connection, observed everywhere and always, is the con-nection of cause and effect.

The cause of a phenomenon usually denotes that which brought about its existence. The phenomenon produced is called the effect or consequence. The wind, for example, is the cause of the movement of a sailing vessel.

There is a definite sequence in time between cause and effect. The cause comes first, and is followed by the effect. But “subsequent” by no means necessarily means “conse-quent”. For example, day always follows night, and night follows day, but day is not the cause of night and night is not the cause of day. It is well known that the cause of the alternation of day and night is the rotation of the earth about its axis, resulting in the il-lumination first of one side and then of the other.

Effect is necessarily connected with cause. If a cause exists, the effect will inevita-bly follow, provided nothing interferes with it. If you press the trigger of a loaded rifle, a discharge is bound to occur. But we know that sometimes no discharge occurs. Does this mean that the causal connection has lost its necessary character? No, it only means that some other cause has prevented the discharge. Possibly, the spring of the trigger had weakened, or the gunpowder was moist, or the cartridge spoilt, etc. By investigating all the circumstances we can determine the cause which prevented the expected phenome-non from occurring. Thus, the break in the causal connection is here really only a seem-ing one.

la order that a cause should produce an action, certain conditions are always re-quired. The conditions are those phenomena which are necessary for the occurrence of a given event, but do not bring it about of themselves. For example, various conditions are necessary in order that an airplane may rise into the air, such as a suitable airfield, fa-vourable weather conditions, etc. But these conditions of themselves are, of course, in-sufficient for the take-off, which requires the operation of the plane’s motors as an im-mediate cause.

Quite often, particularly in complicated cases, cause is easily confused with the oc-casion. Such confusion is due to a superficial view of things and an inability to discern the true, deep-lying causes of phenomena. The occasion of itself cannot give rise to any phenomenon, but it acts as an impulse which brings the actual cause into operation. For example, the assassination in Sarajevo of the Austrian crown prince, Franz-Ferdinand, was the occasion for the First World War. Yet we know that the war was not caused by this assassination, but by the increasingly bitter rivalry of the imperialist powers.

To grasp events correctly in practical affairs, in politics, and to separate the essential from the non-essential, it is especially important to be able to distinguish actual causes from conditions and occasions.

Against the Idealist Conception of Causality

Causal connection is universal in character and applies to all the phenomena of na-ture and society, whether simple or complex, whether known or unknown to science.

Causeless phenomena do not and cannot exist. Every phenomenon necessarily has a cause.

It is the cardinal purpose of science to determine causal connections. To explain a phenomenon, one must find its cause. By investigating and cognising the world, science penetrates to the roots of phenomena—from the surface of events to their immediate, direct causes, and from these to more profound, general and essential causes. Ignorance of the true cause of a phenomenon not only makes it impossible for man consciously to produce or prevent it; it tends to give rise to unscientific and fantastic notions, supersti-tions, and mystical, religious explanations of nature.

This is why the problem of causality has long been the subject of bitter controversy between materialism and idealism. Idealist philosophers have often either totally denied the objective nature of causal connection or sought its source not in nature, but in some spiritual principle.

In the opinion of David Hume, the eighteenth-century English philosopher, experi-ence does not reveal the necessary connection of phenomena. That is why, he claimed, we can only say that one phenomenon follows another, but are not justified in saying that one phenomenon produces another.

Immanuel Kant understood that there could be no science, unless the obligatory na-ture of causal connection was recognised. But like Hume, he assumed that there was no such connection in observable phenomena. Kant sought the source of causality and ne-cessity in the human mind, whose peculiar design allegedly imparts a causal connection to the phenomena we perceive.

Many modern idealists aver that there is neither cause nor effect in nature and that, as L. Wittgenstein put it, “the belief in the casual nexus is superstition”.24

These idealist views are conclusively refuted by the whole history of science. The raison d’être of natural and social sciences is concerned principally with discovering and studying the causes of phenomena. But the most convincing proof of the objective character of causal connection is provided by man’s practical productive activities. By discovering causal dependencies in nature and then making practical use of this knowl-edge, people produce the effects they require and arrive at desired results. “In this way, by the activity of human beings.” Engels wrote, “the idea of causality become estab-lished, the idea that one motion is the cause of another.”25

Idealism and religion oppose the materialist causal theory with the doctrine of ends, or so-called teleology (derived from the Greek “telos”—purpose). To the causal expla-nation which replies to the question why a natural phenomenon has occurred, teleology counterposes the conjecture for what ends it has occurred. According to the teleological viewpoint, the existence, design and development of a thing are determined by the pur-pose, or “final cause”, for which it is meant. Teleology is an extremely convenient doc-trine for religion and idealist philosophy, because it leads inevitably to the conclusion that a supreme reason (God) exists and achieves its ends in nature.

As proof of their views, supporters of teleology usually point to the purposive struc-ture of organisms (e.g., the protective colouring of animals). Marxist dialectics does not

deny purposiveness in the anatomical structure and activity of living organisms. But it declares that this has its basis in objective causes. The mechanism by which these causes operate was revealed by Darwin’s theory. Alteration of plants and animals arises through their interaction with changed conditions of life. If these alterations prove bene-ficial to the organism, i.e., if they help it to adapt itself to the environment and to sur-vive, they are preserved through natural selection, become hereditary, pass from one generation to another, producing that purposive structure of the organism, that adapta-tion to the environment, which so often strikes the imagination.

Interaction

The theoretical and practical significance of the causal connection of phenomena is tremendous. But it does not exhaust the multiformity of relations in the objective world. Lenin wrote that “causality... is but a small particle of the universal connection”26 and that the “human conception of cause and effect always somewhat simplifies the objec-tive connection of the phenomena of nature, reflecting it only approximately, artificially isolating one or another aspect of a single world process.”27

This means that the interconnection of phenomena in nature and society is more ex-tensive and complex than the connection expressed by the relation of cause to effect. In particular, cause and effect are subordinate to the broader relation of interaction.

Nature constitutes a single whole, all parts of which are connected in one way or an-other. In this universal interconnection, any phenomenon, itself the effect of some cause, also acts as a cause in some other connection, giving rise to new effects. The evapora-tion of water in the seas and rivers owing to the action of the sun's rays, for example, leads to the formation of clouds. These, in turn, produce rain, which moistens the soil and feeds the brooks and streams.

Interaction is also observed in the influence exerted upon each other by cause and effect within one and the same process; in this sense, the two change places—the cause becoming the effect, and vice versa. The continuous thermonuclear reaction in the sun is an example of such interaction, for the process in which hydrogen atoms are converted into helium atoms creates a high temperature (of the order of millions of degrees) which, in turn, necessarily causes the synthesis of helium atoms from hydrogen atoms.

We often observe interaction also when studying social affairs, for example, a greater popular demand for a commodity stimulates greater production of it. In turn, the growth of production produces increased demand. Cause and effect change places. De-mand affects production, and production affects demand.

Hence, cause and effect should not be viewed metaphysically as ossified, uncon-nected, absolute opposites. They should be viewed dialectically as interconnected, inter-convertible, “fluid” conceptions.

However, it is not enough to demonstrate the interaction of different factors or dif-ferent phenomena. We still have to find out which side is the determining one in this interaction. It is only when we have discovered this that we can understand correctly the sources of the process, appraise the forces involved in it, and see the main line, the di-

rection of development.

And to give a proper idea of the interaction between growth of demand and growth of production in the example cited above, it should be stressed that growth of production is the determining factor in this interaction.

Necessity and Law

By recognising that all phenomena are necessarily subject to causality, we recognise the existence of necessity. The inception and development of phenomena that follow from the most essential relations lying at the root of a process are called necessary. Nec-essary development is the development that cannot fail to take place under the given conditions. For example, in the history of the organic world less adapted organisms are necessarily replaced by those more adapted.

Necessity in nature and society is most completely revealed in laws. Recognising necessity in the origin and development of phenomena involves recognising that they are subject to certain regularities that exist independently of man’s will or desire.

Each law is a manifestation of the necessity that governs phenomena. For example, a body raised above the surface of the earth will necessarily fall back to earth, provided it is not held up by some force acting in the opposite direction. This example illustrates the law of gravitation.

What is a law? A law is a profound, essential, stable and repeated connection or de-pendence of phenomena or of different sides of one and the same phenomenon. The law of Archimedes, for example, establishes a stable connection between the weight of a fluid or gas displaced by a body immersed in it and the magnitude of the “upward thrust” exerted upon the body by the fluid or gas. Laws may be less general, operating in a limited field (e. g., Ohm’s law), or more general, applying to a very wide field (e. g., the law of conser-vation of energy). Some laws establish the precise quantitative dependence of phenomena and may be expressed mathematically (e. g., the laws of mechanics). Other laws do not lend themselves to precise mathematical formulation (e. g., the law of natural selection). But all laws express the objective, necessary connection of phenomena.

Knowledge of the laws of objective reality makes possible a deeper understanding of the causes of events and therefore constitutes a reliable basis for man’s purposeful activities.

However, no law can embrace all aspects of a phenomenon. It expresses only the latter’s most essential features.

To discover the law governing any particular set of phenomena, it is necessary to leave out of account all subsidiary circumstances and to isolate in its pure form all the essential, decisive connections between the phenomena. Science does this both by spe-cially contrived experiments and by logical isolation, or abstraction, of the essential as-pects of the phenomena. The law of freely falling bodies (the law of Galileo), for exam-ple, does not take the resistance of the air into account and establishes that all bodies fall with the same acceleration. But in the earth’s atmosphere a body may fall swiftly like a stone, or descend slowly, like a dry leaf, or may even rise for a time, like the seeds of the

dandelion or other plants.

Galileo’s law holds good in all these cases. But this law alone is insufficient to ex-plain fully the falling of a body in specific conditions. Such an explanation requires knowledge not only of the law, but of the circumstances in which it operates.

Necessity and Accident

Among the diverse phenomena of nature and society are some that do not necessar-ily follow from the law-governed development of a given thing or a given series of events and which may or may not occur, may happen in one way, or in another way. These are accidental phenomena.

If the farmer’s crop is damaged by hail, for example, this is accidental in relation to his labour and the laws governing the growth of plants.

The problem of accident has been the subject of much dispute in science. The per-fectly correct principle that causality holds good for all phenomena in nature and human society has led many scientists and philosophers to draw the incorrect conclusion that only necessity exists in the world, and that no phenomena are accidental. Accident, from their point of view, is a subjective concept which we use to denote effects whose cause we do not know.

This viewpoint is entirely wrong, because it makes the two different conceptions—necessity and causality—identical. It is true that there are no causeless phenomena in the world, and that accidental phenomena are causally determined. But this does not make accidental phenomena necessary. Take the following example. A train jumps the rails and is wrecked. We may find that the cause of the wreck was, for example, loosened rails which the linesman had overlooked. Yet disaster was an accident, not a necessity. Why? Because it was brought about by a circumstance not necessarily connected with the laws of motion of railway traffic, since it is technically quite possible to provide conditions in which such disasters will not occur.

The denial of objective accidentality leads to conclusions that are harmful from the scientific and practical points of view.

One who regards everything as necessary will be incapable of discriminating be-tween the essential and the non-essential, between the necessary and the accidental. As Engels put it, necessity itself would then be reduced to the level of accident.

A correct understanding of the concepts of necessity and accident involves seeing not only the difference between them, but also their connection. Necessity makes its way through a maze of accidents. The dialectics of necessity and accident consists in the fact that accident appears as a form in which necessity manifests itself, and is supplementary to necessity. Therefore, accident has its place also within a necessary process.

Here is an example. In winter in northern latitudes the weather becomes cold and snow falls. That is a necessity. But on what particular day the temperature drops below zero and snow falls, how cold it is, how much snow falls, etc.—all that is accidental. Yet there is necessity in these accidents, because both cold and snow are necessary signs of winter in that region.

In the earlier example of the derailed train the disaster was an accident. But if the railway is badly organised, if discipline is poor, and the personnel inefficient, then disas-ters will become a necessary result of the unsatisfactory working of the railway, instead of a rare accident. Of course, in that case too, the specific circumstances of a disaster, and its time and place, will still be more or less accidental.

Further, accidents may influence the development of a necessary process, accelerat-ing or retarding it. Frequently, accidents enter so considerably into the development of a necessary process that they become necessity. Thus, according to Darwin’s theory, min-ute accidental changes in an organism which are beneficial to it become established through heredity and strengthened in the process of evolution, resulting in a change in the species. Accidental differences thus become necessary characteristics of a new spe-cies.

The above is evidence that necessity and accident are not absolutely separate from each other. They interact and pass into one another in the process of development.

It follows from this connection of accident and necessity that accidental phenomena are also governed by certain laws, which may be studied and become known.

For example, it has been statistically established that in the United States the aver-age expectation of life is higher among Whites than among Negroes. This regularity does not mean, however, that every white man lives longer than every Negro. Some Whites die young, while some Negroes live to a ripe old age. But the above regularity holds good on the average, as a whole, and reflects the adverse situation of the Negroes in the U.S.A., racial discrimination, inferior living conditions, lower wages, etc.

The regularities governing accidental phenomena have been generalised in a number of scientific theories, and particularly in the mathematical theory of probability.

Determinism and Modern Science

The principle of determinism, always upheld by the materialists, consists in the rec-ognition of the objective character of universal connection, the causative determination of phenomena, the rule of necessity and regularity in nature and society.

Determinism is the basic principle of all genuinely scientific thinking, since it is only by knowing the causes of phenomena that their origin can be scientifically ex-plained, and only by knowing the law governing phenomena that their further develop-ment can be predicted. However, the conception of determinism underwent a change in the course of the development of science. Natural science in the eighteenth and nine-teenth centuries, which confined itself to studying the “macrocosm”, i. e., the world of relatively large bodies and their parts, and based itself chiefly on Newton’s mechanics, was dominated by mechanical determinism. Its distinguishing feature, which was also its defect, was that it made every cause a mechanical one.

This viewpoint was justified and confirmed by practice in the study of the motion and mechanical interaction of celestial bodies and also of macroscopic terrestrial bodies and parts of bodies. It was by the method of mechanical determinism that scientists could predict the visible positions of the sun and planets and could calculate how to con-

struct machines and engineering works.

However, all attempts to apply the principle of mechanical determinism in studying more complex phenomena proved a failure. Biological phenomena, physiological and mental processes, and the social activities of people, could not be explained merely by mechanical determinism.

The second extremely important defect of mechanical determinism was that it did not recognise the objectivity of accidental phenomena. Its adherents rejected accident as being identical with causelessness.

The inadequacy of mechanical determinism became particularly evident when the progress of science and technology led to cognition of the microcosm and the properties of the so-called elementary particles, i. e., the minutest and simplest particles known to modern science (electrons, positrons, mesons, etc.).

Accident plays an extremely important part in the microcosm, and for processes oc-curring in it quantum mechanics takes into account both necessity and accident.

Discoveries in regard to the microcosm, and the development of quantum mechanics were in themselves a formidable achievement of science and involved a dialectical con-ception of the world. It was shown that the properties and relations of material bodies, and of their particles, were not as homogeneous and uniform as the old physics had as-sumed, and that matter was inexhaustible in its diversity.

However, physical discoveries also served for drawing idealistic conclusions, which have been upheld not only by idealist philosophers, but also by some prominent scien-tists in the capitalist countries who have been influenced by religion and idealism.

The school of “indeterminism” made its appearance in modern physics and the phi-losophy of natural science. Its representatives reject the very principle of objectively necessary connection. They proceed from the erroneous assumption that determinism is only possible in its old mechanical form, which disregards accident, and on the basis of the scientifically proved inadequacy of this mechanical determinism they conclude that any form of determinism is untenable. Thus, voluntarily or involuntarily, they allow su-perstition and belief in miracles to have a place in science. Some of them go so far as to attribute “free will” to the electron. From their point of view, the progress of science itself has made it possible to reconcile and combine science with idealism and religion.

In reality, however, modern physics has not refuted determinism, but has revealed that in the microcosm it operates in a special way. Study of the laws governing the phe-nomena of the microcosm is the main subject of quantum mechanics, which is being successfully applied in the calculations of scientists and engineers. And this is testimony that in this field, too, we are dealing with the objectively necessary connection and de-termination inherent in all the phenomena of reality.

2. Quantitative and Qualitative Change in Nature and Society

The first thing to do in investigating the various phenomena of reality is to distin-guish the particular phenomenon under study from all others.

Qualitative and Quantitative Definiteness of Things

The totality of the essential features that make a particular thing or phenomenon what it is and distinguish it from others, is called its quality. The philosophical concept of quality differs from the notion of it in everyday life, where it is associated with value. In that sense people speak of the good or bad quality of, for instance, food, manufac-tured articles or artistic productions. The philosophical concept of quality does not con-tain any element of value. It is only a concept that denotes the inseparable distinguishing features, the inner structure, constituting the definiteness of a phenomenon and without which it ceases to be what it is.  

It should be borne in mind, of course, that no quality exists by itself. There are only things or phenomena which are characterised by qualitative definiteness.

But inside things, or totalities of them possessing a distinct qualitative definiteness, there may also be more or less significant qualitative differences. In the animal world, for example, vertebrates differ qualitatively from arthropoda. But within the general sub-type of vertebrates there are qualitative differences between mammals, birds, fish, rep-tiles and amphibia. Furthermore there are, in turn, qualitative differences among mam-mals.

The demarcation and identification of the features and distinctions that constitute the quality of a phenomenon are only the beginning of cognition. Besides quality, each thing has also a quantitative aspect, marked by the special quantitative characteristics in which its quality exists.

The quantitative definiteness of a thing may refer to its external features. For exam-ple, a thing may be big or small. But it may also characterise the internal nature of a thing. Thus, every metal has its own heat conductivity, its own coefficient of expansion, and every liquid has its own heat capacity, its own boiling-point and freezing-point, while every gas has its own temperature of liquefaction, etc.

The quantitative characteristics of qualitatively different materials and processes are particularly important in technology. Modern industry relies on them at every step.

It was only when quantitative measurements relating to the phenomena were com-bined with qualitative descriptions that natural science achieved appreciable progress. Observations of the stars and of the visible movements of the planets were begun very long ago. But astronomy did not develop as a science until the first measurements were made of the visible positions of the stars in the sky and of the angular distances between them, etc. In other fields of science as well, the progress of scientific knowledge was bound up with the development of measuring and computing devices, the development of methods of measurement, etc.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the founders of the science of modern times, such as Galileo, regarded analysis of the quantitative relations and properties of phenomena as the main task of natural science.

However, the scientists of that time went to extremes. They reduce all “qualities” to “quantities” that corresponded to them, and failed to see the basic qualitative differences behind the quantitative differences of phenomena,

The purely quantitative approach to natural phenomena led to the mechanism typical of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century science, i. e., to the conviction that mathematics and mechanics provided an adequate basis for cognition of the whole world and that any phenomenon could be understood if explained by the laws of mechanics. According to the theory of René Descartes,’ for example, animals were simply complex machines whose activities were wholly explicable by means of mechanical causes. And La Met-trie, the French eighteenth-century materialist, went so far as to argue in his essay, Man-Machine, that not only animals, but men as well, were nothing more than machines.

The mechanistic view of nature was progressive for its time, because it required a strictly scientific approach to all natural phenomena and rejected all idealist and theo-logical “explanations”. But it was soon discovered that the quantitative approach alone was insufficient and that cognition of objects and phenomena required the discovery of their peculiarities, their specific distinguishing features. The external world is full of diverse qualities and can only be understood and explained if the qualitative as well as the quantitative aspects of all phenomena and processes are taken into account. The problem, therefore, is not one of simply reducing the quality of a phenomenon to its quantity, but of understanding what relation there is between the quantitative definite-ness of a phenomenon and its qualitative definiteness.

The development of science demonstrated that there are quantitative relations com-mon to many qualitatively different objects and processes. For example, the mathemati-cal formulae of the wave theory are applicable to phenomena of various physical types— mechanical vibration, electro-magnetic oscillation, thermal fluctuation, and oth-ers. This is possible because all these phenomena objectively possess certain common features, common regularities, which may be quantitatively expressed.

At the contemporary stage of the development of science, mathematics, which deals with quantitative relations, is being increasingly applied to scientific investigation in a number of qualitatively different fields of reality and in technology. This is unques-tionably a sign of progress.

However, the very possibility of applying a particular quantitative relation to quali-tatively different processes presupposes a concrete study of all the qualitative peculiari-ties of each of them.

Quantitative Changes Turn into Qualitative Ones

One-sided emphasis of either the quantitative or the qualitative aspect indicates a metaphysical approach. Metaphysics is blind to the inherently necessary connection be-tween quantity and quality. Dialectical thought, on the other hand, achieved an impor-tant advance by establishing that the quantitative definiteness and the qualitative defi-niteness of things are not entirely external and indifferent opposites, but that there is a profound dialectical connection between them. In its most general form, this connection consists in the fact that quantitative changes of a thing inevitably bring about a change in its quality.

We are surrounded on all sides by examples of such conversions of quantitative

changes into qualitative ones.

Thus, a change in the length of electromagnetic waves is attended by the marked qualitative differences shown by radio waves, infrared radiation, the spectrum of visible radiation, ultra-violet waves, X-rays and, last but not least, so-called gamma rays.

Innumerable qualitative changes brought about by quantitative changes can be ob-served in chemistry. Take the synthetic substances (rubber, plastics, synthetic fibres), which are so prominent in industry and everyday use. Their molecules, marked by their great size, are formed by the combination of many small molecules each of identical composition. This combination of small molecules (monomers) into large ones (poly-mers) results in qualitative changes, for polymers have many remarkable properties that monomers lack.

Quantitative modifications proceed more or less gradually and are often scarcely no-ticeable. In the beginning they do not modify the qualitative definiteness of a thing to any substantial extent. Subsequently, however, they accumulate and finally lead to a radical qualitative modification. “Quantity,” it is said, “passes into quality.”

Thus, steel retains its solidity when heated. But when its temperature reaches the critical point the metal ceases to be a solid and becomes a liquid.

The dialectical transition of quantity into quality is of particularly great importance for understanding the process of development, because it explains the emergence of new quality, without which there is no development.

For example, in the early stages of social development there was a natural economy, with each community producing all it needed for its own existence. Subsequently, as production increased, exchange of commodities began. It became more frequent, grew quantitatively, and this led finally to very substantive qualitative changes in the eco-nomic life of society. Natural economy was replaced by commodity economy, in which people produced things for exchange rather than their own consumption, and obtained the things they needed by means of exchange.

If a new quality arises from quantitative changes, it will have a new quantitative definiteness. This is the “passage of quality into quantity”. Thus, a qualitatively new model of a machine results in a higher productivity of labour. Socialist economy, quali-tatively different from capitalist economy, develops at a higher rate.

The passage of quantitative changes into radical qualitative changes, and vice versa, constitutes the universal dialectical law of development. It operates in all the processes of nature, society and thought—in all spheres where the old is replaced by the new.

What Is a Leap?

The transition of a thing, through the accumulation of quantitative modifications, from one qualitative state to a different, new state, is a leap in development. The leap is a break in the gradualness of the quantitative change of a thing. It is the transition to a new quality and signalises a sharp turn, a radical change in development.

For example, the emergence of man was a leap—a radical turning-point in the de-velopment of the organic world.

Leaps, transitions from one quality to another, are relatively rapid. However, the slowness of the quantitative modifications and the rapidity of the qualitative change are relative. The leaps are rapid in comparison with the preceding periods of gradual accu-mulation of quantitative modifications. This rapidity varies, depending upon the nature of the object and the conditions in which the leap occurs.

The term evolution is used to denote quantitative changes both in nature and in soci-ety. Sometimes it is used not only to denote gradual quantitative changes, but, in a broader sense, to denote development in general, which embraces both quantitative and qualitative changes. We often describe modern Darwinism as a theory of the evolution of the organic world, implying that this evolution covers both qualitative and quantita-tive changes. Leap-like qualitative changes in social life are designated by the concept of revolution. By a revolution in the development of society is meant above all qualitative changes in the social system. But revolutions also occur in other fields of social life—in technology, production, science and culture.

There is an internal necessary connection between evolution and revolution. The evolutionary development of society is inevitably consummated by leap-like qualitative transformations, by revolutions. Revolutionary changes of quality are the starting-point of a new period of evolutionary changes.

The doctrine of materialist dialectics on the passage of quantitative into qualitative changes is an important weapon in the struggle against Right-wing and “Left-wing” op-portunists. It helps to reveal the fallacy of reformism, which denies the necessity of so-cialist revolution and asserts that the transition to socialism can be effected through re-forms—the gradual “growing” of capitalism into socialism. On the other hand, dialectics demonstrates the complete theoretical untenability of all ultra-Leftist trends, which ig-nore the natural development of events and under-estimate the importance of everyday work among the masses, of preparing them for revolution, of building up the revolution-ary forces.

Against the Metaphysical Notion of Development

Marx and Engels created materialist dialectics in the course of combating the meta-physical view of nature, which denied development. Since then the situation has changed. In the second half of the nineteenth century the idea of development spread far and wide (mainly owing to Darwin’s theory). However, the metaphysical point of view did not disappear. It took the shape of a distorted, one-sided conception of development itself. At present, the struggle of dialectics against metaphysics centres chiefly round the question of how to understand development, and not of whether there is development.

One of the varieties of the metaphysical conception of development consists in the contention that nature develops exclusively by small, gradual, continuous quantitative changes, by way of evolution, and that it does not admit of leaps, of sharp qualitative changes. “Nature does not make leaps,” say the adherents of that view. Since they see nothing in development besides evolution, they are called “trite evolutionists”. It was Herbert Spencer, the nineteenth- century English philosopher and sociologist, who

founded the school of “trite evolutionism”.

According to Spencer, development takes place smoothly, without the slightest in-terruption of its gradualness, solely through the quantitative addition of elements, the stages of the evolutionary process not differing qualitatively, but only quantitatively.

Spencer’s theory of “trite evolutionism” exercised a considerable influence on many positivist trends in philosophy and natural science. It was adopted by many bourgeois and revisionist theorists and used in the struggle against Marxist materialist dialectics, against the teaching of Marx and Engels on proletarian revolution.

The obvious fallacy of “trite evolutionism” and its variance with the facts led to the emergence of another notion of development, which was externally its very opposite, but was just as one-sided and metaphysical. This is the so-called theory of “creative evolu-tion”, which became fashionable in the twentieth century.

The adherents of “trite evolutionism” saw in development only quantitative changes, while the adherents of “creative evolution” saw in it nothing but qualitative changes. They stressed that development was “creative”, and that it consisted in the appearance of new forms. But they did not see the obligatory connection between these qualitative changes and the preceding quantitative modifications. They asserted that the appearance of the new in the process of development could not be explained by the operation of natural causes and that the only possible explanation was a mysterious “creative force” of a spiritual kind, which directed development and engendered new forms.

Thus this new theory of “creative evolution” leads to the old idea of God, which clearly exposes its anti-scientific character.

The metaphysical conception of development is opposed by the genuinely scientific dialectical conception which recognises both gradual quantitative changes and leap-like qualitative ones.

3. Division into Opposites Is the Chief Source of Development

We saw that the process of development is the passage of an old quality into a new quality at a definite stage of quantitative modification.

But what is the motive force, the source, of all development? A most important task of materialist dialectics is to answer that question. The starting-point for its answer is the contradictory nature of reality itself.

A Note on the History of Dialectics

Even in ancient times people noticed that opposed properties, forces and tendencies were clearly evident and played a very important part in the infinite diversity of the ex-ternal world. They noticed, furthermore, that opposites not only coexisted side by side, but that they were interconnected and that they arose in one and the same object or phe-nomenon, that they constituted different sides of a single thing or process.

Many philosophers of ancient China, India, Greece and other countries held that the origin and existence of things could only be explained by understanding what opposites went to form them. In those times, hot and cold, dry and moist, empty and full, being

and non-being, etc., were thought to be such opposites.

The notion that the collision of opposites was the motive force in change was ex-pressed already in antiquity. Thus, the ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, taught that “everything happens through struggle”, that struggle is the source—the “father”—of all things. The ancient dialecticians also noticed that opposites are not something ossified and immutable, that they are relative, that they differ from each other only in a certain sense, and that in certain circumstances one passes into the other, and vice versa. These were essentially brilliant conjectures, although often expressed in a naive form.

In feudal society, where the Church persecuted all independent study of nature, the idea of the unity and struggle of opposites faded into oblivion. At the time of the emer-gence of capitalist society the question of opposites again attracted attention. Such out-standing thinkers as N. Kuzansky (15th century) and Giordano Bruno (16th century) taught that where the ordinary mind sees only irreconcilable opposites (the infinite and the finite, the crooked and the straight, etc.), a more profound mind detects the unity or the “coincidence of opposites”.

Mechanistic natural science, which prevailed in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-turies, did not favour the development of dialectics and, in particular, the doctrine of opposites. However, even at that time penetrating thinkers who observed the events and relations of the pre-revolutionary epoch, which was full of acute conflicts and collisions, voiced far-reaching thoughts about the significance of opposites in social life and his-tory. (See, for example, Diderot's Rameau's Nephew or Rousseau’s The Origin and the Reasons of Inequality).

The significance of opposites attracted the attention of a number of German phi-losophers at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, while with Hegel it became one of the basic principles of his philosophy. Hegel conceived the process of development as movement from a unity through the disclosure of opposites to a new unity, as the passing of a thing or phenomenon into its opposite. He called the combination of opposite aspects in a phenomenon its “contradiction”. But being an ide-alist, he regarded the contradictions of reality as contradictions in the logical develop-ment of the absolute idea.

The founders of Marxism, who remodelled Hegel’s dialectics materialistically, pre-served the term “contradiction”, but gave it a different, materialist meaning.

Dialectical Contradiction and Its Universal Character

By a dialectical contradiction Marxism understands the presence in a phenomenon or process of opposite, mutually exclusive aspects which, at the same time, presuppose each other and within the framework of the given phenomenon exist only in mutual con-nection.

For the ancient dialecticians, the doctrine of opposites and their “coincidence” was no more than a conjecture made on the basis of immediate perception of reality, and thinking about it. For Marxist dialectics it is a conclusion from the facts accumulated by science as a result of investigating all fields of reality.

Indeed, the study of the phenomena of nature, social relations or man’s mental activ-ity reveals contradictions, i. e., conflicts of opposed aspects or tendencies.

It stands to reason that so long as we examine a thing at rest, in a static state, we see in it merely different properties and features, and may overlook the “struggle” of oppo-sites and, consequently, fail to see any contradictions. But as soon as we try to follow the movement, the modification, the development of a thing, we instantly discover the existence in it of opposed aspects and processes.

For example, when examining a prepared slide of a plant or animal cell under the microscope, we see no more than its structure, i. e. the cell wall, the nucleus, the proto-plasm, etc. But if we observe a living cell, we shall see taking place in it the opposed processes of assimilation and dissimilation, the growth and dying away of its component parts.

Opposites and contradictions are encountered in all fields of science. Mathematics deals with the opposed operations of addition and subtraction, differentiation and inte-gration; mechanics wit action and reaction, attraction and repulsion; physics with posi-tive and negative electric charges; chemistry with the combination and dissociation of atoms; the physiology of the nervous system with excitation and inhibition in the cere-bral cortex; and social science with the class struggle and many other opposites and, consequently, contradictions.

Human thought and cognition are also governed by the principle of dialectical con-tradiction. In the process of cognition, for example, we observe continuous conflicts of opposite views, contradictions between old theories and new facts, etc.

Development as the Struggle of Opposites

The concept of contradiction is of crucial importance in analysing the process of de-velopment. In nature, social life and human thought, development proceeds in such a way that opposite, mutually exclusive sides or tendencies reveal themselves in an object; they enter into a “struggle”, which culminates in the destruction of the old forms and the emergence of new ones. Such is the law of development. “Development is the ‘struggle’ of opposites,”28 wrote Lenin.

It stands to reason that this proposition must not be understood too simply. The struggle of opposites in the direct, literal sense of the word occurs chiefly in human so-ciety. It is by no means always possible to speak of struggle in its literal sense as regards the organic world. And as regards inorganic nature the term is to be understood still less literally. That is why Lenin puts the term in quotation marks. These qualifications are necessary for a correct idea of the struggle of opposites.

The division of a unity into opposites and the mutual counteraction or “struggle” of these opposites is the most fundamental and universal law of dialectics. As Lenin em-phasises, the division of unity and the cognition of its contradictory parts is one of the most fundamental features of dialectics, it is indeed “the essence of dialectics”.29

All development, whether the evolution of the stars, the growth of a plant, the life of a man or the history of society, is contradictory in its essence. In fact, development in its

most general sense signifies that at any given moment a thing retains its identity and at the same time ceases to retain it. Its definiteness remains, but at the same time it changes and becomes different.

“There is a contradiction in a thing remaining the same and yet constantly changing, being possessed of the antithesis of ‘inertness’ and ‘change’,” Engels wrote.30 A devel-oping thing has within it the embryo of something else. It contains within itself its own antithesis, a “negating” element which prevents it from remaining inert and immutable. It contains an objective contradiction; opposite tendencies operate within it and a mutual counteraction or “struggle” of opposite forces or sides takes place, leading eventually to the resolution of the contradiction, to a radical, qualitative change of the thing.

For many thousands of years the organic species which existed in, say, the so-called Tertiary period of the earth's geological history remained unchanged and their forms were constant. But this constancy was relative. Changes accumulated in the organisms in the course of interaction with the changing environment. These changes were transmit-ted hereditarily and led ultimately to the origin of entirely new species of plants and animals. The constant interaction, or “struggle”, within each species between the anti-thetical tendencies of heredity and variability forms the inner basis of the evolution of the organic world.

It follows that the stability of a thing, which presupposes a certain balance or equi-librium of opposites, can only be temporary and relative. Only the motion of matter, which continuously rejects old forms and gives rise to new ones, is eternal and absolute. In formulating this crucial proposition of dialectics, Lenin wrote: “The unity of oppo-sites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute.”31

The dialectical conception of development as the unity and struggle of opposites is opposed to the metaphysical conception. As Lenin stressed, one of the principal defects of the metaphysical conception of development was that it overlooked the internal mo-tive force of the development of matter, that it ignored self-movement and considered the source of development to be external. In the final analysis, God was this external source which imparted motion to matter, but was itself outside matter. The metaphysical con-ception not only advanced a one-sided, and therefore distorted, notion of development, but led to fideistic conclusions, i.e., the recognition of a divine principle, and therefore, to the betrayal of science.

The dialectical conception of development is profound and full of meaning. “It alone furnishes the key to the ‘leaps’, to the ‘break’ in continuity, to the ‘transformation into the opposite’, to the destruction of the old and the emergence of the new.” According to this conception, Lenin wrote, “it is to knowledge of the source of self-movement that attention is chiefly directed”.32 Since it sees in the internal contradictoriness of all things and phenomena the key to the comprehension of self-movement and development, the dialectical conception of development does not require any supernatural source of mo-tion. It rejects the intervention of “transcendental” forces in the life of nature, and there-fore remains loyal to science.

Contradiction Is Always Concrete

The above description of development as a struggle of opposite is, of course, very general. It is applicable to every process of development and is therefore in itself inade-quate for explaining any particular one, because there are no such things as opposites “in general”; opposites are always concrete and definite.

Each thing or phenomenon contains innumerable interacting aspects. Moreover, each phenomenon is connected with the things and processes that surround it. This is why diverse external and internal contradictions can be found in all phenomena. In order to understand the development of a phenomenon, one must find out which is the princi-pal, determining contradiction in the given process, what concrete opposites interact within it, what form their- “struggle” assumes, and what role in that “struggle” is played by one aspect or another of the contradiction.

The contradictions inherent in a phenomenon are not immutable and eternal. Like everything else in the world, they arise, develop and are finally resolved, causing a tran-sition from the old qualitative state to a new one.

In all cases, when studying the process of development, it is essential to make a con-crete analysis of the forms assumed by the struggling opposites and of the stages passed through by the developing contradiction.

The higher the stage reached by matter in its development—from inorganic nature through the organic world to human society— the more complex and ramified the proc-ess of development becomes. In this process the struggle of such opposites as new and old becomes more and more important, and the differentiation and antithesis of the “revolutionary” and “conservative” aspects in the developing phenomenon become pro-gressively sharper. Here too, of course, contradictions are not confined to the struggle of new and old, but in the final count it is this struggle—in the course of which the new overcomes the resistance of the old and asserts itself in life while the old, which has out-lived its time, perishes—that determines the character of development.

The dialectical leaching of development focuses the investigator’s attention on a concrete analysis of the opposing tendencies disclosed in each phenomenon and de-mands active support for what is new, growing and progressive.

Antagonistic and Non-Antagonistic Contradictions

In relation to social life, it is important to distinguish between antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions.

Contradictions between social groups or classes whose basic interests are irreconcil-able are called antagonistic. Such are the contradictions between oppressors and op-pressed, exploiters and exploited. In our time this applies above all to the contradictions between the working class and the capitalists. These will not disappear until the capital-ist class has been deprived either by peaceful or non-peaceful means of political power and of the means of production, and thereby of the very possibility of exploiting work-ing people. This can only take place through a socialist revolution.

In politics, in practical activities, it is very important to bear in mind the antagonistic

nature of the basic class contradictions in an exploiting society. To deny it leads inevita-bly to reformist mistakes. Opportunists and revisionists, for example, do not recognise the antagonistic character of the contradictions between the bourgeoisie and the working class, and because of this advocate the reconciliation of classes. But such a policy is mistaken and harmful. It weakens the position of the working class and undermines the struggle of the working people for emancipation.

Antagonistic contradictions are a historical phenomenon. They are engendered by an exploiting society and exist as long as this society exists.

When the exploitation of man by man comes to an end, antagonistic contradictions gradually disappear as well. But this does not mean that no contradictions of any kind remain under socialism. “Antagonism and contradiction are by no means the same thing,” Lenin wrote. “Under socialism the first will disappear and the second will re-main.”33

Non-antagonistic contradictions will remain after the survivals of class distinctions are removed. For contradictions arise in society not only between classes, but also be-tween different aspects of social life, for instance between production and consumption, between different sectors of the economy, between the requirements for development of the productive forces and the existing forms of economic management, etc. That is why there is nothing abnormal about the dialectical contradictions that arise in life.

True, contradictions often involve anxieties and difficulties in life, work and strug-gle. Much energy has to be devoted to surmounting them. But there is no advance with-out contradictions, without the struggle to resolve them.

The principal place among social contradictions is held by the contradictions be-tween the forces that fight for the new and those that defend the old. It is evident that there can be no development without the birth of the new and without its assertion in life, without struggle for the new. The coming into being of some phenomena and the obsolescence of others, contradictions and conflicts between them, and the triumph of the new over the old, are objective, regular features of social development.

In the struggle to resolve contradictions, people tear down outmoded institutions and relations, overcome inertia and routine and rise to face new, more complex problems and attain more perfect forms of social life.

What are the concrete contradictions occurring under socialism? “They are, in the main,” N. S. Khrushchov points out, “contradictions and difficulties connected with the rapid progress of socialist economy, with the growth of the material and cultural re-quirements of the people, contradictions between the old and the new, between the ad-vanced and the backward.”34

The contradictions of socialist society are overcome by the working people under the leadership of the Marxist-Leninist Party through the rapid and continuous develop-ment of its material and technical resources and the further development of the eco-nomic system, and through improving administrative forms and promoting the socialist consciousness of the working people. The resolution of these contradictions leads to the further consolidation of the socialist system and advances society towards communism.

Bourgeois Ideologists Distort Dialectics

In their efforts to refute materialist dialectics, many opponents of Marxism attack primarily the dialectical theory of contradictions. Most often they maintain that contra-dictions are always the result of logical inconsistency in thinking and that there cannot be any contradictions in reality itself.

This “criticism” of the dialectical law of the unity and struggle of opposites is alto-gether baseless. In speaking of “contradictions”, materialist dialectics is concerned pri-marily with the contradictions existing in objective reality. These, of course, must be distinguished from contradictions that arise from inconsistent thinking and confused ideas.

Contradictions due to incorrect thinking should not be confused with the objective contradictions existing in objective things. Although the word “contradiction” is the same in both cases, it means different things.

The opponents of Marxism resort to yet another method of combating materialist dialectics.

One of the most reactionary trends of idealist philosophy—neo-Hegelianism—became widespread in a number of capitalist countries after the First World War and has not lost influence to this day. Its followers distorted Hegel’s idealist dialectics, threw aside everything that was really valuable in it and tried to use it in combating Marxist philosophy for a sophistical* justification of anti-scientific and politically reactionary ideas.

• Sophistry is the art of substantiating an untrue proposition by fallacious reasoning.

In particular, some neo-Hegelians began to assert that the nature of life is such that it is inevitably marked by antagonisms, acute conflicts and tragic clashes, and that owing to the “tragic dialectics” of human life people will never be able to surmount the eternal contradictions that afflict society, that they will never be able to build their life on a ra-tional and just foundation.

These philosophers declare that the effort of the workers to replace the capitalist sys-tem with its contradictions by a socialist system pursues the unrealisable aim of putting an end to the dialectical development of society.

By interpreting contradictions in this way these bourgeois philosophers seek to per-petuate capitalism and at the same time to discredit the working-class struggle for com-munism.

Every concrete form of contradictions, including social contradictions, is indeed re-solved in the long run. The triumph of socialism in the U.S.S.R. and other countries proves conclusively that the contradictions inherent in capitalism are not eternal, just as capitalism itself is not eternal, and that these contradictions can be overcome.

4. Dialectical Development from the Lower to the Higher

The material world exists eternally. But this eternal life of matter is made up of a constant change of its various forms. They come into being, exist and disappear, being

replaced by other forms.

Stars come into being and perish in the infinite expanse of the universe. Geological epochs succeed one another in the history of the earth. Species of plants and animals come into being and disappear in a countless succession of new-born and dying genera-tions. Forms of social life are not eternal either. They arise, develop, strengthen, later grow old and are replaced by others. Thus, before our eyes capitalism is being replaced by the socialist system of society.

It is in the continual birth of new forms, the incessant replacement of obsolete forms by new ones, that the eternal motion and development of matter is manifested.

Dialectical Negation

In elaborating his idealist dialectics, Hegel introduced the concept of “negation”. He asserted that in the logical development of the absolute idea one category “negates” an-other, although preserving all that was valuable in it. By negation Marxist dialectics un-derstand the law-governed replacement in the process of development of an old quality by a new one, which arises out of the old one. Often this replacement of an old quality by a new one in the process of development takes the form of the transformation of a thing into its opposite.

Marx wrote that “no development that does not negate its previous forms of exis-tence can occur in any sphere”.35 The negation of a old quality by a new one in the proc-ess of development is the natural result of the operation of the law of the unity and struggle of opposites. For a struggle of mutually exclusive aspects and tendencies occurs in each object, phenomenon or process, and this struggle leads ultimately to the “nega-tion” of the old and the appearance of the new. But development does not cease when one phenomenon is “negated” by another that comes to replace it. The new phenomenon that has come into being contains new contradictions. At first these may be unnotice-able, but in the course of time they are bound to show themselves. The “struggle of op-posites” then begins on a new basis and in the long run leads inevitably to a new “nega-tion”. As a whole, the objective world is eternal and infinite, but all the things that com-prise it are limited in space and time, transient and subject to “negation”. No “negation” is the last. Development continues and every successive “negation” is itself, in turn, “negated”.

Materialist dialectics does not concern itself with every kind of negation, but with dialectical “negation”, that is, with negation which involves the further development of a thing, object or phenomenon.

Such “negation” must be distinguished from mechanical “negation”, in which the object “negated” is destroyed as a result of outside intervention. If we crush an insect or grind a grain of wheat; that will be mechanical “negation”. It may not be purposeless in itself (in this case, the destruction of harmful insects and the conversion of wheat into flour), but it terminates the development of the object.

“Negation in dialectics,” Engels says, “does not mean simply saying no, or declaring that something does not exist, or destroying it in any way one likes.”36

Continuity in Development

Dialectical “negation” presupposes not only the destruction of the old, but also the preservation of the viable elements of former stages of development; it presupposes a certain connection between the outgoing old and the new that is coming to replace it.

When the socialist social system is built upon the ruins of capitalist society, the “ne-gation” of capitalism does not imply complete destruction of everything created by mankind under capitalism. The productive forces and the valuable achievements of sci-ence and culture are preserved and continue to develop. Far from being destroyed by the proletarian revolution, everything of value that was created by capitalism serves as a basis for further progress, for the building of socialism.

Speaking against people who denied the importance for socialism of the old culture created under the bourgeois system, Lenin said that a new, socialist culture could not be created out of nothing, that “it is not something that has sprung nobody knows whence,” and that it “must be the result of a natural development of the stores of knowledge which mankind has accumulated under the yoke of capitalist society.”37

Nihilism, empty negation, failure to see the successive connection that exists be-tween the new and the old and the need carefully to preserve the positive content ac-quired in the preceding stages of development, are not only theoretically wrong, but lead to gross errors in practice.

'It is not negation for the sake of negation, not blank negation, not sceptical nega-tion,” Lenin wrote, “that is typical and essential in dialectics, which unquestionably con-tains an element of negation and, what is more, as its most important element. No, it is negation as a factor of connection, as a factor of development, with a retention of the positive.”38

“Negation” by a new quality of the old quality is a universal law of reality. As to how “negation” occurs concretely, what forms it assumes, and what character, these are extremely diverse and depend on the nature of the object negated, the character of its contradictions, and also on the conditions in which the object develops. Thus, for exam-ple, in the development of unicellular organisms which multiply by division into two new organisms, “negation” proceeds differently from negation in the development of multicellular organisms, which die upon giving birth to new organisms. The inorganic world, as well as the history of human society at different stages of its development, also furnish distinct forms of “negation”.

The Progressive Nature of Development

Since only what has become obsolete is “negated” in the process of development, while all that is sound and viable is preserved, development is a progressive movement, an ascent from lower stages to higher stages, from the simple to the complex. In other words, development is  progress.

Often, something like the return to stages previously passed through occurs during this development, when certain features of outlived and replaced forms are repeated, as it were, in the new forms. Engels illustrates this proposition with a widely known exam-

ple. “Let us,” he writes in Anti-Dühring, “take a grain of barley. Billions of such grains of barley are milled, boiled and brewed and then consumed. But if such a grain of barley meets with conditions which are normal for it, if it falls on suitable soil, then under the influence of heat and moisture it undergoes a specific change, it germinates; the grain as such ceases to exist, it is negated, and in its place appears the plant which has arisen from it, the negation of the grain. But what is the normal life-process of this plant? It grows, flowers, is fertilised and finally once more produces grains of barley, and as soon as these have ripened the stalk dies, is in its turn negated. As a result of this negation of the negation we have once again the original grain of barley, but not as a single unit, but ten-, twenty- or thirtyfold.”39

True, strains of cereals change slowly and, as a rule, the grain of a new harvest dif-fers but little from the sown seed. However, it is possible to create conditions of devel-opment in which change occurs much more rapidly and the result of the “negation of the negation” will differ qualitatively from the point of departure and will, for instance, con-stitute a new plant variety.

Processes in which a return to the old seems to occur may be observed in the history of society, as well as in the field of cognition.

For example, the primitive-communal tribal system, in which there was no exploita-tion, was replaced in the course of history by an exploiting society (slave, feudal, or capitalist). With the transition to socialism, however, the exploitation of man by man is abolished, and in this respect socialist society resembles primitive communal society. But this resemblance conceals a vast, fundamental difference, conceals the history of the progressive development of society through many thousands of years.

Thus, social development did not proceed in a circular course, nor a straight line, but a spiral. It reproduced some features of the past, but it reproduced them at an immeas-urably higher level. Lenin described this essential feature of the dialectical conception of development as follows: “A development that seemingly repeats the stages already passed, but repeats them otherwise, on a higher basis (‘negation of negation’), a devel-opment, so to speak, in spirals, not in a straight line.”40

In the process of development, deviations from the progressive line can and do hap-pen. There may be zigzags, or regression, and there may be periods of temporary stagna-tion. Yet history demonstrates that in the long run progressive movement overcomes all these temporary deviations and obstacles, and makes headway. Any natural or social form now in existence has a long history that recedes far into the past and represents the result of a long process of development, of progressive movement from the simple to the complex, of ascent from the lower to the higher.

The solar system materialised out of cosmic dust. Modern plants and animal organ-isms developed out of initially extremely simple organisms. Society has travelled a long way from the primitive tribe to the contemporary forms of social life. Technology has unceasingly progressed from the original primitive tools to the most complex mecha-nisms of our time. From the conjectures of the ancient philosophers, which were blended with fantasy, human knowledge has arrived at the present complex and ramified system

of the sciences embracing all spheres of reality.

By tracing this progressive development of nature, society and human thought, ma-terialist dialectics gives people a scientifically-based historical optimism, helping them in their struggle for new, higher forms of life and social organisation.

5. Dialectics as a Method of Cognition and Transformation of the World

By revealing the most general laws of development of nature, society and human thought, materialist dialectics provides us with a scientific method of cognition and of practical transformation of the real world on the basis of this cognition.

Importance of Dialectics for Science and Practice

Owing to their universal character, the laws of dialectics are of methodological im-portance and serve as pointers for research—a guide along the road of cognition.

Indeed, if everything in the world takes place according to the laws of dialectics, every phenomenon must be approached from the dialectical standpoint to be understood. Knowing how development occurs enables us to know how developing reality should be studied and what to do to change it. Herein lies the tremendous importance of dialectics for science and the practical remodelling of the world.

Materialist dialectics cannot, of course, take the place of the separate sciences and solve their specific questions and tasks. But every scientific theory is a reflection of the objective world, an elucidation and generalisation of the facts of experience, and pre-supposes use of general concepts, the art of using which is taught by dialectics. True, even a scientist who knows nothing of dialectics may, by following the logic of the fac-tual material which he studies, arrive at valid conclusions. However, a conscious appli-cation of the dialectical method is of invaluable assistance to the scientist and facilitates his task.

The propositions and laws of materialist dialectics are not derived from the data of any single science, but are a generalisation of the entire history of cognition of the world. Knowledge of dialectics enables the scientist, when dealing with problems of his own science, to stand at the highest level of scientific methodology and the scientific world outlook, and to conduct his concrete research with the aid of the generalised ex-perience of all the sciences, all social practice.

Dialectics sharpens our vision when focussed on the study of facts and the laws of reality. It equips the mind of the scientist, politician, technician, educationalist and artist with insight, and gives them the flexibility and receptiveness in relation to new phenom-ena that are as necessary to them as the air they breathe. It purges the mind of dogma, prejudice, preconceived notions and false “eternal truths"', which entrammel thought and retard scientific development. It teaches us to keep in touch with life and not to be bogged down in the past, it teaches to perceive the new and always to go forward.

Dialectics expresses the very spirit of scientific research, constant dissatisfaction with the knowledge achieved, and continuous concern and an undying urge for truth, for an increasingly profound cognition of reality.

Dialectics excludes all subjectivism, narrowness and one-sidedness. It develops a broad view of the world and encourages an all-embracing approach to phenomena under study. It calls for an objective, all-round view of things, in their motion and develop-ment, in their connections and intermediations, and in their mutual transitions. It teaches the student to see the internal along with the external, to take account not only of the content but also of the form of a phenomenon, not to stop at a superficial description of phenomena, but to probe farther, deeper, into their substance, and yet to bear in mind that the external aspect is also essential and should not be neglected. Dialectics draws attention to the opposite tendencies in each developing phenomenon. It sees what is sta-ble in what is changing, and it discerns the germ of coming changes in what seems to be unshakable.

Dialectics, Lenin wrote, is ‘"living, many-sided knowledge (with the number of sides eternally increasing) with an infinite number of shadings of every sort of approach and approximation to reality.”41

The study of dialectics and its application in practice is a powerful educational means. Dialectics develops a distinct pattern of thought and a special style in practice which are hostile to subjectivism, stagnation and dogmatism and are responsive to what is new, growing and progressive.

Dialectics is the true soul of Marxism. The study of materialist dialectics is of great help not only to the scientist and political leader, but to every one who wants to have a thorough grasp of the developments taking place around him and to participate con-sciously in social life.

Impelled by the very development of science and social life, progressive scientists are increasingly abandoning their prejudice against dialectics and are beginning to un-derstand its tremendous importance for science and life.

The Creative Application of Dialectics

It is by no means easy to apply dialectics correctly to science and practical activities. Dialectics is not a handbook with cut-and-dried answers to questions of science and practice. It is a living flexible guide to action, sensitive to life and its trends.

The laws and propositions of dialectics should not be regarded as a pattern into which all facts of reality can be arbitrarily ‘fitted”. That is a fallacious, scholastic and dogmatic conception.

The laws of dialectics are universal. They apply to the development of all things and phenomena. Yet it should be borne in mind that they operate differently in different spheres of the material world, in qualitatively different processes. They manifest them-selves in one form in the organic world, and in another in the inorganic world. Their na-ture in the development of society is different from that in the evolution of the species. They operate in one way in the life of socialist society and differently in the life of capi-talist society.

In order to apply dialectics in the process of cognition and in practical activities, mastery of the principles of dialectics is not enough; a profound knowledge of concrete

facts and circumstances is required. Only after a most careful and thorough study of each concrete situation can it be discovered how and in what form dialectical laws oper-ate in a particular case, how the situation should be appraised, and what the line of ac-tion should be if we wish to succeed. That is why dialectics has always to be used crea-tively.

This is made easier by the splendid examples of the use of the method of materialist dialectics to be found in the works of the founders of Marxism-Leninism, Marx, Engels and Lenin, and in the decisions and activities of the Communist Party of the Soviet Un-ion and the other Communist and Workers’ Parties.

One of the important reasons for the great victories won by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and other Marxist parties lies in the fact that in their policy, in all their activities, Marxist parties are guided by the method of materialist dialectics and develop that method creatively. Deviation from dialectical materialism, neglect of its laws and propositions, lead in the final count to failures both in theoretical analysis and practical activity. The Declaration of the Meeting of Representatives of the Communist and Workers' Parties of the Socialist Countries, held in Moscow, November 14-16, 1957, says rightly:

“Should the Marxist political party in its examination of questions base itself not on dialectics and materialism, the result will be one-sidedness and subjectivism, stagnation of human thought, isolation from life and loss of ability to make the necessary analysis of things and phenomena, revisionist and dogmatist mistakes and mistakes in policy.”42

Dialectics is not only a method of studying reality. It is a method of revolutionary change of reality. It emphasises the importance of an active, effective approach to the world that surrounds us. It is in practice—in work, labour, the class struggle and the building of communism—that the propositions, the laws of materialist dialectics, are tested. Practice yields a wealth of material for the further development of dialectics, for the further elucidation of its propositions, for a fuller and deeper study of its laws. This is why the creative application of Marxist dialectics consists, first and foremost, in its use as an instrument of practical activity, a means of transforming life.

CHAPTER 3

THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

Man’s cognition of the surrounding world has a long history. It is a gradual move-ment from ignorance to knowledge, from incomplete and imperfect knowledge to in-creasingly full and profound knowledge. The special features and laws of this process are revealed by the Marxist theory of knowledge.

To understand the laws of cognition it has to be viewed in its development, in its coming into being and in the struggle of its internally contradictory tendencies. Like all processes of development, cognition is governed by the universal laws revealed by ma-terialist dialectics. Dialectics, Lenin wrote, is the Marxist theory of cognition. The Marx-ist theory of knowledge is distinguished by its dialectical approach to the problems of cognition from all the theories developed by pre-Marxian materialists.

1. Practice Is the Basis and Purpose of Cognition

Cognition of the surrounding world—the investigation of distant galaxies and of minute particles of matter, the study of the origin of life on earth and of the history of ancient cultures, the solution of complex mathematical problems and the analysis of cosmic radiation, etc., etc.—all this is a most fascinating occupation, which is a source of great satisfaction to the research worker and often his whole purpose in life. But peo-ple do not engage in science simply for pleasure. Knowledge furnishes man with tre-mendous power in his daily labour and struggle with nature, and also in his social activi-ties, i.e., in all the practical affairs on which the existence of each individual and of soci-ety as a whole depends.

Idealist philosophers often tried to counterpose cognition to practical activity, to separate it from practice. They proceeded either from the view that cognition was the fruit of the human spirit’s eternal urge for truth and did not depend upon practice, or that practical action was not connected with cognition of the world, that man’s intellect was designed only to master things and to act successfully, while genuine cognition of the world was either totally impossible (Friedrich Nietzsche and others) or possible only through supersensory intuition * (Henri Bergson).

• Intuition in idealist philosophy denotes “immediate” supersensory perception of “truths” without the help of scientific experience or reasoning.

Both these views distort the true relation of cognition and action, theory and prac-tice.

The history of the rise and development of the sciences demonstrates convincingly that science and cognition arise in general from the requirements of practice, and that practice is a necessary condition and basis for cognition.

In his practical activities man enters into immediate intercourse with the surrounding world. By being acted on and changed, things and objects reveal to man their previously unknown properties. To use a thing is at the same time to cognise it. The possibilities of

cognition become much broader when practice is richer and more varied.

All sciences, including the most abstract, came into being in response to the re-quirements of man’s practical life. Geometry, as the name itself suggests, was originally connected with the measurement of land; astronomy with navigation, the calculation of agricultural cycles and the compilation of calendars; and mechanics with the art of building and fortification, etc.

It is not just in the distant past that we observe the dependence of cognition on prac-tice. Natural science began to advance rapidly when, with the emergence of capitalism, industry began to develop by leaps and bounds. At the present time, too, science is in-separably connected with practical life. This connection has become more complex and indirect as far as its abstract theoretical branches are concerned, but practice remains, as it always has been, the fundamental basis of cognition, its principal stimulus and motive force.

One of the most serious defects of all pre-Marxian materialism was precisely the in-ability to grasp the connection between cognition and practice. Materialist philosophers, it is true, frequently spoke of the importance of scientific knowledge for man’s life. In the seventeenth century, for example, the materialist progenitor of modern philosophy, Francis Bacon, declared that mastery over nature for the improvement of man’s life was the most important purpose of science. But although the older materialists guessed the importance of knowledge for practice, they did not understand the importance of prac-tice for cognition. The old, pre-Marxian materialism was contemplative. It viewed cog-nition as the purely theoretical activity of the scientist, who observed nature and re-flected upon it.

They did not see the connection of cognition with either the social and political or the productive activities of the mass of the people. Moreover, they thought it natural and inevitable that the acquirement of knowledge should be the privilege of the few, while “low”, practical activities and physical labour were the lot of the ignorant majority.

Marx and Engels alone, being free from the prejudices characteristic of the theorists of the exploiting classes, grasped the decisive part played by man's practical activities in the process of cognition. They drew the conclusion that man’s daily practical activities in production, which created the material basis of social existence, were also of great theoretical significance for cognition. They established, as Lenin pointed out, that “the standpoint of life, of practice, should be first and fundamental in the theory of knowl-edge.”43

In contrast to pre-Marxian materialism, Marxism includes practice in the theory of knowledge, viewing practice as the basis and purpose of the cognitive process and as the criterion of the trustworthiness of knowledge.

By introducing the standpoint of life, of practice, into the theory of knowledge, Marxism directly connects cognition with industry and agriculture, with the research laboratory and the social activities of the masses. Marxism regards theory as the elucida-tion and generalisation of man’s practical experience, and not as something differing in principle from practice.

Practice and theory are opposites, just as man's material and mental activities are opposites. But these opposites penetrate each other and form a unity of two inseparably connected and interacting aspects of social life.

The Unity of Theory and Practice

Practice not only poses tasks for theory to solve, directing the scientist’s attention to the study of aspects, processes and phenomena of the objective world that are important for society. It also creates the material means for their cognition. Practice, in this case primarily industry, furnishes science with instruments and apparatus, and enables the scientist to make experiments involving very complex equipment.

Material production enables man to amplify his sense organs, to multiply their cog-nitive possibilities to a tremendous degree. The microscope magnifies the image of ob-jects a hundred- and a thousandfold, and the electron microscope even many thousand-fold, enabling scientists to see and photograph minute particles of matter invisible to the naked eye. By means of the telescope man is able to perceive the light of stars hundreds of millions of light-years distant from the earth, and modern radio devices enable him to receive signals and scientific information from sputniks and space rockets hundreds of thousands of kilometres away.

Is modern science conceivable without the proton synchrotron which generates bil-lions of electron volts in microparticles, or without atomic reactors, powerful telescopes, and electronic computers capable of tens of thousands of calculations per second? Of course not.

But science, too, engendered as it is by practical requirements, exerts a most power-ful and ever increasing reciprocal influence on practice. The tremendous technical suc-cesses and great development of the productive forces in the twentieth century were pos-sible solely through the broad and all-embracing application of scientific discoveries in industry, agriculture, transport and communications, and through the embodiment of laws and formulas in machines and devices, and in technological processes.

With knowledge of the laws of nature, the human mind directs man’s material pro-ductive activities and is becoming a force capable of reshaping his environment. Lenin said in this connection that “man’s consciousness does not only reflect the objective world, but also creates it.”44

Thus, the connection and interaction of theory and practice, of science and produc-tion, with the accent on practice, is a necessary condition for society’s material and technical progress.

Social and political life is also the scene of the constant interaction of theory and practice. Here, too, theory arises in response to the requirements of social life, and of the class struggle, and, in its turn, influences the social process. True, a genuine social sci-ence was first developed by Marx. But even pre-Marxian progressive social theories, containing at least some elements of scientific knowledge, played a most progressive part, helped the progressive forces of society to apprehend their immediate practical aims and problems, and supported and inspired these forces in their struggle against re-

action and outdated institutions.

The importance of theory for social life and the relations between people grew im-measurably after Marx and Engels had developed the scientific materialist conception of society.

The victory of the socialist revolution and the immense achievements of the U.S.S.R. and other countries of the socialist camp would not have been possible if the Communist Parties had not been guided in all their undertakings by the theory of Marx-ism-Leninism, the principle of the unity of theory and practice.

Theory serves the practice of the working-class struggle, and practice takes its bear-ings from theory. Otherwise, theory and practice both suffer. Divorced from practice, theory is barren. Unguided by theory, practice is doomed to grope in the dark.

Under socialism the development of theory and the achievements of practice go hand in hand. The practice of socialist and communist construction in the countries of the socialist camp is guided by the Marxist-Leninist theory, while theory is enriched by the practice of the mass of the people who are building a new society. "‘Every practical question of the building of socialism,” N. S. Khrushchov says, “is at the same time also a theoretical question, directly related to the creative development of Marxism-Leninism. The one cannot be separated from the other.”45

The fact that Marxism recognises practice as the ultimate purpose of scientific cog-nition does not mean in the least that it belittles theory, and has nothing in common with a narrow practicalism. The demand that science and life should be connected is directed against the isolation of science from practical tasks, against turning theory into barren mental exercise. But it does not mean loss of perspective and the limitation of the tasks of theoretical research to serving merely immediate practical needs. Far-reaching "‘pro-spective” theoretical research, which discovers new connections and laws of reality and creates theoretical “reserves” for subsequent scientific and technical progress is indis-pensable for the continuous growth of science and technology. Marxism does not toler-ate any attempts to distort scientific truth to suit the requirements of the moment.

The Marxist demand for partisanship is directed against violations of objectivity in research, against distortion of facts, whatever they might be. Both in the period of its struggle for emancipation from capitalist exploitation and during socialist and commu-nist construction, the working class is vitally interested in genuine knowledge, including knowledge of the laws of social development, because they are the laws of its inevitable final victory.

The bourgeoisie has long since lost interest in impartial scientific research, particu-larly in the sphere of social science. Its principal concern in that sphere is to refute Marxism and find arguments in favour of the capitalist system.

Even in the natural sciences the bourgeoisie is not so much interested in genuine knowledge as in the immediate benefits to be derived from it. Its approach to science is purely utilitarian. This, of course, refers to the bourgeoisie as a class, and not to honest, incorruptible scientists living in bourgeois society.

In socialist society, scientific research knows no impediments. The understanding

that cognition of the world is not the private affair of individual scientists, but a matter of the utmost social significance, inspires all honest men of science to serve truth with loyalty and self-devotion.

2. Knowledge Is the Reflection of the Objective World

The Marxist theory of knowledge is a theory of reflection. This means that it regards cognition as the reflection of objective reality in the human mind. Opponents of dialecti-cal materialism usually object to this conception of knowledge. They assert, for exam-ple, that it is meaningless to speak of reflection of the laws of nature, which are invisi-ble, and that there is no reality of which mathematical formulas and logical categories (e.g., “essence”), and ethical concepts (e.g., “justice”, “nobility”), could be the reflec-tion. However, these and similar objections are based on a very primitive and crude con-ception of reflection.

By defining knowledge as reflection, dialectical materialism implies that knowledge, being the reproduction of reality in man’s consciousness, can be nothing but a reflection of the objective world. It is not the things themselves, or their properties and relations, that exist in man’s consciousness, but mental images or reflections of them, which con-vey more or less accurately the characteristics of the objects cognised and are, in this sense, similar to them. And conversely, it is not formulae and concepts that exist in the material world of reality but objective things and relations which are reflected by these concepts and formulae.

The materialist theory of reflection makes a distinction between consciousness and matter, between cognition and its object. Yet it does not counterpose consciousness to matter in an absolute sense, since it is objective reality that is reflected in man’s con-sciousness, and since consciousness itself is a property of matter.

Recognition that mind is a property of highly organised matter, the brain, involves the conclusion that there is not, and cannot be, any fundamental, impassable border-line between thought and the material world.

Spiritual, mental phenomena can, of course, be the object of cognition, as well as material things. However, this does not by any means alter the nature of cognition, since such phenomena are in themselves a reflection of the objective reality outside man’s consciousness.

Furthermore, man's cognitive faculties are not a mysterious gift divinely bestowed, but the result of a prolonged development that took place in the process of cognition, or reflection of the material world, on the basis of practical activity. In the course of this process the sense organs developed and thinking improved.

Such are the basic principles of Marxist philosophy in the problem of knowledge. Its starting-point is man’s ability to cognise and reflect the world around him, and it opens boundless horizons for the progress of human knowledge.

Against Agnosticism

Many philosophers of the idealist camp, and even some scientists under their influ-

ence, oppose the materialist teaching that the world is cognisable.

They uphold the standpoint of agnosticism (“a” is the Greek for “no”, and “gnosis” is knowledge). An agnostic does not always say that we cannot know anything. Often he “merely” suggests that there are problems insoluble in principle, that there are spheres of reality which will remain out of the reach of cognition in principle, no matter how much science and technology may progress and the human intellect may improve.

The Scottish eighteenth-century agnostic, David Hume, for example, claimed that only sense-perceptions were within our reach and that the purpose of science was merely to arrange and systematise them. In his opinion, we can know nothing of what is behind our sense-perceptions and of what causes them. He declared therefore that the funda-mental question of philosophy is insoluble. He said that we could not tell what the world was based on—whether matter or spirit, consciousness. We do not know, and shall never know, because we are unable to go beyond the circle of our sense-perceptions.

Immanuel Kant, his German contemporary, did not deny that our sense-perceptions were caused by things existing independently of man and his cognition. He claimed, however, that these things (he called them “things-in-themselves”) were in principle in-accessible to cognition.

Agnosticism is very closely related to the religious doctrine that the “ways of God are unfathomable”, that human reason is fallible and that man requires a different, non-scientific path to truth. Kant himself confessed that he had had to “give up knowledge, in order to make room for faith”. Agnostic philosophers are always allies of the Church, even in those cases when they themselves do not believe in God. The reason is that ag-nosticism, which puts forward the false notion that the world is unknowable, undermines science and reinforces theology, and inclines man to blind faith, inducing him to trust religious doctrines.

Agnosticism in all its forms is refuted by the facts of life. The history of science shows how man advanced, slowly at first and then more and more rapidly, from igno-rance to knowledge, and how nature gradually revealed to him its seemingly incompre-hensible secrets.

Five hundred years ago people still thought that the earth was the centre of the finite world and that the stars were attached to a celestial firmament resembling a spherical glass vault. The great thinkers of the Renaissance—Copernicus, Bruno and Galileo—overthrew these false notions, shattered the glass dome of the cosmos and extended it to infinity. But even a hundred years ago the composition and structure of celestial bodies appeared to some people bound to remain for ever an insoluble riddle. The positivist, Auguste Comte, asserted categorically that mankind would never learn what the stars consisted of. But only two years after his death, in 1859, the method of spectral analysis laid the basis for investigations of the chemical composition of celestial bodies. At the beginning of the twentieth century, astronomy was still incapable of going beyond the limits of our galaxy, the Milky Way, whereas modern means of research have now re-vealed millions of other stellar systems and have given man an idea of the structure of the universe over distances that defy the imagination.

Man penetrates not only into the boundless expanses of outer space. He penetrates deep into the microcosm, getting closer and closer to solving the riddle of the origin of life. Everywhere, in all spheres of science, we find evidence of the boundless power of scientific cognition.

But the most convincing refutation of agnosticism is practice, human activity, pro-duction. Engels says that as soon as we can cause or produce some phenomenon in ac-cordance with our notion of it, making it, moreover, serve our purpose, we can be sure that within certain limits our notion of the phenomenon constitutes real and trustworthy knowledge.46

Beginning with laboratory experiments and theoretical calculations, physicists learned not only to produce a chain reaction of disintegration in uranium atoms, but also to control this reaction in atomic piles. Production of atomic energy in industrial reactors proved the correctness of the propositions of theoretical physics that were the starting-point of the scientists’ work, and demonstrated that we have a true knowledge of some of the laws of intranuclear processes.

Tsiolkovsky’s hypothesis made on theoretical grounds of the possibility of using jet engines and rockets for space travel has, before our very eyes, given a start to space navigation. The development of jet aviation, artificial earth satellites and spaceships has shown that the views of Tsiolkovsky and his successors were correct and their calcula-tions well founded.

Modern technology and industry offer an endless number of proofs of the power of knowledge.

3. The Theory of Truth

The problem of truth is the central problem of the theory of knowledge and the most important question of every science. If a scientific theory does not furnish true knowl-edge, it is not worth a brass farthing.

The question of truth arises whenever we are concerned with the relation of our knowledge to objective reality. Since the objective world exists independently of con-sciousness, it is clear that in the process of cognition our notions, ideas and theories should correspond to reality. Facts cannot be adjusted to suit our notions about them. On the contrary, our notions must be made to agree with the objective facts. Those who act differently are bound to succumb to empty subjectivism, to lose their sense of reality, to make the wish father to the thought, and ultimately fail in their practical activities.

If our sensations, perceptions, notions, concepts and theories correspond to objective reality, if they reflect it faithfully, we say that they are true, while true statements, judgements or theories are called the truth.

It is often said that the aim of cognition is to find the truth, to discover the truth, etc. It stands to reason that this must not be taken to mean that truth exists of itself and that man stumbles upon it, or finds it. It only means that cognition aims at attaining true knowledge. This should be borne in mind, because some idealist philosophers claim that truths as such have an independent existence and that, under certain conditions, man can

contemplate and describe them. In reality, the notion of “truth” applies solely to human knowledge, ideas, theories, concepts, etc. What exists in the objective world is not truths, but the things, phenomena, relations, processes, etc., that are reflected in man’s true notions and ideas.

Objective Truth

Although truth arises in the process of human cognition, the properties and relations of things reflected in it do not depend upon man. This is why we say that truth is objec-tive.

Consequently, by objective truth we mean human knowledge that correctly reflects the objective world, its laws and properties, and in this sense, as Lenin said, it “does not depend on a subject, ... does not depend either on a human being, or on humanity....”47 Man has no power over truth. He can change the world around him. He can change the conditions of his life. But he cannot change the truth as he thinks fit, because it reflects that which exists objectively.

Every truth is objective truth. It must be distinguished from subjective opinion which does not correspond to reality, from an invention, or an illusion. Not all the things which people considered, or consider, true are really true. For example, it was thought for a long time that the sun revolved round the earth. But this was an erroneous view. On the other hand, the teaching of modern astronomy that the sun is the centre of our system around which the planets, including the earth, revolve within their orbits, is an objec-tively true teaching. Why? Because it reflects reality correctly. Because it reflects the actual character of the solar system, which is independent of man.

The Process of Cognition

Reflection of the objective world in man’s consciousness should not be understood metaphysically as a single act. Cognition is a process with many aspects and comprises distinct, though interconnected stages. Describing it, Lenin wrote:

“From live contemplation to abstract thinking and from that to practice—such is the dialectical process of cognising the truth, of cognising objective reality.”48

As we have already said, knowledge is acquired by man not so much through a pas-sive perception of his environment, as in the process of active practical relations to things. It is practice, which connects man directly with the outer world, that gives rise to various sensations, constituting the point of departure in the cognitive activity of the in-dividual and in the history of human cognition generally. To sum up, the first stage of cognition consists of sensations.

Sensations Are Images of Things and of Their Properties

Since, in the final analysis, all knowledge proceeds from sensations, the question of its truth depends primarily on whether or not our sensations are truthful and whether they can faithfully reflect material things and their properties. The Marxist theory of knowledge, based as it is upon the fundamental principles of dialectical materialism,

answers that question in the affirmative. There is an objectively true content in every act of human cognition, beginning with sensation. Man’s sensations, like his perceptions and notions, are reflections or images of things and their properties.

There are, however, philosophers and natural scientists who deny this.

In the middle of the nineteenth century the well-known German physiologist, Jo-hann Müller, while investigating the mechanism of our sense organs, showed that, for example, the sensation of light could be caused not only by the light rays, but also by excitation of the visual nerve by an electric current, mechanical irritants, etc. On this basis, Müller drew the mistaken conclusion that our sensations conveyed no more than the state of the corresponding sense organs and told us nothing about things and their properties outside us. Müller’s doctrine became known as “physiological idealism”.

Another prominent German nineteenth-century scientist, Hermann Helmholtz, also expressed mistrust of the perceptions of the sense organs.

Those who share the viewpoint of these scientists consider that sensations are not images but merely conventional signs, symbols, hieroglyphics, which denote a phe-nomenon, which point to it, but do not reflect its objective nature. This point of view turns sensations into an insuperable barrier that shuts man off from the outer world, rather than a bridge that connects him with it. From this point of view cognition of things is impossible. What is more, this agnostic viewpoint is liable to lead to a denial of the objective existence of things, inasmuch as objective reality by no means necessarily corresponds to the conventional sign, or symbol. In the history of philosophy the road to subjective idealism lay through just this denial that sensations are the reflection of the objective properties of things. But this denial contradicts the experience of mankind and the facts of science.

A study of the evolution of the animal world shows that the sense organs of animals, and later those of man, developed and improved in the process of the interaction of the body and its environment. In the course of long evolution the sense organs became adapted to the external world in such a way as to be a good guide to surrounding condi-tions. Lenin wrote that “man could never have adapted himself biologically to the envi-ronment if his sensations had not given him an objectively correct presentation of that environment.”49 If sensations did not give us a more or less true knowledge of things and their properties, thinking could not be true either, because it springs from sensations and is based upon them. Then there would be no true knowledge at all, man would be in a world of phantoms and illusions, and his life would be impossible.

There is, of course, also a subjective element in sensations, because they are linked with the activities of the sense organs and man’s nervous system, with his mind. No im-age can be identical with the thing it reflects. It always conveys its features more or less approximately and incompletely. But sensations are not merely subjective states of the human mind. “Sensation is a subjective image of the objective world” (Lenin).50

Hence, sensations contain objective truth. Such is the only scientific, materialist point of view. “To be a materialist,” Lenin emphasised, “is to acknowledge objective truth, which is revealed to us by our sense organs.”51

Sensations, perceptions and notions acquired through sense experience form the ba-sis of knowledge, its point of departure. But cognition does not stop there. It goes far-ther, rising to the level of abstract thought.

Thought Is Cognition of the Essence of Phenomena

The Marxist theory of knowledge recognises the qualitative difference between these two levels. Far from divorcing them, however, it perceives their dialectical inter-connection.

Although it is the highest form of cognitive activity, thought is also present at the level of sensation. When man feels, he already thinks, becomes conscious of the results of his sense-perceptions, and comprehends what he perceives. At the same time, it is only sensations and perceptions that provide thinking with the empirical material that constitutes the foundation of all our knowledge.

The possibilities of sense cognition are limited. The cognition of phenomena that are out of the reach of sensation occurs through abstract thought. We cannot, for example, directly perceive through our senses, or visualise, the velocity of light, which is 300,000 km per sec. But that velocity exists, and we can think of it readily. What is more, we can measure it with instruments on the basis of theoretical calculations. We are unable to perceive a duration of a few hundred-millionths of a second, which is the life span of such elementary particles as some of the mesons. But we can think it. Mathematics deals continually both with infinite and infinitesimal quantities, which cannot be visualised.

Elementary generalisations are made even at the level of sense cognition. We per-ceive common properties, e.g., the whiteness of such different bodies as snow, salt, sugar, foam, paper, etc. But sense knowledge does not reveal the inner nature of phe-nomena, their necessary relations and connections. To discover the laws that govern phenomena, to penetrate to their essence, i.e., to attain a scientific knowledge of the world around, us, we require a qualitatively different cognitive activity—thinking, which takes the form of concepts, judgements, inferences, hypotheses, and theories.

No law as such is perceived by the senses. People watched bodies fall to earth in-numerable times, but it required considerable scientific progress and the genius of New-ton to discover and formulate the law of gravity, which embraced all those innumerable facts and was the basis of them.

We know that sensations caused by the direct effect of things on our sense organs are subjective images of the objective world and, therefore, contain objective truth. Can the same be said of the products of thought, which are abstract concepts not immediately connected with material things? Yes, of course.

Sensations and perceptions always deal with individual, concrete facts, with the ex-ternal aspect of phenomena. They reflect all this with a greater or lesser degree of accu-racy. Abstract concepts are also reflections of reality containing objective truth. But ab-stract concepts reflect the deeper, internal “stratum” of reality. They do not confine themselves to the external sensory aspect of phenomena, but specify the essential rela-tions and connections that lie at their root. The senses show us, for example, that thunder

and lightning are followed by a downpour. This knowledge may suffice for certain prac-tical acts, such as seeking shelter when a thunderstorm breaks out. But it is entirely in-sufficient to explain the phenomena observed in a thunderstorm. That involves thinking in abstract concepts.

The relations between the capitalist and the worker may take the most diverse forms in particular cases—from open coercion to external loyalty, democracy and friendliness. But the essence of the relation of the capitalist to the worker will always be the same—that of exploitation. A description of various concrete facts and incidents is insufficient to reveal this true essence of class relations, which requires a deep theoretical analysis exposing the nature of capitalism and involves abstract concepts adequate to express its laws.

Lenin wrote that “thinking which rises from the concrete to the abstract, does not depart... from truth, but approaches truth. Abstraction of matter, a law of nature, abstrac-tion of value, etc., in a word, all scientific (correct, serious, not flighty) abstractions re-flect nature more deeply, more correctly, more fully.”52  

The power of thought lies in its capacity for abstraction, its ability to exclude par-ticulars and to reach generalisations expressing the main and most essential thing in phenomena.

The power of thought lies in its capacity to go beyond the bounds of the immediate moment, to understand past developments, and to foresee those of the future by means of the objective laws that it has discovered. Thought is an active process—a process of creating concepts and operating with them. But thought and its products (concepts) are connected with the objective world not directly, but indirectly through practical activi-ties and sensations. The advantage of concepts is in that they are not tied to particular sense-facts, and are relatively independent of them. Owing to this, thought is capable of a comprehensive study and analysis of phenomena, of an infinite approximation to con-crete reality, of a more and more precise reflection of the world.

But in so doing there is always the danger of thought ignoring reality, of groundless fantasy and of the process of thought being converted into something self-contained, into an end in itself. That is the path to idealism.

The reliable antidote to this is the link with practice, with life, with production, with the experience of the people. Genuine science advances because it always returns to sense-experience, to practice, however high the theoretical thinking of the scientist may soar. The continuous interaction of practice, experiment, and theoretical thought is the guarantee of the successful advance of science.

It is through the joint work of his hands and brain that man was able to discover nu-merous laws of nature, to understand them thoroughly and to become the master of na-ture and its powerful forces.

Infinite Cognition of the Infinite World

Human cognition as a whole is a developing, endlessly continuing process.

The objective world which surrounds man is infinite. It changes ceaselessly and de-

velops; it gives rise endlessly to a multitude of new forms. However deeply cognition may penetrate into the expanse of the universe, it will always have an inexhaustible field for new research and generalisation, for discovering new laws and investigating still more essential, profound and universal connections.

Not one of the sciences at man’s disposal has yet fully elucidated all the phenomena and all the regularities in its field, and will never be able to do so owing to the infinite character of nature. To cognise the world completely would, as Engels said, be the mira-cle of counting infinity. It is just as impossible to exhaust all nature through cognition as it is to count an infinity of numbers.

Cognition is infinite not only because the object of cognition—nature and society—is infinitely diverse, but also because cognition itself has no limits. The progressive de-velopment of production and social relations confronts science continuously with new technical and theoretical problems, and creates new requirements. Man's urge for knowledge knows no bounds. Each newly discovered truth opens new horizons to man and raises new questions, prompting further penetration into the object of cognition and the improvement of earlier knowledge.

The doctrine of dialectical materialism on the inexhaustibility of the world and the infinity of knowledge is hostile to all agnosticism. Dialectical materialism recognises the historical limitations of knowledge in each epoch, but it firmly rejects the false notion of the existence of an absolute boundary that science cannot cross.

Man’s cognition is all-powerful. It has no bounds, no limits. But this all-powerful cognition is acquired by individuals, whose potentialities are limited by their abilities, by the level of knowledge achieved, the existing technical facilities, etc.

This contradiction between the limited cognitive possibilities of the individual and the essentially infinite nature of knowledge is overcome in the course of the succession of generations and by the collective labour of mankind at each moment of its existence. Human thought “exists only as the individual thought of many milliards of past, present and future men”,53 said Engels.

Scientific truths do not arise at once in a finished form, but take shape gradually as a result of the long process of scientific development and the accumulation of knowledge by many generations of people. “Cognition is the eternal, endless approach of thought to the object. The reflection of nature in man’s thought should not be conceived as being ‘dead’, as being ‘abstract’, without movement, without contradictions, but as in an eter-nal process of movement, the inception of contradictions and their solution.”54

Absolute and Relative Truth

At each given historical moment the knowledge achieved by science is somewhat incomplete, unaccomplished. Progress in the cognition of truth consists in gradually eliminating and diminishing this incompleteness, while the accuracy and fullness of the reflection of phenomena and laws of nature constantly increase.

One must distinguish between deliberate lies, such as are often used by the enemies of scientific progress, and mistakes or misconceptions arising in the process of cognition

owing to objective causes: the inadequate general level of knowledge in a given field, the imperfection of technical devices used in scientific research, etc. The dialectical con-tradictoriness of knowledge is also demonstrated by truth often developing side by side with error, and it happens sometimes that one-sided, or even incorrect, theories serve as a form of the development of truth.

During the nineteenth century, physics held to the wave theory of light. Early in the twentieth century it was found that the wave theory of light was one-sided and inade-quate, since light possessed both an undulatory and corpuscular nature. However, the one-sided wave theory enabled scientists to make a large number of important discover-ies and to explain numerous optical phenomena.

Hegel’s development of the dialectical method on a false, idealistic foundation may serve as an example of truth developing in the form of a mistaken theory.

The incompleteness and imperfection of human knowledge and of the truths accu-mulated by man is usually described as the relativity of knowledge. Relative truth is im-perfect, incomplete truth.

But if we were to stop at this point, with the affirmation of the relativity of human knowledge, and did not go on to the question of absolute truth, we should be making the mistake often committed by many contemporary physicists, which is adroitly used by idealist philosophers for their own ends. They see in human knowledge only relativity, weakness and imperfection, and thus arrive at the denial of objective truth, at relativism and agnosticism. Any sophistry or false conception can be justified from the point of view of such one-sided relativism, because it regards everything as relative and nothing as absolute.

Lenin said that materialist dialectics recognises the relativity of all our knowledge; however, it does not do so “in the sense of denying objective truth, but in the sense that the limits of approximation of our knowledge to this truth are historically conditional”.55

In our always relative knowledge there is an objectively true content which is re-tained in the process of cognition and serves as a basis for the further development of knowledge. This intransient content in the relative truths of human knowledge is termed its absolutely true content or, simply, absolute truth.

The recognition of absolute truth proceeds from the recognition of objective truth. Indeed, if our knowledge reflects objective reality, then, in spite of inevitable inaccura-cies and miscalculations, it must contain something that has an unqualified, absolute meaning. Lenin pointed out that “to acknowledge objective truth, i. e., truth not depend-ent upon man and mankind, is, in one way or another, to recognise absolute truth.”56

The materialist philosophers of ancient Greece were the first to say that life origi-nated from lifeless matter and that man originated from animals. Thus, in the opinion of Anaximander (6th century C.) the first living beings took shape out of sea slime and man originated from fish. The progress of science showed that the notions of the ancient Greek philosophers on the origin of life and man were very naive and incorrect. Yet, in spite of this, there was an element of absolute truth in their hypotheses, viz., the idea of the natural origin of life and man, which science has retained and confirmed.

Its recognition of absolute truth separates dialectical materialism from the views of the agnostics and relativists, who refuse to see the power of human knowledge, its all-conquering power, which no secrets of nature are able to withstand.

It is often said that human knowledge is in possession of very few absolute truths and that these are confined to trivialities, i.e., to universally known propositions. For example, such propositions as “twice two is four” or “the Volga flows into the Caspian Sea” are absolute, final truths, but, some may say, these truths are of no special value.

It may be argued, however, that in actual fact human knowledge contains a profu-sion of extremely important, absolutely true propositions, which the further progress of science will not modify. Such, for example, is the proposition of philosophical material-ism about the priority of matter and the secondary nature of consciousness. The proposi-tion that society cannot exist and develop without producing material values is an abso-lutely true proposition. Darwin’s idea of the evolution of organic species and man’s ori-gin from animals is an absolute truth.

Such absolute truths are contained in the theories and laws of science and man is guided by them in his practical and theoretical activities.

Dialectical materialism, however, which views cognition as a process, has the same approach to absolute truth. By absolute truths, Marxist philosophy does not only mean individual final truths, such as “Napoleon died on May 5, 1821”. It imparts a broader meaning to the notion of absolute truth. Absolute truth is the constantly expanding abso-lutely true content of relatively true knowledge. It is the process of an ever fuller, deeper and more accurate reflection of the objective world.

The Dialectical Unity of Absolute and Relative Truth

Everywhere in the history of science we see that there is absolutely true content in what were relative truths as originally formulated. But they also have a content that is subsequently discarded as erroneous. We see how the absolutely true content expands and grows as truth develops, while the element of error continually decreases. We see how relative truth constantly approximates to absolute truth. We see how absolute hu-man knowledge develops out of the sum of relative truths.

“Human thought by its nature,” Lenin says, “is capable of giving, and does give, ab-solute truth, which is compounded of a sum total of relative truths. Each step in the de-velopment of science adds new grains to the sum of absolute truth, but the limits of the truth of each scientific proposition are relative, now expanding, now shrinking with the growth of knowledge.”57

This dialectical conception of absolute truth is highly important in combating meta-physics and dogmatism in science. Very many philosophers and scientists were inclined to declare that the knowledge they had obtained was eternal, consummate, absolute truth that needed neither further development nor further verification. Hegel, for example, declared the entire content of his idealist philosophical system to be absolute and eternal truth, thus contradicting his own dialectical method. In relation to knowledge metaphys-ics consists in the failure to understand that absolute truth also develops and is a process.

Marx and Engels developed dialectical materialism—a new form of materialism that was free from the defects of the previous metaphysical materialism. But this did not mean that Marx and Engels had consummated the development of philosophy and ex-hausted all philosophical truths. Lenin said: “We do not regard Marxist theory as some-thing completed and inviolable; on the contrary, we are convinced that it has only laid the corner-stone of the science which socialists must further advance in all directions if they wish to keep pace with life.”58

Does this also apply to the laws and principles of Marxist dialectics? Yes, of course. Dialectics is a science, and as such it is bound to develop. The comprehension of the general laws and categories of dialectics, like that of the laws of other sciences, is bound to deepen with the modifications of practice and the development of science. It is bound to be enriched by new experience, new knowledge. The general laws of dialectics oper-ate differently in different historical conditions. For this reason the knowledge of the laws of dialectics is enriched by the investigation of these new conditions.

Yet the development of dialectics as a science cannot lead to nullifying the basic propositions that were developed in the course of the long and arduous history of human thought; it means only a progressively deeper and thorough comprehension of them.

Truth Is Concrete

The truths acquired by human cognition should not be viewed abstractly, or in isola-tion from life, but in their connection with concrete conditions. That is the meaning of a very important thesis of materialist dialectics, viz., that there is no abstract truth, truth is concrete.

Is the Euclidian geometry, which we learn in school, true? It is unquestionably true, but only in relation to the dimensions that we usually deal with. It becomes inadequate in relation to both the microcosm and inter-galactic space, where we have to apply non-Euclidian geometries, such as Riemann’s geometry, for example.

Speaking of bourgeois democracy, Lenin noted that it was an immense advance compared with the feudal system. A democratic republic and universal suffrage under the conditions of capitalist society gave the proletariat an opportunity of establishing its own economic and political organisations, through which it waged a methodical struggle against capitalism. “There was nothing even approximately resembling this among the peasant serfs, not to speak of the slaves.”59

At the same time, Lenin vigorously exposed the limitations and narrowness of bour-geois democracy compared with Soviet democracy — a democracy for the vast majority of the people, springing from the creative revolutionary initiative of the masses.

The dialectical materialist thesis of the concrete nature of truth warns us against general formulas and ready-made schemes in the treatment of facts. Dialectics teaches us to pay regard to facts, to take account of the concrete interrelations of phenomena, to analyse changed conditions and to adapt our course of action to them. Dialectics requires that general principles and laws should be applied in conformity with the concrete situa-tion. This is the approach that corresponds to the requirements of practice.

Importance of the Marxist Theory of Truth for Science and Practice

The teaching of materialist dialectics on absolute and relative truth and the concrete nature of truth is of immense importance for science and practice. In his analysis of the development of physics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Lenin pointed out that the idealist mistakes made by many scientists of that period were due to their ignorance of the dialectics of the cognitive process. One who thinks along metaphysical lines assumes that truth is either absolute or totally non-existent. For a long time scien-tists thought that the theories of classical physics were absolute truths. But when new discoveries upset the old scientific notions and revealed the inadequacy of previous theories, some scientists lost their bearings. It seemed to them that there was no absolute or objective truth at all, that all our knowledge was merely relative, conditional, subjec-tive. This relativist attitude caused them to fall victim to idealist philosophy.

Knowledge of dialectics not only enables scientists to avoid idealist errors, it enables them to overcome the difficulties confronting science.

The dialectical conception of absolute and relative truth shows the proper approach to errors committed in the process of cognition, in science. The truth does not arise ready-made. Cognition is a difficult and complex process, leaving room for mistakes, misconceptions, and one-sided theories and views. But the ideas advanced by science are gradually sifted through the sieve of criticism, tempered in the furnace of practice, and all the false elements in them are cast off or burnt away, while the objectively true, absolute content remains and becomes a permanent asset to science.

No one can claim to be absolutely infallible. But although errors are inevitable in man’s cognitive activities, this does not at all mean that each concrete act of cognition by each individual scientist must necessarily involve mistakes. A scientist must do his best to avoid making mistakes in research. The way to avoid mistakes is through master-ing the dialectical method of scientific research, maintaining close contact with practice, making a thorough all-round study of the matter in hand, and collectively discussing the problems and their suggested solutions, etc.

No one is guaranteed against making mistakes. What matters is, firstly, to make no gross errors and, secondly, not to persist in an error when it has been established as such.

Criticism and self-criticism is the force that reduces the possibility of mistakes both in cognition and in practical activity, and reveals them when they occur. The battle of opinions in science, a critical attitude to one’s own scientific effort and a heedful ap-proach to the criticism of others — these are conditions for the normal work of every scientist. Ignoring or suppressing criticism in any way is extremely harmful to the scien-tist himself, and to science.

The dialectical conception of truth helps, too, in combating dogmatism and revision-ism, which are hostile to Marxism and ignore the teaching of dialectical materialism on relative and concrete truth, though they may swear allegiance to it. Dogmatism views theoretical propositions as absolute, universal truths that can be applied equally in all cases, regardless of the concrete situation and the emergence of new phenomena. Revi-sionism, on the other hand, as far as its methodology is concerned, adopts an extreme

relativism and attributes no more than a relative character to every truth, disowning the fundamental principles of Marxism, which constitute its revolutionary essence.

Marxist dialectics exposes the metaphysical faults of both dogmatism and revision-ism. By recognising the relative nature of our knowledge, dialectics prevents theoretical formulae from becoming ossified and turning into dogma. It requires a concrete applica-tion for all general truths. At the same time, dialectics proceeds from the fact that grains of absolute truth are formed and accumulated in the process of cognition. This applies, among other things, to the key principles of Marxist-Leninist theory. They can and should be developed, enriched and given concrete form in accordance with the data of social practice and science, but they must not be discarded because that would be a be-trayal of truth.

4. Practice Is the Criterion of Truth

To be serviceable to society, an idea or scientific theory must be true. To establish whether a theory is true or false, it has to be compared with reality.

But how is this to be done? This problem was rightly considered a very difficult one and for a long time philosophers could not find the correct approach to it. Marx alone succeeded in solving it. He realised the fallacy of trying to find a criterion of truth in consciousness alone, and he established that man could prove the truth, the power of his thought, solely in carrying out his practical activities.

Indeed, man has no other means of establishing the truth of his knowledge except through practice. It is his practical activities — the basis and ultimate goal of cogni-tion—that constitute the supreme yardstick with which to determine whether knowledge that has been gained is true or not. Practice is the criterion of truth.

Dialectical materialism defines practice as a process in which man, a material being, acts upon his material environment. Practice is the entire activity of man in altering the world, and primarily his productive and social and revolutionary activity.

In industrial production, the most widespread form of practically verifying scientific and technological ideas is factory tests and the mass use of machines, instruments and technological processes.

In scientific research, practice often takes the form of experiment, i. e., man’s active interference in natural phenomena, when on the strength of definite theoretical assump-tions conditions are created artificially for reproducing or, reversely, terminating the phenomenon in question.

Where an immediate influence on the object under study is impossible, as in the case of a star, our conceptions about it are tested by comparing them with the results of all astronomical observations and with the data of related fields of science (e.g., physics).

Sometimes new ideas may be tested indirectly, i.e., by comparing them with scien-tific theories and laws that have already acquired the nature of objective truth. In many cases, the systematic knowledge already possessed by mankind enables some ideas to be appraised without new experiments. If an inventor, for example, were to design a new “perpetual motion” machine, no scientific institution in the world would bother to con-

struct a model of it for a practical test, or even to examine it. The idea of a “perpetual motion” machine is contrary to the fundamental laws of nature; its falsehood is obvious and needs no new test. This does not mean that the criterion of practice is lacking in this case. No, it is there, but applied indirectly rather than directly, through already tested and confirmed truths, through the experience of past generations of scientists.

Practice is also the criterion of truth in the social sciences. Practice here does not mean the actions of individuals but the activities of large social groups, classes or par-ties. Personal practical experience, which is inevitably narrow and limited, must not be counterposed to the collective experience of a class or party. The criterion of the truth of social theories can only be the productive and practical revolutionary activities of the masses.

The Great October Socialist Revolution was a brilliant confirmation of Marx’s analysis of the capitalist mode of production and of his conclusion that capitalism would inevitably perish and be replaced by the socialist mode of production.

In making practice the criterion of truth, dialectical materialism does not at all ig-nore the significance of thought. Marx wrote that all the secrets of theory “find their ra-tional solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice”.60 Thought plays a most important part in establishing the truth of ideas and theories. Practice as the criterion of truth is not an instrument whose indicator automatically points to “true” or “false”. In his practice, man achieves a certain result, the significance of which has still to be comprehended and elucidated.

For example, it is not always possible to conclude that the design of some new model or invention is worthless because the first test was a failure. The result obtained can be correctly appraised only by carefully analysing the underlying idea of the inven-tion and all the conditions for its realisation.

Practice does not stand still, it continually changes, develops and advances. The sphere of man’s activities and the possibilities of his penetration into the surrounding world grow ever larger. It may take considerable time for practice to be able to confirm an idea. But a true idea is bound to be confirmed sooner or later. The idea that the earth was round, for example, was long considered untrue and regarded as heretical, until Ma-gellan’s voyage round the world in 1519-22 removed all doubt on that score once and for all.

Practice grows and develops. Hence, it too can contain both old and new elements. That is why not all practice is a reliable criterion of truth. Conservative-minded people also frequently refer to practice in combating new ideas. But they refer to outdated prac-tice. Progressive theory rests on progressive practice, for it is this that provides data for appraising the truth of a theory and new material for science, rouses thought and ad-vances it.

Just as relative truth has a certain absolute content, so also practice, although histori-cally limited at any given time, has also a permanent significance, being a constant and indispensable form of man’s connection with the objective world.

Pragmatism Is the “Philosophy of Advantageousness”

A philosophical trend known as “pragmatism” (from the Greek pragma—business, a thing done) is widespread in the capitalist countries, particularly the U.S.A. Its founder was the eminent American logician Charles Pierce, who devised a complicated and con-tradictory idealist philosophical system in which he tried to combine certain scientific ideas with the interests of religion. The doctrine of pragmatism, which he put forward in the seventies of the last century, was part of this system. Twenty years later the well-known American psychologist William James rescued this doctrine from oblivion, adapted it to the intellectual horizon of the American businessman and philistine, and put it on the “idea market”, where it speedily came into fashion and practically became the official philosophy of the American way of life.

Some bourgeois philosophers try to liken pragmatism to Marxism on the ground that pragmatism continuously harps on action and relies on the practical test of ideas and theories. The revisionists, too, joined bourgeois propaganda in slandering Marxists and accusing them of pragmatism. In reality, Marxism has nothing in common with pragma-tism, which is a false idealist doctrine that has been adopted as a weapon by the ideolo-gists of the imperialist bourgeoisie. While speaking of practice and pretending to be a “philosophy of action”, pragmatism advances a bourgeois-individualistic, subjective conception of practice based on the unscientific notion that the world is irrational and unknowable.

The leitmotiv of pragmatic philosophy is the idea that man has to act in a world about which he can have no trustworthy knowledge. From the viewpoint of pragmatism, the accessible world is a chaos of sensations and emotions devoid of inner unity and be-yond rational cognition. “We may be in the universe,” William James wrote, “as dogs and cats are in our libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling of the meaning of it all.”61

But where is man to take guidance if he is deprived of knowledge? Instead of knowledge, James suggests instinctive, irrational belief— above all religious faith, which rules out logical thought.

Other pragmatists, headed by John Dewey, recommend “instrumental” or “experi-mental logic”, which amounts essentially to searching by the method of trial and error for the type of behaviour most advantageous in a given situation. From the pragmatic point of view thought does not supply knowledge, but merely the ability to find a way out of a difficulty and to achieve success.

Accordingly, the pragmatists assert that scientific concepts, laws and theories are not reflections or copies of objective reality, but merely “guides to action”, “tools” or “in-struments” for the realisation of ends. If an idea or theory “works” and promotes suc-cess, it is good, i.e., true; if not, it is bad, i.e., false.

The pragmatists consider religious dogma highly useful, and hence true. They apply the principle of advantage not only to knowledge, but also to all forms of intellectual and practical activity. The old Jesuitical motto that “the end justifies the means” expresses, indeed, the essence of their approach to life.

The pragmatists deny the objective reality of the surrounding world and regard it as the raw and indefinite material of “experience” that may adopt any form to suit man’s purpose. The world, they say, is “plastic’"; it is always what we make of it and “yields readily to human coercion”. There are no objective, “stubborn” facts, they say, there are only the interpretations that we give them. All reality is thus made completely dependent upon the subject and his will.

Consequently, the philosophy of pragmatism is based on a distorted conception of practice. It greatly exaggerates the active, volitional character of human activity and makes it the basis of reality. Contrary to the assertions of the pragmatists, however, man’s activity does not create the external world. It only changes and transforms reality, which exists independently of man. To be successful, conscious human activity must be based on a knowledge of the objective properties of things and of the laws that govern them. Action does not exclude knowledge, as the pragmatists assert, but presupposes it. Naturally, there may be isolated cases when a partial, temporary success may be achieved by acting upon a false idea. But it is usually a short-lived success—as short-lived as the “success” of Hitlerism, which rested on a spurious fascist mythology.

By depicting the world as “plastic”, absolutely pliable reality, the philosophy of pragmatism encourages the false idea that volition, energy and determination to act are capable of achieving any set goal, irrespective of objective conditions and laws.

Pragmatism is, first and foremost, the world outlook of “vigorous money-grabbers”—the U.S. financial magnates and monopolists who regard themselves as om-nipotent masters of the capitalist world. By ignoring objective facts, the idealist philoso-phy of pragmatism fosters adventurist, aggressive tendencies in political thought and provides a theoretical basis for the policy of acting “from positions of strength”. By its failure to recognise the objective difference between truth and falsehood and by identify-ing truth and utility, pragmatism encourages unprincipledness and enables the ideolo-gists of the ruling class to justify every profitable lie, and every criminal act. The justifi-cation of aggression, violence and fraud that follows from the very essence of the prag-matic philosophy suits the interests of the most reactionary imperialist groups. No won-der Mussolini admitted that he had learned much from William James and thought pragmatism “the corner-stone of fascism”.

At the same time, by subordinating all practical and theoretical activities to consid-erations of immediate advantage, pragmatism furthers the development of a subjective, narrowly utilitarian, opportunist approach to life. Applied to the working-class move-ment, it means advocating the policy of petty affairs and the “fight for a farthing”, it means loss of perspective and betrayal of the class interests of the proletariat.

Pragmatism is bitterly hostile to the scientific progressive world outlook.

5. Necessity and Human Freedom

The great importance of Marxist philosophy lies in its equipping the working people with a knowledge of the laws of the development and transformation of the objective world. It is a powerful weapon in the struggle for the liberation of the working people

from all forms of oppression, for the building of a new, free life.

But is human freedom possible? Is man capable of shaping his own fate? These questions have troubled people since ancient times, but no one could give a convincing answer.

Discussing the question of freedom, philosophers arrived at different but always in-correct conclusions.

Some of them adopted the fatalist viewpoint, which denied freedom. Fatalism ex-pounds the eternal predestination of all man’s actions. Religious fatalism (the Moslem faith and Calvinism) declares that man’s will is predetermined by God. The old meta-physical materialists (such as Holbach) spoke of the necessity of nature, which, they al-leged, bound man hand and foot and left him no freedom of action.

Many idealist trends, on the other hand, deny natural necessity, inasmuch as they de-rive the entire world from consciousness, from man’s will. They consider man to be completely free and go so far as to assert absolute absence of law. Such philosophical theories of freedom are representative of indeterminism, of which the “philosophy of existentialism” discussed earlier may serve as an example.

Of the pre-Marxian philosophers, Hegel produced the deepest solution of the prob-lem of freedom and necessity, but he developed it, like all his doctrine, on an idealist foundation. He tried to link freedom and necessity by defining freedom as recognition of necessity. But by necessity he understood the necessary development of the absolute idea, while freedom, according to his doctrine, was realised solely in the realm of the spirit.

The basic fault of the doctrines of Hegel and all other idealists is that they conceive freedom solely as freedom in spirit, in consciousness, totally evading the question of the real conditions of human life. What is more, they speak invariably about freedom of the individual and ignore the question of the emancipation of the masses.

Dialectical materialism provides a scientific solution to the question of the relation of freedom and necessity. While it takes necessity as the basis, materialist dialectics at the same time acknowledges the possibility of human freedom. Man’s true freedom is not an imaginary independence of natural and social laws (no such independence is in fact possible). It lies in knowing these laws and in actions based on that knowledge.

People are not supernatural beings. They cannot overstep the bounds of natural laws any more than they can avoid breathing. Furthermore, people live in society, and cannot be immune from the operation of the laws of social living. They can neither arbitrarily revoke the existing laws of social development, nor introduce new ones.

But people can cognise the laws of nature and society and, knowing the nature and direction of their operation, they can utilise them in their own interests, put them to their own service.

All modern technology which, far from ignoring the laws of nature, is based on the purposeful use of these laws, is proof that they can be used in the service of man.

It is much more difficult for man to master the laws of social life, which for thou-sands of years have ruled him as an alien and hostile force. The working man was en-

slaved by the spontaneous laws of economic life and by the power of the dominant ex-ploiting classes.

Man’s liberation from social, class enslavement, his achievement of freedom, is a long and arduous historical process. It is only in our epoch that it gained momentum and embraced many millions of people roused by the teaching of Marxism-Leninism to the struggle for communism. The building of a communist society will mean a leap for mankind from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom.

In the course of the centuries of human social development, while submitting to ob-jective necessity that lies outside his own will, man has increasingly mastered the ele-mental forces of nature and created the premises for his own social emancipation. This historical process is governed by its own special social laws, distinct from the laws of nature. The study of these laws, which govern the development of human society, forms a special part of Marxist-Leninist philosophy, viz., historical materialism which we shall now deal with.

PART TWO

THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY

CHAPTER 4

THE ESSENCE OF HISTORICAL MATERIALISM

1. A Revolutionary Upheaval in Man’s View of Society

From ancient times men have sought for answers to the questions: are social systems a matter of accident or are they the result of some invisible yet powerful causes? Is it possible to change these systems, to achieve well-being and freedom for all and not only for the minority? If so, how? And who will lead humanity to the achievement of these much-desired aims? And finally, which way is humanity going—towards a golden age of progress or towards stagnation and decline?

Thinkers of all times and all nations have tried to answer these questions. But for many centuries their theories and conceptions were invariably overthrown not only by the criticism of other scholars, but also by the criticism of time, by the whole develop-ment of history. In the field of social studies the path to knowledge has proved particu-larly long and arduous.

The point is that the life of society is a great deal more complex than the develop-ment of nature. Within the limits of our direct observation the phenomena of nature re-cur comparatively uniformly, regularly, and this makes it easier to understand their es-sence. But to trace a similar regularity, a similar recurrence in the life of society is far more difficult. This naturally makes it harder to understand and hinders us in detecting any definite law in its development.

There is another distinction of no less importance. In nature, we have to deal with the operation of impersonal, elemental forces. In the history of society, we are dealing with the actions of people, who are endowed with consciousness and will-power and are always pursuing some kind of aim. At first glance it would appear that in this field the main task is to elucidate the motives that make people act, to find out what aims a cer-tain person has set himself, and this will tell us why he acted in one way and not another. This kind of psychological explanation of the life of society, which was predominant in pre-Marxist sociology and prevails to this day in bourgeois theories of society, is super-ficial and insufficient.

Of course, everyone is guided in his actions by certain motives and pursues certain aims. But first, the question arises why a particular man should have those particular motives and aims, and not others. And secondly, even a superficial acquaintance with history shows that the aims and interests of different people, and, consequently, their actions, have always come into conflict, and that the ultimate result of this conflict—a historical event—is often very different from what any of its individual participants in-tended.

Thus, many of those who took part in the French Revolution of 1789-94 thought that

they were establishing the reign of reason and eternal justice, creating a society based on natural equality and the inalienable rights of man. Very soon, however, it transpired that they were in practice merely clearing the way for the class domination of the bourgeoi-sie. In place of the old inequality—between feudals and serfs—there came a new ine-quality—between the bourgeoisie and the workers.

This contradiction between the conscious activity of each separate individual, on the one hand, and the spontaneity of social development as a whole, on the other, was de-tected long before Marx. But the philosophers were unable to give a correct explanation of it. In their examination of the actual course of history they got no further than conjec-tures about the aims and motives of certain historical figures and thus turned the histori-cal process into a mass of chance occurrences. Those of them who attempted to regard history as a process governed by necessity very soon lapsed into fatalism and began to regard it as a result of the action of some external force (God, the “absolute idea”, “the universal mind”, and so forth) that was supposed to determine men’s actions.

The idealist view of history fostered by the very complexity of social development has been vigorously encouraged by the exploiting classes, who have an interest in con-cealing the true causes of economic and social inequality, the causes responsible for the wealth and power of some and the poverty and lack of rights of others. Thanks to the efforts of these classes, idealist views of society influence people to this day and are widespread in the capitalist countries.

A fundamental revolutionary upheaval in the very approach to the study of social problems was needed in order to explain what it is that conditions people’s ideas, opin-ions and conscious actions. This upheaval became possible only after the establishment of capitalism had laid bare the material economic roots of the class struggle, after the working class had stepped into the historical arena as the first class in history which, as will be shown later, not only does not fear a consistently scientific explanation of soci-ety, but has a direct interest in such an explanation.

Only in these historical circumstances did the way lie open for the scientific achievement of Marx and Engels, who extended dialectical materialism to the study of society and its history and evolved a scientific theory of the general laws of social de-velopment. This theory is historical materialism, the materialist conception of history,

The revolution wrought by Marx and Engels in social science lies primarily in the fact that they proved that there are no mysterious supernatural forces at work in society, and showed that men are themselves the makers of their history. This struck a crushing blow at all mystical views of society and paved the way for understanding history as a natural process not requiring any interference from without.

On the other hand, Marxism proved that people make their history not arbitrarily but on the basis of the objective material conditions they have inherited from past genera-tions. This struck a mortal blow at voluntarism and subjectivism and paved the way for understanding history as a process governed by natural laws. In appraising the signifi-cance of the Marxist theory for the science of society, Lenin wrote that this materialist theory “for the first time made a scientific sociology possible... that only the reduction of

social relations to production relations and of the latter to the level of the productive forces, provided a firm basis for the conception that the development of formations of society is a process of natural history”.62

Marx formulated the initial proposition of historical materialism as follows: “It is not men’s consciousness that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.” In other words, in society, as in nature, be-ing, material life, is primary, is the determining factor in relation to spiritual life, to con-sciousness.

According to Marxism, social consciousness is the sum total of the political and le-gal theories, the religious, philosophical and moral views of a given society; in addition, social consciousness includes the social sciences, art and social psychology (social feel-ings, moods, customs, and so on). Social being, on the other hand, is the material life of society in all its complexity and with all its contradictions.

What exactly is meant by the material life of society, which, as historical material-ism has established, determines the whole face of society, its structure, its views and its institutions?

2. The Mode of Production as the Material Basis of the Life of Society

The primary component of the material life of society is the labour activity which people devote to the production of the necessities and comforts of their life—food, clothes, housing, etc. This activity is an eternal natural necessity, an essential condition on which the very existence of society depends. As Engels says, mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, relig-ion, etc.

The geographical environment, on the one hand, and population, on the other, form the natural material prerequisites for the process of production. However, although these natural material conditions exercise a considerable influence on the course of social de-velopment, either accelerating or delaying it, they do not form the basis of the historical process. Different social systems can exist in one and the same natural environment, and density of population has an unequal effect in various historical circumstances.

Unlike animals, which passively adapt themselves to the external environment, man exercises an active influence on his environment and obtains the material values needful to his life by means of labour, which presupposes the use and making of special instru-ments. Society cannot arbitrarily choose these instruments. Every fresh generation that enters life inherits the instruments of production that have been created by the efforts of previous generations and carries on production with the help of these instruments, only gradually improving and changing them.

Moreover, the development of these instruments follows a definite sequence. Hu-manity could not, for example, pass straight from the stone axe to the atomic power sta-tion. Each new improvement and invention can be made only on the basis of those that have preceded it, and must rest upon gradually accumulated production experience, the labour skills and knowledge of the people of the given country, or of another, more ad-

vanced country.

But the instruments of labour do not function of themselves. The principal part in the process of production is played by human beings, the working people, who are able to create and use these instruments because they possess definite skills and working ex-perience.

The means of production created by society, and above all the instruments of labour by which material wealth is created, and the people carrying out the process of produc-tion on the basis of a certain degree of production experience, constitute the productive forces of society.

The material life of society is not, however, confined to its productive forces.

Production is carried on not by an isolated individual like Robinson Crusoe on his uninhabited island. It always has a social character. In the process of producing material wealth, people, whether they like it or not, find themselves in some way or other linked with one another, and the labour of each producer becomes a part of the social labour.

Even in the early stages of history, people had to unite in order to survive, and with the help of the most primitive instruments to obtain the means of subsistence in combat with wild beasts, the elements, and so on. With the development of the social division of labour this dependence of some people on others increased. Thus, with the appearance of craftsmanship the peasants began to depend on the craftsmen, while the craftsmen depended on each other and the peasants, and so on. The producers thus find themselves linked together in manifold relationships.

These relationships are not confined to the ties between producers engaged in vari-ous branches of production. At a certain stage of development of the productive forces, as we shall see later, the ownership of all or, at any rate, the basic means of production is separated from the direct producers and becomes concentrated in the hands of a few members of society. From then on the producers and the instruments of labour cannot unite and the process of production cannot begin unless the owners of the means of pro-duction and the producers enter into certain relations. The relations that are established between people in the course of production become the relationships between classes—large groups of people, some of whom own the means of production and appropriate for themselves the results of the labour of others who are deprived of the means of produc-tion either completely or partially and are compelled to work for the former. In capitalist society, for example, the capitalist class does not work, but by owning factories, mills and railways, it can appropriate the fruits of the workers’ labour. And the workers, whether they like it or not, can earn a living only by selling their labour-power to the capitalist, since they are deprived of the means of production.

The relationships that people enter into in the course of producing material values were called by Marx and Engels production relations. They are also called economic relations.

The production relations are formed independently of human consciousness, and in this sense have a material character. The character of production relations is determined by the level of development and the character of the productive forces. The economic

relations peculiar to, let us say, slave-owning would be impossible in primitive society. In the first place, the instruments of labour were then so simple to produce (the club, the stone axe) that almost anyone could make them, so that exclusive, private ownership of these instruments was impossible. And secondly, men could not exploit each other be-cause at the level of productivity which then existed they produced only just enough to live on and it was physically impossible to support parasitic classes.

From this example alone it is evident that the relations which people enter into in the process of production, and also the productive forces, exist not isolated from one another but in a definite unity. This unity of the productive forces and production relations is expressed by historical materialism in the concept of the mode of production.

How Production Develops

From the most ancient times to our day social production displays incontestable progress, the constant replacement of one mode of production by another, higher one.

How does this development take place? What moves it forward?

The facts show that the sources of the development of production are to be sought not outside but within that development itself. This was emphasised by Marx, who de-fined history as the “self-developing social state”63 of mankind.

In the process of labour, people act upon external nature and change it. But while in-fluencing nature they at the same time change themselves. They accumulate experience of production, labour skills, and knowledge of the world around them. All this makes it possible to improve the instruments of labour and the ways of using them, to invent new instruments, and to introduce various improvements in the process of production. And each improvement or invention of this kind brings in its train fresh improvements, which sometimes effect a real revolution in the techniques and productivity of labour.

As has been shown already, however, production inevitably presupposes certain re-lations not only between man and nature, but also between the people who take part in production. These relations in their turn exert an influence on the development of the productive forces. They determine the stimuli of the activity of those who are directly engaged in production and of the classes that have command of the instruments of la-bour. On the nature of the production relations depend the economic laws of every mode of production, the living and working conditions of the workers, and other factors influ-encing the development of the productive forces.

Interaction of Productive Forces and Production Relations

The unity of the productive forces and production relations that is expressed in the mode of production in no way excludes the possibility of contradictions between them.

The causes that bring about these contradictions lie in the fact that the two elements of the mode of production—production relations and productive forces—develop in dif-ferent ways. Generally speaking, the techniques, production skills and working experi-ence that people possess—whether it is a matter of history as a whole or of one mode of production taken separately—improve and increase more or less constantly. They are the

most mobile, changing element of production.

As for the production relations, although during the existence of a given mode of production they undergo certain changes, their essential nature remains unchanged. Thus, for example, the state-monopoly capitalism of the present day, as we shall see later, is distinctly different from the capitalism of the nineteenth century. However, the basis of capitalist production relations—private ownership of the instruments and means of production—remains the same and, consequently, the basic laws of capitalism still hold good. Radical changes of production relationships are bound to have the character of a leap, a break in gradualness, which entails the liquidation of the old production rela-tions and their replacement by new ones, i. e., the appearance of a new mode of produc-tion.

Hence it is clear why any harmony between the production relations and the charac-ter of the productive forces in the history of each mode of production can be only tran-sient, temporary, until the socialist epoch is reached. Usually such harmony exists only in the initial stage of development of a mode of production, the stage that is marked by the establishment of new production relations corresponding to the given level of devel-opment of the productive forces. After this, however, the development of technology and the accumulation of labour skills, experience and knowledge do not come to a stop, but are as a rule accelerated, thus graphically demonstrating the positive effect of pro-duction relations on the development of the productive forces. When production rela-tions correspond to these forces, their development proceeds comparatively smoothly and without hindrance.

But the development of the production relations themselves cannot follow con-stantly that of the productive forces. In class society these relations, having once arisen, become consolidated legally and politically in forms of ownership, in laws, in class poli-tics, in the state and other institutions.

With the growth of the productive forces the discrepancy that inevitably arises be-tween them and the production relations eventually develops into a conflict, since the obsolete production relations hinder the further development of the productive forces.

Thus, the relations of feudal society based on the feudal lord’s ownership of land and the personal dependence of the peasants on the feudal lords did at one time corre-spond to the productive forces which society had at its disposal, and therefore aided their development. But in the age when industry (manufacture, followed later by machine industry) began to forge ahead at enormous speed, the situation changed. Serfdom be-came a brake on the growth of industry, which needed workmen who would, on the one hand, be personally free and, on the other, not possess any means of production, and whom hunger would drive to the mills and factories to work under the yoke of the capi-talist. A striking example of the discrepancy between production relations and produc-tive forces is shown by modern capitalism, under the conditions of which the vastly in-creased socialisation of production is constricted within the narrow framework of private capitalist ownership. This discrepancy finds expression in destructive crises, wars, the slowing up of economic development, and so on.

The conflict between production relations and productive forces leads to a sharpen-ing of the contradictions in various spheres of the life of society, and above all between classes, some of which are interested in the old production relations, while others are interested in the new production relations that are maturing.

Sooner or later this conflict is resolved by the revolutionary abolition of the old pro-duction relations and their replacement by new ones corresponding to the character of the productive forces that have grown up, and to the requirements of their further devel-opment. A new mode of production arises. There begins—at a higher level— a new cy-cle of development, which passes through the same stages and, in the case of societies composed of antagonistic classes, again culminates in the destruction of the old and the birth of a new mode of production.

3. Basis and Superstructure

The state of the productive forces determines, as we have seen, the character of men’s production relations, i. e., the economic structure of society. This economic struc-ture in its turn constitutes the basis, the foundation, on which there arise many kinds of social relations, ideas and institutions. The ideas of society (political, legal, philosophi-cal, religious, etc.), the institutions and organisations (state. Church, political parties, etc.) which arise on a given basis, constitute the superstructure of society. The theory of basis and superstructure explains how in the final analysis the mode of production de-termines all aspects of social life and reveals the link between the socio-economic rela-tions and all the other relations of a given society.

Every society known to history has its specific basis and corresponding superstructure.

The social division of society, its class composition, depends on the dominant form of ownership, and this class composition in its turn determines the character of the soci-ety’s political institutions and legal standards. A monarchy is inconceivable under so-cialism, and universal suffrage would be impossible in a slave-owning society. Feudal production relations presuppose, as we shall see later, not only the material but also—in one form or another—the personal dependence of the peasant on the landowner (serf-dom). In feudal law this is expressed in the form of legal inequality between peasants and feudals.

The transition to capitalist production relations brought changes also in legal rela-tions. The substitution of the “discipline of hunger” for direct coercion and personal de-pendence found its juridical expression in the fact that the law formally declared the equality of worker and capitalist. But since bourgeois law is based on the system of pri-vate property the equality it proclaims, in reality, merely strengthens the dominant posi-tion of the property-owning classes. Consequently political and legal relations are de-rived from economic relations and are determined by them.

The same must be said for philosophical, religious, moral, artistic and other social ideas and conceptions. We know, for example, that in primitive society the prisoners who were captured during wars between various tribes were killed and sometimes even eaten. Later on it became customary to turn them into slaves. Why did such a “soften-

ing” of social morals take place? Because the growth of labour productivity had made possible the appropriation of the labour of others, the exploitation of man by man. And it was on this economic basis that the new customs and new views characteristic of the epoch of slavery were born.

The changes in the production relations that occur under socialism bring about a radical change in the views, morals and standards of conduct of the members of society. Under capitalism, speculation is considered just as much a profession as, say, the profes-sion of doctor or barrister, a profession which at best may be controlled by regulations (operating in favour of the large-scale speculators against the smaller ones), but always remains legal, just as the institutions (the stock exchange, for example) which serve this form of activity are legal. It could not be otherwise in a society based on the exploitation of the labour of others, where money is the highest value, the measure of all virtue. Un-der socialism, however, such activities are not only morally condemned by society, they are also punishable by law.

From the fact that the basis determines the superstructure it follows that every change of basis, i. e., of production relations, entails a change of superstructure, radical changes in the sphere of the state, law, political relations, morals and ideology. The su-perstructure in its turn exercises an influence on production relations and can either de-lay or accelerate their replacement. It is quite clear, for example, that the political insti-tutions of the modern bourgeoisie (the state, above all), its law and ideology, are playing an important part in the preservation of capitalist ownership and delaying its long over-due replacement by socialist (public) ownership.

In the superstructure of any class society the ideas and institutions of the ruling class are dominant. But in addition to these the superstructure also includes the ideas and or-ganisations of the oppressed classes, which help these classes to fight for their interests.

Thus, the fact of the division of bourgeois society into workers and capitalists is sooner or later reflected in the consciousness of both classes. The result of this is that alongside the class ideology and organisations of the bourgeoisie—its state, political parties, press, etc.—there also appear and develop in society the ideology and organisa-tions of the working class. The workers sooner or later become conscious of themselves as a special class, they become aware of their common interests and of the incompatibil-ity of these interests with those of the capitalists. Awareness of class interests results in the workers beginning to unite for a joint struggle against the capitalists. The advanced section of the working class unites in a political party; trade unions and other mass or-ganisations of the working people are created. The relations binding the proletarians in a class organisation—political party, trade unions—are relations that must pass through people’s consciousness before becoming established, for the workers join a party con-sciously, out of ideological considerations and of their own free will. Class solidarity develops among the workers and they acquire a morality of their own that is opposed to the ruling bourgeois morality.

Thus, on the real basis of class relations there arises a whole pyramid of different world outlooks, social attitudes, political and other organisations and institutions, every-

thing that goes to make up the concept of the superstructure.

In no society is the combination of its various aspects—the productive forces, econ-omy, politics, ideology, etc.—a matter of accident.

The character of the productive forces and the level of their development predeter-mine the relations into which people enter in the process of production, and these rela-tions form the basis on which a distinct political and ideological superstructure arises. Every society therefore constitutes an integral organism, a so-called socioeconomic for-mation, i. e., a definite historical type of society with its own characteristic mode of pro-duction, basis and superstructure.

The concept of the socio-economic formation is of enormous significance for the whole science of society. It makes it possible to understand why, in spite of an immense variety of concrete details and peculiarities, all peoples travel what is basically the same path. The history of every people is ultimately conditioned by the development of the productive forces, which obeys the same internal laws. The development of society pro-ceeds through the consecutive replacement, according to definite laws, of one socio-economic formation by another. Moreover, a nation living in the conditions of a more advanced formation shows other nations their future just as the latter show that nation its past.

The doctrine of socio-economic formations tears the mystical veils from the history of humanity and makes it comprehensible and know- able. “The chaos and arbitrariness that had previously reigned in the views on history and politics gave way to 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...” (V. I. Lenin).64

4. History as the Development and Change of Socio-Economic Formations

Historical materialism does not impose preconceived patterns on history and does not adapt the events of past and present to fit its own conclusions. On the contrary, it is a scientific generalisation of history.

The conclusion that the history of mankind constitutes a succession of socio-economic formations is based on scientifically verified knowledge of the past. Mankind as a whole has passed through four formations—primitive-communal, slave, feudal, and capitalist—and is now living in the epoch of transition to the next formation,, the com-munist formation, the first phase of which is called socialism.

In what follows, we shall try to describe only the most general features of the vari-ous socio-economic formations and refrain from entering into the details and secondary features in which the history of every country and every epoch abounds.

The Primitive-Communal System

The primitive-communal system was historically the first form of society that arose after man emerged from the animal world, having acquired through a long process of labour the qualities which distinguish him from all other living creatures.

The instruments of labour that mankind possessed in the early stages of the primi-tive-communal system were of the most primitive kind—the club, the stone axe, the flint knife, the stone-tipped spear, followed later by the bow and arrow. The means of subsis-tence were obtained by hunting and collecting natural foodstuffs; much later tillage by means of a hoe made its appearance. The only motive force employed in that epoch was man’s muscular strength.

Production relations between people were in accordance with the level of develop-ment of the productive forces. With the instruments of labour then available it was im-possible by acting in isolation to fight the forces of nature and to secure the means of subsistence. Only labour performed in common (common hunting, fishing and so on) by all the members of the primitive commune, their unity and mutual assistance enabled them to acquire the necessary means of subsistence. Common labour entailed common ownership of the means of production, which constituted the basis of the production re-lations in that epoch. All members of the commune shared the same relationship to the means of production; no one could deprive other members of the commune of the means of production and turn them into their own private property.

Since there was no private property there could be no exploitation of man by man. The primitive instruments of labour, even when employed in common, provided such a meagre subsistence that there was scarcely enough to feed each member of the com-mune. There was simply no surplus that could be taken away from a producer and kept for other members of society. But since there was no exploitation of the labour of others there was also no need for a special apparatus of coercion. The simple functions of ar-ranging the common affairs were either performed collectively or else entrusted to the most respected and experienced members of the commune.

The special features of this formation are thus determined by the low level of pro-duction and the helplessness of man in the face of his formidable natural surroundings. Man’s dependence on nature, which confronted him as something alien and incompre-hensible, was reflected in childishly naive religious ideas. People lived in submission to the power of the commune, clan and tribe, and they blindly followed tradition and cus-tom. During this period co-operation and mutual aid applied only to the members of a given tribe. At times bloody conflicts broke out between the tribes. The primitive-communal system, though free of the deformities and repulsive features later inflicted upon society and people by the domination of the system of exploitation, was by no means a “golden age” for man.

In the course of time the primitive-communal system reached a state of decline. The ultimate causes of the destruction of primitive society lay in the development of the pro-ductive forces. Men gradually mastered the secret of smelting metals. Stone and wooden implements were replaced by those of metal. The plough with a metal coulter, metal axes, bronze and iron tips for spears, arrows, etc., became widespread. Agriculture un-derwent further development. Domestication of animals and their use as draught power for tillage greatly increased the productivity of labour. The development of the produc-tive forces—instruments of labour and production skills and the experience of the

workmen—led to important social changes. Social division of labour arose. Agriculture and animal husbandry and then handicrafts emerged as special kinds of labour activity. Exchange of the products of labour began to develop, first between tribes, then within the commune itself. Gradually the need for common labour practised by the whole commune disappeared. The tribe and the clan broke up into families, each of which be-came an independent economic unit. Labour became split up, private property appeared, and with it the possibility of exploitation, for production had now developed to such an extent that human labour power had begun to produce more than was required for the bare subsistence of the workman.

People were prompted to improve their instruments of labour and develop their skills by necessity, and by the desire to make their work easier and build up stocks against natural disasters. But by changing their instruments of labour they, unwittingly, unconsciously, not even suspecting what social consequences this would have, were paving the way for a profound social revolution—the replacement of the primitive-communal formation by the slave formation. The expanded productive forces of society required new production relations among people.

The Slave System

The foundation of the production relations of this system was private property not only of the means of production, but also of the workmen themselves—of slaves. The slave-owner's property right over the slaves and over all they produced was determined by the level of development of the productive forces of that epoch. This level was suffi-ciently high to give rise to the possibility of exploitation of the working people. But at the same time it was still so low that exploitation of the workmen and appropriation of a part of what they produced could be accomplished only by reducing their consumption to the minimum and leaving them just enough to prevent them from dying of hunger. This could be done only by depriving the exploited of all rights, by reducing them to the position of “speaking tools” and using the cruellest methods of compulsion.

The change of production relations gave rise to a revolution in other spheres of so-cial life, too.

The relations of co-operation and solidarity that had been characteristic of the primi-tive commune were superseded by a relationship involving the domination of one sec-tion of society over the other, by relations of exploitation, oppression and implacable enmity. Society was divided into antagonistic classes—the class of slaveowners and the class of slaves.

The epoch of slavery placed terrible burdens and hardships on the working people. “The lowest interests—base greed, brutal sensuality, sordid avarice, selfish plunder of common possessions—usher in the new, civilised society, class society; the most outra-geous means—theft, rape, deceit and treachery—undermine and topple the old, class-less, gentile society.”65 Thus Engels describes the period of transition from the primi-tive-communal system to that of slavery.

The brutal exploitation of the slaves evoked bitter opposition on their part. In order

to crush this opposition a special apparatus of coercion—the state—had to be created in place of the former clan and tribal institutions of administration. It was the function of the state to protect the property of the slave-owners and to ensure a constant supply of slaves from prisoners of war and also from bankrupt debtors, who were turned into slaves. The birth of the state gave rise to the birth of law, a system of juridical standards and prescriptions expressing the will of the ruling class and protected by the coercive power of the state. New customs and the specific ideology of slave society appeared. Scorn and contempt for physical labour, which now came to be considered an occupa-tion unworthy of a free man, gradually spread among the oppressors; the idea of the ine-quality of men took firm root.

Nevertheless the slave system was an important step forward in human progress. It brought a further development of the social division of labour—between agriculture and town crafts, and also between the various branches of handicrafts. In its turn, the divi-sion of labour entailed specialisation, improvement of tools, and an increase in skills. New branches of agriculture (cultivation of vegetables, fruit, etc.) came into being along with the production of grain crops. Instruments of labour such as the wheeled plough, the harrow and the scythe were invented. In addition to his own muscular power, man began to make extensive use of the strength of animals. The application of the labour of masses of slaves made possible the construction of dams and irrigation systems, roads and seagoing ships, water mains and large city buildings. And the liberation—thanks to the exploitation of the slaves—of a section of the members of society from direct par-ticipation in production created conditions for the development of science and art.

But the time came when the possibilities of progress inherent in the slave mode of production were exhausted, when its production relations turned more and more into fetters hampering the development of the productive forces. Having in their possession cheap slave-labour, the slave-owners made no effort to improve the instruments of pro-duction. What was more, the slave, who was not interested in the results of his labour, could not be entrusted with complex and costly tools. More and more insistently the needs of the development of the productive forces demanded the abolition of the old production relations.

This could only be accomplished by a social revolution. The classes and groups that suffered most from the slave system and therefore had most to gain from its abolition formed the driving force behind that revolution. For the most part, they were slaves and the poorest section of the freemen. As the contradictions in the old mode of production came to a head, the class conflict grew more and more acute. It took all kinds of forms—from deliberate breaking of the instruments of labour to uprisings involving tens of thousands of people. In the end, under the combined blows of the uprisings of the work-ing classes and the attacks of neighbouring barbarian tribes, which the slave-owning state, weakened by internal contradictions and conflicts, could no longer resist, the slave system crumbled. It was replaced by a new formation—feudalism.

The Feudal System

The foundation of the production relations of this system lies in the feudal lords’ ownership of the means of production, primarily of the land (the very concept known as “feudalism"’ is derived from the Latin word “feodum”, the name given to the lands dis-tributed by the king to his vassals in return for their military allegiance). The peasants were personally dependent on the feudals, but were no longer completely their prop-erty.* The feudals had the right to the labour of the peasants, and the latter were obliged to do service for their lords.

• In some countries, for example, Russia, the personal dependence of the peasants on the feudals assumed particularly crude forms, approaching slavery. The landlord could buy and sell peasants, etc.

Feudal society was marked also by the peasants and craftsmen possessing their per-sonal holdings: the peasant serf had his own plot of land, his personal holding, the prod-ucts of which remained at his disposal after his obligations to the feudal lord had been met.

This special character of the production relations opened up new possibilities for the growth of the productive forces. The direct producer now had a definite material interest in the results of his work. Accordingly, he no longer broke or spoiled his tools, but, on the contrary, looked after them carefully and went out of his way to improve them. Ag-riculture made further progress, the three-field system of cultivation was evolved and methods of land fertilisation were more and more widely adopted.

Even more significant successes were achieved by the crafts supplying agricultural instruments, articles of daily life used by feudals and merchants, various kinds of uten-sils, and also weapons and military equipment. The development of crafts and trade led to the rise of towns. In the course of time the towns became powerful economic, politi-cal and cultural centres, the cradle of the new capitalist mode of production.

In the epoch of feudalism, many outstanding discoveries that had a great influence on the course of human history were made, Man learned to produce iron out of pig iron, to build sailing-ships with keels that were capable of making long voyages, to fashion simple optical instruments (spectacles, telescopes); the compass, gunpowder, paper, book-printing, and mechanical clocks were invented. The muscular power of men and animals was supplemented on an ever wider scale by the force of the wind (windmills and sailing-ships) and of falling water (the water-mill and water-wheel were the simple and widespread engines of the Middle Ages).

The replacement of slave production relations by feudal ones brought about changes in the whole life of society.

The principal change was in class structure. The feudals, the owners of the land, be-came the ruling class. The other basic class of feudal society was the serfs. The relations between these two classes were antagonistic in character and based on an irreconcilable opposition of class interests. The forms of exploitation, although slightly milder than those of slavery, were of a very cruel kind. The exploitation of the peasants was still

based on non-economic coercion. The serf experienced the economic stimulus of mate-rial incentive only when working on his own personal holding. The greater part of his time was devoted to working for the feudal lord, for which labour he received no reward whatsoever. Here the main incentive to work was fear of punishment, of physical vio-lence, and also of the danger of losing all his personal property, which could be confis-cated by the landlord.

Compared with that of slave society, the class struggle in feudal society rises to a higher level. Peasant uprisings sometimes embrace large territories. The strength of the peasants’ resistance to the feudals is shown by the peasant wars which shook one coun-try after another: Wat Tyler’s Rebellion in England (14th century), the Jacquerie in France (14th-15th centuries), the Hussite wars in Bohemia (15th century), the Peasant War in Germany (16th century), the Taiping Rebellion in China (19th century), the Sikh uprisings in India (17th-18th centuries), the uprisings of Bolotnikov and Razin (17th century) and of Pugachov (18th century) in Russia, etc.

The political and ideological superstructure of feudal society reflects the forms of exploitation and class struggle peculiar to it. To exploit and hold down the serfs, the feudal state had constantly to resort to armed force, which was at the disposal not only of the central authority but also of each feudal lord, who was the absolute master within his own domains and could condemn and punish at will.

The social and economic inequality of feudal society is embodied in legislation. Classes and their various internal strata constitute estates (feudal society being divided into such estates as the nobility, the clergy, the merchants, and the peasantry). The rela-tions between the estates and within each of them are based on a system of strict subor-dination and personal dependence. The rigidity of social barriers impedes movement from one step of the feudal hierarchy to another. The spiritual life of feudal society is ruled by the Church and religion.

In the course of time, the development of the productive forces comes into contra-diction with the production relations prevailing in feudal society and the political and ideological superstructure determined by them. The peasants fight ever more stubbornly against feudal oppression for the right to dispose freely of the products of their economic activity. They endeavour to free themselves from feudal exactions so as to obtain the means for improving their husbandry, etc. Large manufacturing establishments based on craft techniques but making extensive use of the division of labour and employing the labour of workmen free from personal dependence spring up alongside the small artisan workshops.

The towns—the bulwark of the young bourgeoisie—vigorously developed. Trade assumed ever wider scope. Merchants with the help of the king’s forces seized new markets in overseas countries. The growth of exchange led in its turn to the rapid devel-opment of production, which was also facilitated by the scientific and technical discov-eries of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

In the midst of the feudal system a new, capitalist mode of production is gradually formed. Its development demands the abolition of the feudal order. The bourgeoisie—

the class that now appears as the sponsor of the new mode of production—needs a “free” labour market, i. e., workers who are free both of serf dependence and of prop-erty, and whom hunger will drive to the factories. It needs a national market, the re-moval of tariff and all other barriers created the feudals. It achieves the abolition of the taxes that pay for the upkeep of the court and the numerous retinue of the nobility, and the destruction of the privileges of the estates. Its aim is to be able to control affairs in all spheres of the life of society.

The bourgeoisie rallies round it all the classes and groups that are dissatisfied with the feudal order, from the peasant serfs and lower strata of the towns, who live in condi-tions of poverty, humiliation and oppression, to the advanced scientists and writers, who, regardless of their origin, are stifled by the spiritual tyranny of feudalism and the Church.

Thus begins the epoch of bourgeois revolutions.

The Capitalist System

The production relations of capitalism are based on the private ownership by capital-ists of the means of production. The capitalist class exploits the class of wage-workers, who are free from personal dependence but are compelled to sell their labour-power be-cause they are deprived of the means of production.

The production relations of capitalism opened up broad opportunities for the devel-opment of the productive forces. Large-scale machine production, based on the harness-ing of powerful forces of nature such as steam, and later electricity, and on the wide ap-plication of science to the process of production, comes into being and develops at a rapid pace. Capitalism brings about the division of labour not only within separate coun-tries but between countries themselves, thus creating a world market, and then a world economic system.

And again the changes in the mode of production are followed by changes through-out the life of society.

The capitalist class and the working class become the main classes of society. As be-fore, the relations between them remain antagonistic in character, since they are based on exploitation, on the oppression of the propertyless by the possessors of property. They are the relations of an implacable class struggle. But the methods of exploitation and oppression have radically changed, the prevailing form of compulsion has become economic. The capitalist, as a rule, does not require physical force to make people work for him. Deprived of the means of production, the worker is compelled to do so “volun-tarily”— under threat of death by starvation. The relations of exploitation are veiled by the “free” hire of workers by the master, by the buying and selling of labour-power.

The changed methods of exploitation bring about a change in the methods of politi-cal rule. The transition takes place from the undisguised despotism of previous epochs to more refined forms of rule, to bourgeois democracy. The unlimited power of the heredi-tary monarch gives way to a parliamentary republic (or at least a constitutional monar-chy), suffrage is introduced, citizens are declared to have certain political freedoms and

to be equal before the law. This kind of system is most in accord with the principles of free competition and the free play of economic forces on which capitalism for a long time was based.

All the differences between the political and ideological superstructure of bourgeois society and that of feudalism do not, however, alter the basic fact that it is still a super-structure erected upon relations of private ownership and exploitation. The dominant part of this superstructure is composed of the institutions and ideas of the oppressor class—the bourgeoisie—whose task it is to preserve bourgeois class domination and to ensure the obedience of the exploited masses.

As has been proved today not only in theory but in social practice, the capitalist formation is also temporary, transitory. Increasingly profound antagonisms, above all the contradiction between the social character of production and the private form of ap-propriation, matured and deepened in the very heart of the system.* The only way out of these contradictions is to effect the transition to social ownership of the means of pro-duction, i.e., to socialism.

• Parts three and five of this book are devoted to a special analysis of the capitalist and socialist modes of production.

But, as in the past, the transition to a new mode of production is only possible through a social revolution. The force destined to effect this revolution is generated by capitalism itself in the shape of the working class. Rallying to its side all the working people, the working class overthrows the power of capital and creates a new, socialist system free from the exploitation of man by man.

The Socialist System

The socialist mode of production is based on social ownership of the means of pro-duction. The production relations of socialist society are therefore relations of co-operation and mutual assistance among workers liberated from exploitation. They corre-spond to the character of the productive forces, the social character of production being based on social ownership of the means of production.

Unlike the primitive-communal system, the socialisation of the moans of production occurs now on the basis of tremendously developed productive forces, culture and man’s power over nature. The new system opens up for humanity unlimited opportunities of progress, both in the development of the productive forces and in all other spheres of the life of society.

•     *     *

Such is a very general outline of the basic stages of the development of human soci-ety.

Our knowledge of the past provides us with striking confirmation the scientific va-lidity of the materialist conception of history, the essence of which Marx formulated as follows in the preface to his book A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy:

“In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indis-pensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or—what is but a legal expression for the same thing—with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly trans-formed.”66

5. Laws of History and Man’s Conscious Activity

The development of society is a process governed by laws and subject to a certain historical necessity which does not depend on people’s consciousness. The most impor-tant aim of the social sciences, the prerequisite for the application of objective laws in the interests of society, is to discover the nature of this necessity, to find out what laws determine the development of history and how they operate.

How Social Laws Operate

The Marxist thesis of history as a process governed by laws is directly opposed not only to the subjectivist conceptions of history as an agglomeration of accidents, but also to fatalism, which denies the significance of the conscious activity of men and their abil-ity to influence the course of social development.

The fatalist point of view is organically alien to the materialist conception of history. The laws according to which society develops do not operate automatically, of their own accord. Formed as the result of men’s activity, these laws determine in their turn the general direction of human activity.

This conception of historical necessity fundamentally distinguishes Marxists from opportunists who, for example, from the correct proposition that the victory of socialism is determined by laws arrive at the completely false conclusion that there is no need to fight against capitalism, that it is only necessary to wait for the time when the “laws of history” themselves bring about the replacement of capitalism by socialism.

In fact, historical laws themselves, without people, do not make history. They de-termine the course of history only through the actions, the struggle and the consciously directed efforts of millions of people.

The bourgeois critics of Marxism try to accuse it of a contradiction on the grounds that, on the one hand, Marxists speak of the inevitability of the replacement of capital-

ism by socialism, and on the other create a political party to fight for socialism. It would never occur to anyone, they assert, to create a party for bringing about an eclipse of the sun, if it were already known that such an eclipse was bound to occur.

This argument arises from the failure of bourgeois “critics” to think things out and shows their inability or lack of desire to understand the theory of Marxism and the course of history. Unlike an eclipse of the sun, which takes place without any human participation, the transition from capitalism to socialism is a change of the social order, which takes shape as a result of men’s activity and which cannot change of its own ac-cord. Conscious human activity is itself an indispensable component part of the law-governed movement of society towards socialism. When people say that objective laws will ultimately take effect, they do not mean that certain necessary changes will occur in society by themselves, but that sooner or later social forces interested in the realisation of these laws will arise, and these forces will by their struggle put these laws into effect.

Marxism-Leninism, which regards social laws dialectically, sees that they operate in the form of a dominating tendency of development in given social relations. This means that a law determines the general direction of movement necessarily ensuing from cer-tain objective conditions. But social development is contradictory, antagonistic forces operate in it, and the concrete course of events depends on the actual correlation of class forces, on the policy of the warring classes and many other specific conditions. When Marxists assert that capitalism will inevitably be replaced by socialism, they have in mind the following: the objective laws of capitalist society inevitably lead to the sharp-ening of its economic and political contradictions; this gives rise to a constantly intensi-fying struggle of the working class and all the working people against the capitalist sys-tem, which will culminate in the downfall of capitalism and the triumph of socialism. The struggle of the working class expresses historical necessity, but its success at any particular moment is influenced by many circumstances—the level of class-consciousness and organisation of the working class, the degree of influence of the Marxist parties, the policy of the Socialist Parties, the policy of the bourgeois state and many other things. The effect of some of these factors may be to hasten the ultimate success of the struggle of the working class, the effect of others may be to delay it. In the final analysis, however, the triumph of the working class and the victory of socialism are inevitable. Therefore, by promoting the development of the struggle for emancipation of the working class and all the working people, by encouraging the growth of their politi-cal consciousness and organisation, the Communists and their allies accelerate the natu-ral course of history and alleviate the “birth pains” of the new society.

Thus, while acknowledging the necessity, the law-governed nature of the historical process, Marxist theory at the same time emphasises the decisive role of the active struggle of people, of the progressive classes. “Marxism,” wrote Lenin, “differs from all other socialist theories in the remarkable way it combines complete scientific sobriety in the analysis of the objective state of affairs and the objective course of evolution with the most definite recognition of the importance of the revolutionary energy, the revolu-tionary creative genius and the revolutionary initiative of the masses—and also, of

course, of individuals, groups, organisations and parties that are able to discover and exercise contact with various classes.”67

The Role of Ideas in the Development of Society

The fact that the laws of history are manifested in men’s conscious activity involves recognition of the enormous role of social ideas.

Bourgeois critics of Marxism contend that historical materialism belittles or even wholly denies the role of ideas in history. This is shown, so they think, by the fact that Marxists consider the spiritual life of society a reflection of its material being. But to indicate the source of origin of social ideas certainly does not mean denying or belittling their significance. In fact, Marxism by no means denies the significance of ideas, social ideals, human passions and aspirations, man’s inward motives in general. Communists would contradict themselves if, on the one hand, they tried to give the working people a scientific, communist ideology, a feeling of class solidarity, internationalism, and so on, while on the other, they denied the importance of the subjective factor, i.e., of conscious human activity in history.

Marxism merely states that people’s ideas and sentiments are not the ultimate causes of historical events, that these ideas and sentiments themselves have their roots in the conditions of people’s material life. But Marxism at the same time emphasises that the conditions of material life can stimulate people’s actions only by passing through their consciousness and being reflected there in the form of definite views, ideals, aims, etc.

The history of the social thought of all peoples shows that the origin of particular ideas is closely linked with the requirements of the development of the material life of society. Ideas calling for a change in the social order arise and spread when the devel-opment of the material life of society confronts people with new tasks. These tasks are comprehended by people in one form or another and find expression in corresponding ideas. Consequently, the origin and spread of revolutionary ideas calling for changes in the social order are not something accidental. They are a natural reflection of changes occurring in the material life of society. Engels wrote, for example, that scientific social-ism is, in fact, the reflection in human thought of the conflict between the new produc-tive forces and the capitalist production relations, a reflection in the minds of the work-ers who suffer directly from this conflict.

Having arisen owing to the maturing of certain material requirements of society, ideas in their turn exercise an influence on the course of social development. How does this occur?

Ideas, of course, cannot directly, of their own accord influence the material life of society. They originate and exist in people’s minds, and therefore their influence on the course of social development can make itself felt only when they are embodied in defi-nite deeds and actions, in human conduct. If the ideas correspond to the current needs of social life, sooner or later they reach the consciousness of the broad masses, become their own ideas and weld them into a single mighty army, inspired by a single aim and will. The spontaneous discontent and spontaneous stirring of the masses is transformed

into a conscious and organised struggle. The ideas cease to be merely ideas and are em-bodied in a cause: they unite and organise people and stimulate definite practical ac-tions. That is why Marx said that ideas, when they take possession of the masses, be-come a material force.

The social consciousness of any given society is, of course, a complex and contra-dictory phenomenon. Social being is not homogeneous and contains advanced, revolu-tionary phenomena and tendencies as well as old and reactionary ones. This is reflected also in the social consciousness. On the one hand, it contains old, reactionary ideas ex-pressing the interests of the decaying classes and reflecting social conditions that have already exhausted their possibilities. Such, for example, is the contemporary bourgeois ideology, which strives to perpetuate the decaying capitalist system. On the other hand, we have the rise and increasing influence of the ideology of the advanced, revolutionary classes reflecting the new requirements of social life and urging people forward along the path of progress.

Even when the ruling class has become reactionary, its ideology remains dominant for a long time. In the first place, it rests on force of habit and tradition; secondly, it is actively imposed by the whole machinery of power (above all, the state) and by the nu-merous institutions of the ruling class (the Church, press, and so on), and thus at the same time hinders the spread of new ideas. However, the progressive ideology possesses a decisive advantage in that it reflects the demands of social development. Revolution-ary ideas can be forbidden but they cannot be destroyed. Sooner or later they take pos-session of the masses, spur them to action, and then comes the end of the old system. Thus social ideas are interwoven in the natural course of historical development.

This important role of ideas in history gives them immense value in the struggle for the revolutionary transformation of society. It was not for nothing that Lenin proposed to begin the creation of a Marxist party in Russia with the publication of the newspaper Iskra, i. e., with spreading the revolutionary ideas of Marxism among the workers, and then to reinforce ideological unity by a material organisation, a political party. Until the progressive ideas gain possession of the minds of the advanced classes the tasks with which society is confronted by the development of its material life cannot be accom-plished. The higher the level of revolutionary consciousness, the more widespread revo-lutionary ideas become among the masses, the sooner and easier the problems confront-ing society are solved.

Spontaneity and Consciousness in Social Development

The development of all the social formations preceding socialism took place in such a way that objective laws operated spontaneously, as a blind necessity which hewed a path for itself through the fortuitous, uncoordinated actions of individuals. These objec-tive laws ruled over people and were felt by them to be an alien and incomprehensible force to which they were compelled to submit.

The explanation of this is, of course, not merely that people knew nothing about these objective laws of society. The main cause of the spontaneity of social development

lay in the fact that the basic sphere of social life—material production—was outside the control of society. Private ownership of the instruments and means of production does not allow men to direct consciously the development of society as a whole. Each man acts at his own risk in his own business, in his own workshop, on his own plot of land, while the development of society as a whole takes place spontaneously, outside the con-scious control of men. Split up into hostile classes, society has no common will that could guide its development in the direction dictated by objective laws.

The domination of blind social forces has made a deep impression on men’s minds. It is enough to recall such mystical ideas as the belief that the life and death of men and nations is controlled by fate, by destiny, and also, of course, the whole idea of religion.

But even in an exploiting society, men’s conscious activity begins to play a big part on some occasions. This occurs especially in periods of social revolutions, which pre-suppose that the revolutionary class or, at least, its vanguard, has a conscious concep-tion, even if only a very general one, of its main historical tasks. Although the ideolo-gists of the revolutionary French bourgeoisie of the eighteenth century did not know the full meaning of the economic laws dictating the replacement of feudalism by capitalism, they more or less correctly formulated the practical demands ensuing from these laws (abolition of the personal dependence of peasants and guild restrictions, abolition of the privileges of the nobility, and so on), since the bourgeoisie was vitally interested in these measures. But even here correct slogans were mingled with illusions, and the French representatives of enlightenment would probably be both surprised and disillusioned to see instead of the “rule of reason” for which they sincerely fought, the triumph of ruth-less hard cash.

The proletariat is the first class in history to be liberated of all illusions. It stands in no need of self-deception, for the objective course of history does not contradict, nor will it contradict, its interests and aims, but, on the contrary, will lead to their realisation, because the very aims of the working class are the result of awareness of the require-ments of social development; neither does it need to deceive others, for it does not seek to gain privileges at the cost of other working people—the working class cannot free itself without freeing all the rest of humanity, without destroying all exploitation of man by man.

The conscious application of the laws of history by the working class begins already in the midst of capitalist society, when it acquires a scientific theory, creates a political party, rallies to its side all the working sections of the people and guides the struggle in the direction that is dictated by the objective laws of capitalism itself—toward the transi-tion to socialism. The social revolution of the proletariat is the first revolution in history in which the revolutionary vanguard of the working masses— the Marxist-Leninist party—clearly realises the objective significance of its historical actions and consciously guides the struggle of the masses to achieve a revolutionary change of the existing sys-tem.

Mastery of the Laws of Social Development

But the era of the genuine mastery of social laws begins only with the victory of so-cialism, when, thanks to social ownership of the means of production, people are able to bring under their control production on the scale of the whole society. They can estab-lish scientifically balanced proportions between the various branches of the economy, between consumption and accumulation, between the production of consumer goods and the income of the population, and so on. Concentration of the basic means of production in the hands of socialist society allows it to conduct a planned economy, which ensures its rapid development. At the same time, by putting the fundamental basis of social life—material production, economic relations—under control of their collective intelli-gence, people are enabled consciously to adjust all the other relations between them.

Man’s conscious application of social laws does not abolish their objective charac-ter, but it does enable society to find its bearings easily in a given situation and, taking into account the objective conditions, to make planned progress towards a pre-determined goal, which is elaborated on the basis of knowledge of these laws. In princi-ple, the situation is the same here as in applying the laws of nature. Man cannot abolish the law of gravity, but a knowledge of the laws of aerodynamics enables him to build aircraft which can rise into the air, overcoming the attraction of the earth. In exactly the same way, society cannot arbitrarily establish proportions between the branches of the national economy, but a knowledge of the objective requirements to which these propor-tions should correspond enables it consciously to plan its further development, taking into account its requirements and without fear of crises and disproportion. Thus the ne-cessity that is characteristic of social phenomena becomes a known necessity and is thus converted into the freedom with which society directs its own development.

The consequences of the conscious mastering of the laws of social development are of exceptional importance.

In the first place, people cease to be slaves of these laws; with a knowledge of scien-tific theory they can foresee and prepare in advance for such and such an effect of the laws, and direct it into the channel they require, and so on. In short, people become mas-ters of the relations between them themselves and of the laws that control these rela-tions. Under socialism this finds expression primarily in the activity of the Marxist party and the socialist state in guiding economic life. The deeper their knowledge of the objec-tive laws of socialist economy, the more confidently the party and state act in determin-ing the path of the country’s economic development, the higher the level of the man-agement of the national economy, the fewer disproportions and accidents occur in the course of social production and the more effective the national economic plans become.

Secondly, knowledge of these objective laws makes it possible to gain a clear per-spective of the ultimate aim against the background of the whole course of social devel-opment. Understandably, if one knows what one’s aim is, one can reach it more directly and save both energy and resources. It is not possible to jump over the various stages, but the time taken to pass through them can be reduced, avoiding unnecessary sacrifices and waste of effort and material values.

Thirdly, the harmony between the objective line of development of society and the interests, strivings and desires of the majority of the members of society awakens their creative initiative and inspires them with exceptional energy and determination to reach the desired goal, which tremendously hastens the development of society.

6. Bankruptcy of Bourgeois Sociology

Fear of the Laws of History

While historical materialism reveals the objective laws of social development and points the way to their comprehension and application in the interests of society, bour-geois sociology tries in all kinds of ways either to prove that there are no historical laws, or to distort the nature of these laws.

Bourgeois sociologists did not acquire this attitude by chance. At one time, when the bourgeoisie was a progressive class, its ideologists regarded society as a part of nature and tried to discover the “natural laws” of its development. And although these attempts never ultimately went beyond the limits of the idealist view of history, they had a pro-gressive significance for the development of the social sciences. It is quite a different matter in modern times, when capitalism is nearing its end.

How is one to explain the highly important events that have made world history in modern times, such as the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution, the forma-tion of the world socialist system, the collapse of the colonial system of imperialism, and so on?

To acknowledge them as historically necessary would be to acknowledge the inevi-tability of the downfall of capitalism and the triumph of socialism, i. e., to break away from bourgeois ideology. But that would mean ceasing to be a bourgeois sociologist. Denial of the part played by objective laws in contemporary events inevitably leads, however, to rejection of the idea of historical necessity in general, to abandonment of the scientific investigation of social relations. It is this, above all, that is a characteristic fea-ture of modern bourgeois sociology. Fear of the laws of history, which spell the doom of capitalism, causes bourgeois sociologists to make violent attacks against Marxism-Leninism, and to distort the real situation.

Description Instead of Explanation

A distinguishing mark of modern bourgeois sociology, especially in the U.S.A., is its pronounced descriptive and empirical character. Bourgeois sociologists describe a multitude of the most diverse forms and phenomena of social life, including extremely insignificant ones. They regard this descriptive character as the chief guarantee against the subjectivism and speculation characteristic of sociological theories in the past. We do not put forward any positive programme, they say, we merely set out the data we have obtained, and this is the most that “objective science” can give.

Thus, they pay lip-service to the scientific, objective investigation of social rela-tions. Their “scientific”, attitude, however, means nothing more than a mere description of isolated facts that does not rise to the level of any broad generalisations. This is fre-

quently justified by means of highly plausible references to the complexity of social life, the danger of schematism, and so on. Since there are no two persons in the world who are exactly the same, and no two events have ever occurred in exactly the same way, there cannot be any general laws of historical development, say these sociologists.

But this line of argument is quite unfounded. Of course, every historical event is unique, unrepeatable. There cannot be a second Napoleon, there cannot be a second sui-cide of Hitler. But the uniqueness of any given event or process does not exclude the fact that this individual process contains certain general, repetitive features, the generali-sation of which makes it possible to discover a definite law. No matter how different the concrete circumstances of the origins of the First and Second World Wars may be, sci-entific analysis reveals that they were ultimately both due to the same causes—the sharpening of the contradictions between the imperialist powers due to the unevenness of their economic and political development. Study of the general, repetitive features of social development does not lead to schematism and dogmatism, as bourgeois sociolo-gists assert. On the contrary, it is an essential condition for the investigation of social phenomena, since it provides the scientific basis for comparing them.

Bourgeois sociology, however, fears such generalisations because they inevitably reveal that the capitalist system is doomed. The investigation, however, of isolated de-tails or statistical tendencies divorced from general laws of historical development not only diverts attention from very important social problems but often even obscures them. Moreover, the majority of the investigations made by bourgeois sociologists serve the needs of the ruling class in capitalist society. The bourgeois sociologists conceal glaring class inequality behind average figures of the distribution of the national income and disguise the rule of monopoly capital by calling it the “welfare state”. They regard capitalist society as eternal and immutable and make it their aim to help individuals to “adapt” themselves to the needs of this society. Usually such investigations prove of “practical value” to the capitalists, being of assistance to them in the better organisation of propaganda, advertising and so on. But it would be useless to seek in them a scientific answer to the burning questions of the present day.

The Search for a Generalising Theory

The bulk of the works of modern bourgeois sociologists consists of particular em-pirical investigations. But these sociologists themselves more and more frequently admit that they need some sort of generalising theory for successfully combating Marxism. Almost every month it is triumphantly announced in the West that such a theory has been found. But it soon becomes clear that these sensational “discoveries” are destined to live only for a day.

Some bourgeois sociologists try to make biological data a substitute for historical laws (Social-Darwinism, Malthusianism, racism). Since man, they say, is a part of na-ture, the development of human society must, therefore, obey the same laws as the de-velopment of other biological species. In nature, we have natural selection, the survival of the fittest through the struggle for existence; consequently, the same thing must hap-

pen in society. From this the conclusion is drawn that the class struggle is only a mani-festation of the eternal struggle for existence, and that the system of capitalist exploita-tion, colonial oppression, and so on, are phenomena inherent in the very biological na-ture of man. The strong must always vanquish the weak, and it cannot be otherwise. Thus, the laws of the capitalist jungle are given a biological justification and are pro-claimed inevitable and eternal.

Yet there could be nothing more false than such theories, which form the basis for the most repulsive racist and other kinds of prejudice. “Nothing is easier,” wrote Lenin, “than to tack an ‘energeticist’ or ‘biologico-sociological label on to such phenomena as crises, revolutions, the class struggle and so forth; but neither is there anything more sterile, more scholastic and lifeless than such an occupation.”68 The laws of the devel-opment of human society are special laws, qualitatively different from the laws of na-ture. Unlike animals, who adapt themselves passively to natural conditions, man himself produces the material comforts he needs. For this reason in particular all attempts to ex-plain by the laws of biology the disasters which capitalism brings upon the working people are beneath criticism. Despite the assertions of some bourgeois sociologists, dis-ciples of the reactionary Malthus, about the “over-population” of the earth, mankind has every opportunity of satisfying its growing material requirements. The system of exploi-tation of man by man, and the class struggle that it engenders, are not an expression of the “struggle for existence” but the result of a definite, historically transient, socio-economic system. As the experience of building socialism in the U.S.S.R. and the coun-tries of People’s Democracy has shown, the socialist system destroys both the class ine-quality and the competition that bourgeois sociologists proclaim to be the eternal driving force of progress, not to mention unemployment, which these sociologists regard as a proof of over-population. In exactly the same way, the awakening of the colonial and dependent peoples of the East and their rapid progress in the socio-economic and cul-tural sphere is a fact that makes sheer nonsense of the repulsive “theories” of the “inferi-ority” of the “coloured” peoples, and of the “biological right” of the white race to rule the world.

Sensing the shakiness of biological analogies, the majority of modern bourgeois so-ciologists look to psychology for the key to understanding social life. Moreover modern bourgeois sociology deals with the human mind itself in the spirit of irrationalism, de-picting man not as a conscious being, but as a creature who acts mainly under the influ-ence of unconscious impulses and biological instincts. From the point of view of the Austrian psychiatrist and sociologist, Sigmund Freud, who had a powerful influence on bourgeois sociology, all human behaviour is determined by animal instincts, above all the sexual instinct, and human consciousness forms merely a superstructure on uncon-scious instincts and urges. Hence bourgeois sociologists conclude that it is impossible to exert a conscious influence on social relations, to prevent wars, and so on. Revolutionary movements are declared to be manifestations of “mass hysteria”.

Bourgeois sociology not only slanders the masses who are consciously waging a struggle for democracy and socialism, but also seeks to discredit the very aim of this

struggle by trying to prove that man’s animal nature cannot be changed. We have al-ready seen, however, that the individual psychology of people does not determine their social relations but itself depends on historical conditions. The “savage instincts”, such as greed, the “property instinct”, etc., of which bourgeois sociologists write, are in fact the product of a definite social environment. The remoulding of human consciousness in the course of the socialist revolution in the U.S.S.R. and the People’s Democracies, the appearance of new spiritual traits (collectivism, for example, as opposed to bourgeois individualism) convincingly refute the bourgeois sociologists’ assertion that human na-ture cannot be changed.

As Lenin pointed out, “the expulsion of laws from science means, in practice, drag-ging in the laws of religion”.69 The empiricism prevailing in bourgeois sociology is sup-plemented by the revival of an openly mystical, religious philosophy of history. The well-known British historian, Arnold Toynbee, in his twelve-volume work A Study of History, writes plainly of “the mysterious power of Providence” that directs the course of history. The neo-Thomist philosophers argue seriously about “divine predestination” in the historical process and its “transcendental meaning”. Innumerable Catholic soci-ologists and publicists vigorously discuss the question of the “end of history” and even undertake to forecast when it will take place. All this is obviously anti-Communist in its tendency.

Like idealist philosophy with which it is closely connected, bourgeois sociology will not stand the test of history and cannot give a scientific answer to the problems that life raises. Ideological justification of the rule of the monopolies and of their aggressive, anti-popular policy, justification of exploitation, attempts to discredit social ownership and collectivism—such are the basic ideas of all bourgeois social science today.

7. The Significance of the Materialist Conception of History  for Other Social Sciences and for Social Practice

Historical Materialism and the Social Sciences

From what has been said it is clear what immense importance historical materialism has for the specialised social sciences and for the practical activity of the revolutionary parties of the working class. The social sciences—history, political economy, law, eth-ics, aesthetics and so on—study various aspects of social life or the concrete history of particular countries and peoples. Political economy studies the laws of development of social production and the distribution of material goods; jurisprudence studies the politi-cal superstructure of society, the law and the state; ethics is concerned with the morals of society, and so on. Historical materialism is the science of the general laws of the devel-opment of society. The propositions and conclusions of historical materialism—on the dependence of social consciousness on social being, on changes of the social system in accordance with changes in the productive forces, on the relation between the basis and the superstructure, and so on—formulate the laws of the life of society as a whole. None of the specialised social sciences is concerned with such broad generalisations as histori-cal materialism. Therefore it is the basis of all the social sciences. Historical materialism

does not claim to take the place of the other social sciences; it serves them as a method of cognition and in its turn draws on them in arriving at its generalisations. Knowledge of the general laws revealed by historical materialism makes it possible to understand the development of various aspects of social life, the concrete history of a particular country. None of the social sciences can correctly comprehend its particular field of so-cial life without elucidating that field’s connection with other aspects of the life of soci-ety, without discovering its place among all the phenomena of social development.

At the same time, the materialist conception of history is not a universal key which has only to be applied to any historical situation or phenomenon and its explanation will at once be forthcoming. Equipped with the materialist conception of history, the investi-gator has in his hands an accurate compass that will help him to reach a true understand-ing of historical events. But the events themselves and the conditions that gave rise to them must still be studied in the light of concrete facts. This means that in every case a thorough study must be made of the data, of the historical facts. Only in this way can one discover the internal connection between events and explain each one, so as not only to understand the past and the present but also scientifically to foresee the future.

Scientific Prevision

Bourgeois philosophers and sociologists, who deny that social development pro-ceeds in conformity with objective laws, hold that scientific prevision of the future is impossible on the grounds that the future depends on people’s intentions and desires, which no one can prophesy.

But, as we have seen, the plans and aspirations of the mass of the people are deter-mined by the objective conditions of their life. Therefore, knowledge of the tendencies resulting from the laws of development of contemporary society enables us to foresee the future course of events. After all, the future does not arise out of nothing but merely realises the possibilities inherent in the present.

Of course, knowledge of the laws of development of society makes it possible to foresee only the general direction of historical development but not its details, not its concrete forms. The concrete form and duration of many social processes are shaped under the influence of a multitude of fortuitous circumstances that cannot be foreseen by even the most brilliant mind. But foreseeing the general line of development has im-mense practical significance.

Marx and Engels over a hundred years ago, in the period when capitalism was still in the ascendant, foretold its inevitable decline and downfall as the result of its own in-ternal contradictions. That prophecy is steadily coming true in our time.

Long before the First World War, Engels predicted the possibility of its occurrence and its consequences. He wrote that as a result of the coming world war many monar-chies would topple and crowns would be lying about in dozens, that the mechanism of trade and industry would be thrown into complete confusion, and so on. “One result,” he wrote, “is absolutely certain: universal exhaustion and the creation of conditions for the final victory of the working class.”70 And indeed, as a result of the First World War the

chain of imperialism was snapped at its weakest link—in Russia, where the working class came to power.

More than half a century ago, Lenin foresaw that in connection with the transference of the centre of the world revolutionary movement to the east the Russian proletariat would become the vanguard of the socialist revolution. In the period of the First World War he foresaw the possibility of the victory of socialism at first in one or several coun-tries. History has provided brilliant confirmation of both these predictions.

Marxists have on a number of occasions predicted events many years in advance of their occurrence, such as the victory of national-liberation movements in the colonies and the dependent countries, the victory of revolution in China, the destruction of the fascist regime in Germany, the victory of the democratic countries headed by the U.S.S.R. in the Second World War, and many others. All these predictions have proved true because they were founded on objective, strictly scientific analysis of reality in the light of its chief law-governed tendencies. On the other hand, the countless prophecies of bourgeois politicians and sociologists about the inevitable collapse of socialism, a great revival of capitalism, and so on, have proved a disgraceful fiasco because they ig-nored the real laws of history and were the products of wishful thinking. Such will be the fate, too, of the many hysterical babblers of the present day who shout about the “crisis of communism” and foretell the “destruction of human culture”.

Historical Materialism and the Practical Activity of the Working-Class Movement

As the science of the general laws of development of society and as a method of un-derstanding social phenomena, the materialist conception of history constitutes the theo-retical basis of all scientific communism, and of the strategy and tactics of the Commu-nist Parties.

By showing the inevitability, in accordance with natural law, of the replacement of the capitalist formation by a socialist formation, the teaching of Marx and Lenin inspires the working people with certainty in the ultimate victory of their great cause. It accus-toms those who participate in the working-class movement to think broadly, to link up the current interests of the day with the ultimate aims of the working class, to examine the deeper interconnection of social events, and to see through individual happenings to the broad historical prospect beyond. The man who is armed with knowledge of the laws of social development becomes a conscious participant in the historic struggle for com-munism.

At the same time, the dialectical-materialist method encourages people to make a concrete analysis of every given situation, of the special features existing in their coun-try and the world at any given time. Every revolutionary party of the working class has to act in special circumstances, under specific national conditions. The success of its activities depends to a considerable extent on how accurately, how scientifically it is able to assess the objective conditions of its struggle, and to define its ends and means in accordance with the actual course of historical events.

Mastering this method does not mean learning by heart the theses and formulae of

historical materialism. It is not hard, for instance, to remember that the conflict between the productive forces and production relations constitutes the basis of the social revolu-tion. But the working-class party that confined itself to stating this one general truth and did not study in what concrete forms this conflict is expressed in its particular country, what the relation of the class forces is there, and so on, would be of little value. Master-ing the materialist conception of history means assimilating the essence of the material-ist and dialectical approach towards the analysis of social phenomena, learning to use it when studying concrete conditions of the struggle of the working class at any given moment, learning to generalise the rich practical experience of the revolutionary move-ment.

That is why the materialist conception of history occupies such an important place in the world outlook of the revolutionary parties of the working class, in the world outlook of every conscious fighter for socialism, of every person who wants to understand the laws of social development and with a sound knowledge of the job in hand further the progress and well-being of toiling humanity.

CHAPTER 5

CLASSES, CLASS STRUGGLE AND THE STATE

The life of society is marked by great complexity and multiformity. During its his-tory various, often diametrically opposite, strivings of many people have come into con-flict, struggles have ensued between them, and the most diverse contradictions have arisen and been resolved. In addition to the struggle within society there have been con-flicts and struggle between peoples and between societies. Periods of revolution and re-action, of rapid progress and stagnation, of peace and war, alternate constantly in his-tory. It was Marxism that first provided the guiding thread which led to the discovery of a law in this seeming labyrinth and chaos, namely, the theory of the class struggle.

Only on the basis of this theory is it possible to explain the hidden motivating springs of all the important events and changes which take place in a society based on exploitation. For the working class this theory provides the scientific basis of the tactics of its struggle for emancipation.

1. The Essence of Class Distinctions and of the Relations Between Classes

The contradictions and conflicts between people of different social status led ad-vanced thinkers even before Marx to the idea of the existence of different social classes and of struggle between them. Their conceptions of what classes were, however, re-mained extremely vague and ill-defined. Out of the multitude of features that distinguish people belonging to different classes these thinkers were unable to select the main and decisive one. Consequently, the principles of class division that they proposed did not contain the essence of the problem and were often accidental and arbitrary. This is an even more characteristic feature of modern bourgeois sociology.

Bourgeois sociologists admit that society is not homogeneous, that it consists of a large number of different strata and social groups. But what lies at the basis of this strati-fication? Various answers are offered. Some sociologists give pride of place to the spiri-tual principle, a common psychology, common religious views, and so on. But we have already seen that people’s social consciousness depends on their social being. Others consider that the basic principle of class division is material well-being: size of income, living conditions, etc. But size of income depends on what position a given class occu-pies in social production, whether it is the owner of the means of production or whether it is an oppressed, exploited class. On this depends its role in political life, its level of education and its everyday existence.

Since the chief and decisive aspect of social life is material production, the basis of the division of society into classes must be sought in the place occupied by a particular group of people in the system of social production, in their relation to the means of pro-duction.

The fullest definition of classes was given by Lenin in his work A Great Beginning: “Classes are large groups of people which differ from each other by the place they oc-cupy in a historically determined system of 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 and mode of acquiring the share of social wealth of which they dispose. Classes are groups of people one of which can appropriate the labour of another owing to the different places they occupy in a definite system of social economy.”71

Hence it is not the “will of God” and not man’s nature as an individual, as the ide-ologists of the exploiting classes have always tried to prove, but membership of a par-ticular class which explains the dominating, privileged position of some and the oppres-sion, poverty and lack of rights of others.

This does not mean, of course, that all differences and relations in society apart from those of class are of no importance. In the course of man’s historical development quite a number of stable forms of social community have been formed that do not coincide with the class division. Such, in particular, is the national community, the nation.

Class and Nation

National ties are marked by their great stability. On this ground, bourgeois sociolo-gists often try to present them as “inherent”, “natural” relations having greater signifi-cance than class relations. This view, however, is deeply mistaken.

First of all, national relations, like those of class, are not something eternal. They are the product of prolonged historical development. The various forms of human commu-nity are closely linked with the character of the social system and change together with the latter. Under the primitive-communal system, the basic form of human community was the clan and the tribe. The chief feature distinguishing the members of the clan from other people was their common origin, their blood relationship. With the break-up of the primitive-communal system the stability of the clans and tribes gradually collapsed and the significance of blood ties weakened. The amalgamation of several tribal unions into one gave rise to the nationality. People belonging to one nationality were no longer bound by ties of kinship; the features which they shared in common (language, territory and culture) had a social, historical origin. The unity of the nationality, however, was still extremely unstable. In the conditions of the slave and feudal systems there could not exist the kind of unity of economic life that is the essential condition for firm territorial unity and stable community of culture. The prerequisites for the conversion of the na-tionality into a nation are formed only in the epoch of arising capitalism, which destroys feudal isolation and leads to the formation of a single national market.

National community should not be equated with the conception of race, as is done by many bourgeois sociologists. Division into races is a division of people according to the inherited features of physical structure. Depending on a number of features (colour of skin, shape of skull, hair and so forth) science distinguishes three basic races: the Caucasian (or white), the Negroid (or black), and the Mongolian (or yellow). Unlike those of national community, racial characters are biological in nature and are formed as the result of prolonged adaptation of the human organism to certain natural conditions. Different nations may belong to one and the same race. On the other hand, a given na-

tion may be composed of people with different racial characters (Negroes, Whites and Indians, for example, in certain Latin-American countries). There is also no internal connection between race and language. For example, the English language is the native language of both Whites and Negroes in the United States. Therefore, such concepts as the “Germanic race’" or the “Anglo-Saxon race” simply have no meaning. The racists’ assertion that some races or nations are superior to others, and that the “coloured” peo-ples lack the abilities of the “white” race is refuted both by scientific data and by the evidence of world history, which proves that all peoples of the globe are capable of cre-ating cultural values and that the measure of their contribution to world culture is deter-mined not by the colour of their skin or the shape of their skull but by the special fea-tures of their historical development.

What then are the basic features of a nation? In Marxist literature the term nation is usually meant a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the ba-sis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up mani-fested in a common culture.

National community cannot abolish class differences within a nation. On the con-trary, these differences permeate its whole life and divide it into warring camps. Thus, national community not only does not exclude class antagonism; unless that antagonism is taken into account the national movement itself cannot be correctly understood.

On the other hand, class solidarity reaches beyond the confines of the separate na-tion. American, German and French capitalists speak different languages. But they are all brought together by the fact that they belong to one class, and this unites them against socialism, the working-class movement and the national-liberation movement of the co-lonial peoples. In exactly the same way the workers belong to different nationalities and races but they remain primarily proletarians, and this determines the community of their international interests, aims and ideology, in face of which other differences are rele-gated to the background. Politically conscious workers, realising that national strife and aloofness harm the international interests of the working class, fight all forms of national or race discrimination.

Division of Society into Classes Is a Historically Transient Phenomenon

In justifying social inequality the ideologists of the propertied classes have always tried to present it as an eternal, inseparable feature of any human society. This is not true. The division of society into exploiters and exploited did not exist under the primi-tive-communal system and it finally disappears under the conditions of socialism.

The origin of classes is directly connected with private ownership of the means of production, which makes possible the exploitation of man by man, the appropriation of the labour of one group of people by another group.

During a certain stage of development, the division of society into classes was inevi-table and historically necessary. So long as human labour was still so little productive that it provided but a small surplus over and above the necessary means of subsistence, Engels writes, any increase of the productive forces, extension of intercourse, develop-

ment of the state and of law, or foundation of art and science, was possible only by means of a greater division of labour. And the basis for this was the great division of labour between the masses engaged in simple manual labour and the few privileged per-sons directing labour, conducting trade and public affairs, and, at a later stage, occupy-ing themselves with art and science.72 Moreover, the class that held the reins of society missed no opportunity of imposing on the masses an ever increasing burden of labour for its own personal advantage.

But after the development of the productive forces has confronted society with the urgent task of replacing private ownership by social ownership and abolishing relations of exploitation, the grounds for the existence of classes also disappear. Not only does the preservation of classes become superfluous, it becomes an obstacle in the path of the further development of society.

In socialist society there are no longer any exploiting classes, the relations between the classes of the workers and the peasants are the relations of two friendly classes, ex-cluding exploitation, the domination of one class over another. An epoch begins during which the remaining differences between the classes are erased. Finally, with the transi-tion to communism classes disappear altogether.

Thus, the division of society into antagonistic classes, and hostility between them, is an inseparable feature only of the age of private ownership.

Class Structure of Society

Classes are divided into basic and non-basic classes according to the place they oc-cupy in society. The classes described as basic are those without which the mode of pro-duction prevailing in society could not exist and which have been brought into being by this very mode of production. In slave society the basic classes are those of the slave-owners and slaves, in feudal society those of the feudals and peasants, in bourgeois soci-ety those of the capitalists and workers. These then are classes one of which is the owner of the basic moans of production and exercises power, while the other constitutes the basic mass of the exploited. The relations between these classes always remain antago-nistic, based on conflicting interests. The capitalist, for example, has an interest in com-pelling the worker to produce as much as possible while paying him as little as possible. The worker, naturally, is interested in exactly the opposite. The incompatibility of eco-nomic interests between antagonistic classes gives rise to an implacable struggle be-tween them. “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 reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”73

But besides these basic classes there are other, non-basic classes in exploiting soci-ety. For example, in slave society there existed free peasants and craftsmen; in capitalist society, apart from the bourgeoisie and the working class, there is still the peasantry and, in many countries, landlords, and so forth. The existence of these non-basic classes with

their special interests, along with various social groups (the intelligentsia, for example), considerably complicates the pattern of class relationships.

Classes of Bourgeois Society

The basic classes of bourgeois society are the capitalists (bourgeoisie) and the wage-workers (proletariat).

The bourgeoisie is the class of the owners of the basic means of production, which lives by exploiting the hired labour of the workers. It is the ruling class of capitalist so-ciety.

The bourgeoisie at one time played a progressive part in the development of society by leading the struggle against the obsolete feudal system. In pursuit of profit and spurred on by competition, it brought into being powerful productive forces. But as the contradictions of capitalism developed the bourgeoisie was transformed from a progres-sive class into a reactionary one and its supremacy became the main brake on the devel-opment of society.

The creator of the colossal wealth appropriated by the bourgeoisie is the working class, the chief productive force of capitalist society. At the same time it is a class de-prived of ownership of the means of production and compelled to sell its labour-power to the capitalist.

As capitalism develops, the wealth of the biggest capitalists increases, but so does the oppression and indignation of the working class, which is “disciplined, united, or-ganised by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself” (Marx).74

Thus as capitalism grows so does its grave-digger—the working class, the vehicle of a new, higher, socialist mode of production.

But there is no capitalist country in which the composition of society is confined to these two classes alone. There never has been capitalism in such “pure form” anywhere. Capital penetrates all branches of the national economy and transforms them, but no-where does it completely destroy the old economic forms.

For this reason, large-scale ownership of land by landlords survives in many bour-geois countries. These landlords reorganise the economy of their estates on capitalist lines, acquire industrial enterprises if the opportunity arises, become shareholders in joint-stock companies and turn into capitalists. Numerous representatives of the landlord class enter the state machine, and also the armed services as members of the officer corps. In their interests, views and political leanings the big landowners as a rule adhere to the most reactionary section of the bourgeoisie, and tend particularly to become one of the bulwarks of fascism (e.g., the Prussian landowning Junkers).

The peasantry also passes from feudal to capitalist society. With the exception of its richest stratum (the rural bourgeoisie, the kulaks), it is an exploited class. Exploitation of the peasants takes various forms: rent paid to the landowners, enslaving loans and ad-vances received from capitalists, direct exploitation of the labour of the poor peasants, who are compelled to work on the fields of landlords and kulaks, and so forth. In addi-tion, the mass of the peasants are obliged to pay tribute to powerful capitalists in the

form of high prices for industrial goods bought from them.

The peasants who work on their own land, along with the craftsmen, small traders and artisans form a fairly numerous group, the petty bourgeoisie. These are people who have possession of small means of production, but unlike the big bourgeoisie, do not live by exploiting the labour of others. The petty bourgeois occupy an intermediary position in capitalist society. As owners of private property, they adhere to the bourgeoisie, but as representatives of the strata who live by their own labour and are exploited by the bourgeoisie, they adhere to the workers. This intermediary position of the petty bour-geoisie gives rise to its unstable and wavering attitude in the class struggle.

The development of industry, technology and culture in capitalist society results in the formation of a broad stratum, the intelligentsia, consisting of persons engaged in mental work (technical personnel, teachers, doctors, office employees, scientists, writ-ers, etc.). The intelligentsia is not an independent class, but a special social group which exists by selling its mental labour. It is recruited from various strata of society, chiefly from the well-to-do classes and only partially from the ranks of the working people. As regards its material position and way of life the intelligentsia is not homogeneous. Its upper strata, the high officials, prominent lawyers and others, are closer to the capital-ists, while the lower strata are closer to the working masses. As the class struggle spreads in capitalist society the advanced section of the intelligentsia goes over to the Marxist-Leninist position and participates in the revolutionary struggle of the working class.

In bourgeois society there exists yet another stratum, the declassed elements—the lumpen proletarians—the “dregs” of capitalist society, consisting of bandits, thieves, beggars, prostitutes, and so on. This stratum is constantly being reinforced by individu-als from various classes who have been thrown into the “dregs” by the conditions of capitalism. Anarchists used to claim that the lumpen proletariat is the most revolutionary element of capitalist society. But the history of the past century has proved the complete correctness of Marx and Engels, who characterised the lumpen proletariat as a stratum which owing to its conditions of life, is ready to be the bribed tool of reactionary in-trigue.75 In Hitler Germany, large numbers of criminals joined fascist organisations such as the storm-trooper and SS detachments. In the United States, gangster bands are widely used for beating up workers, Negroes and progressives.

When characterising the classes and strata of capitalist society one must also take into account the differences within them. Of particular importance are the differences between the monopolist and non-monopolist bourgeoisie (and in the colonies, between the national bourgeoisie and the strata of it that are in league with the colonialists). These differences, which have widened in our times, play, as we shall see, a large part in the political life of contemporary bourgeois society.

Thus, bourgeois society presents an extremely complex and many-sided picture of class distinctions and relationships, a clear understanding of which is essential for the correct policy and tactics of the working class and its parties. But it is no less important to see behind all this diversity the chief class contradiction of bourgeois society — the

antagonistic contradiction between the working class and the bourgeoisie. All social phenomena must be approached from the point of view of this contradiction. No matter what changes capitalism may undergo, no matter how complicated its class structure and the relations between the classes may become, it remains a society based on exploita-tion. And in such a society the chief factor in the relations between classes remain the relations of irreconcilable struggle between the exploited and the exploiters.

2. The State as an Instrument of Class Domination

The Marxist-Leninist theory of classes and the class struggle provides the key to un-derstanding one of the most complicated phenomena in the life of human society—the state. It scientifically explains its essence, its origin and development, the replacement of certain types of state by other kinds, and the inevitability of the withering away of the state.

Origin and Essence of the State

History shows that the origin of the state is linked with the appearance of classes. In the early stages of human development, under the classless primitive-communal system there was no state. The functions of managing the affairs of society were carried out by society itself.

But when private ownership had come into being, and along with it economic ine-quality, when society had split up into hostile classes, the system of managing public affairs underwent a radical change. These affairs could no longer be settled on the basis of the agreed will of the whole or the majority of society. The dominating position was seized by the exploiting classes. Since they composed only an insignificant minority of society, these classes had to rely on direct coercion as well as on their economic power to maintain the system that suited them. For this a special apparatus was required—detachments of armed men (army and police), courts, prisons, etc. Control of this appa-ratus of coercion was placed in the hands of men devoted to the interests not of the whole of society but of the exploiting minority. In this way the state was built up as a machine for maintaining the domination of one class over another. With the help of this machine the economically dominant class consolidates the social system that is to its advantage and forcibly keeps its class opponents within the framework of the given mode of production. For this reason, in an exploiting society the state, in essence, always represents the dictatorship of the class or classes of exploiters.

In relation to society as a whole, the state acts as an instrument of direction and gov-ernment on behalf of the ruling class; in relation to the opponents of this class (in an ex-ploiting society this means the majority of the population), it acts as an instrument of suppression and coercion.

Thus, the state is the result of the irreconcilability of class contradictions, It “arises when, where and to the extent that class antagonisms objectively cannot be reconciled”.76 The political power of the economically dominant class—such is the essence of the state, the nature of its relations with society. But in addition to this, it has

other characteristics.

One can speak of the state as such only when the political power of this or that class extends over a certain territory and over the population living on that territory—its citi-zens or subjects.

Size of territory, as well as the number and composition of the population may, of course, influence the power of the state and, in a number of cases, its structural form. But the essence of the state is not determined by these features but by its class character.

Types and Forms of State

States, past and present, form a motley picture. They include the ancient despotisms of Assyria, Babylon and Egypt, the republics of ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, the principalities of Kiev Rus, the monarchies of the Middle Ages, the modern parliamen-tary republics, and finally the socialist republic. These are all different types and forms of state.

The type to which a state belongs depends on which class it serves, that is to say, it depends in the final analysis on the economic basis of a given society. The type of state therefore corresponds to a socio-economic formation. History knows three basic types of exploiting state: the slave, the feudal, and the bourgeois. The characteristic feature common to them all is the domination of exploiters, i.e., a small section of society, over the exploited, who comprise its overwhelming majority. The socialist state, where the working people headed by the working class are in power, is a new and quite different type of state. The highest form of socialist state is the socialist state of the entire people, which arises under the conditions of the complete victory  socialism and, for the first time in the history of states, loses its class character (this is dealt with in more detail in chapters 24 and 26).

Whereas the type of state expresses its class nature, the form of the state primarily indicates how the organs of power and administration are constructed and what kind of political regime is maintained. Thus, the form of the structure of the supreme organs of power distinguishes a monarchy, where one person (a king or emperor) not elected by the population stands at the head of the state, from a republic, where power is based on suffrage. There are also states which combine certain features of both these forms, the constitutional monarchy, for example, where the power of the king or the emperor is limited by law, by the constitution, and a large part is played by elected organs of gov-ernment.

The political system may vary even in states of the same type. Thus, the bourgeois state is to be found not only in the form of a democratic republic but also in the form of a terroristic fascist regime. The rise of various forms of state, their development and flowering, their decline and replacement by other forms takes place in conformity with natural laws.

The variety of forms to be found in states of the same type depends mainly on changes in the economic structure, in the relation of class forces and the various group-ings within the ruling classes.

The decentralised state with its weak central government and great political inde-pendence of its individual feudal lords corresponded to the period of feudal disunity, when each estate was essentially a self-supporting economy and the economic ties be-tween them were still very weak. In the period of the decay of feudalism, the growth of commodity-money relations and economic ties between separate localities and also be-tween states, and the strengthening of the economic role of the bourgeoisie, the central-ised state comes into being, the so-called absolute monarchy.

But other factors, too, influence the form of the state—national traditions, the se-quence in the development of political institutions, the level of political consciousness among the people, relations with foreign states (particularly the degree of danger of for-eign attack), and so on.

The science of Marxism-Leninism attaches great importance to the form of the state. For example, where the bourgeoisie is in power the more democratic form of state offers far more favourable opportunities for social progress, for the development of culture and science, and for the struggle of the working masses against oppression and exploitation.

But no form, not even the most democratic, can change the essence of the exploiting state as an instrument for the domination of one class over others. In Egypt, the slave state took the form of an eastern despotism with an unrestricted monarch, the Pharaoh, at its head; in Athens, the form of a democracy; in Rome, the form of an: aristocratic re-public, and then an empire, and so on. In spite of the great variety of forms, the essence of all these states was the class domination of the slave-owners over the slaves.

The Bourgeois State

The bourgeois state can also take various forms: a democratic republic, a constitu-tional monarchy, an open dictatorship of the fascist type. But in any form it remains an instrument in the hands of the bourgeoisie, and therefore primarily an instrument for the subjugation of the working masses.

The bourgeois-democratic state was a big step forward in comparison with its predecessors. The bourgeois revolution destroyed the regime of the absolute monarch, which the people hated. It set up a representative system of government, trial by jury, and other democratic institutions. Under pressure from the revolutionary masses of the people, bourgeois constitutions embodied many principles of democracy.

But just as the economic system of capitalism did not abolish the exploitation of the working masses but merely altered its form, so bourgeois democracy did not change the anti-popular nature of the political power of the exploiters. The democratic institutions introduced by the bourgeoisie are of a formal nature and do not really enable the work-ing people to make use of the rights that are proclaimed. And it could not be otherwise, for the economic system of capitalism is incompatible with real equality and freedom. Even the most democratic bourgeois state safeguards and sanctifies the capitalist system and private ownership, and suppresses the working people who wage a struggle against it.

This is particularly characteristic of the present epoch, when the imperialist bour-

geoisie is throwing overboard the democratic institutions and forms that have been won by the people and attacking the rights and freedoms of the individual. The fascist state—the dictatorship of the most reactionary and aggressive section of the monopolist bour-geoisie, which existed in Italy (1922-43), and Germany (1933-45), and which still exists in Spain, Portugal and certain other states—provides vivid confirmation of this fact. Tendencies towards intensifying the dictatorship of the monopolies are characteristic of the U.S.A., France and the German Federal Republic.

The bourgeoisie’s desire to abandon democracy encounters opposition from the de-mocratic and socialist forces led by the working class and its Marxist parties, and this opposition becomes increasingly more organised and powerful.

Such are some of the basic propositions of historical materialism on the state. They do not, of course, cover the whole of the Marxist-Leninist teaching on the state. The ex-perience of the present age, particularly the experience of the working people who have created a new type of state, the socialist state, contributes much that is new to this teach-ing. This will be dealt with in Part Five of this book.

3. The Class Struggle as the Driving Force of the Development  of an Exploiting Society

Reactionary ideologists, frightened by the working people’s resistance to exploita-tion, try to represent the class struggle as an obstacle to progress, a dangerous deviation from the normal course of social development. Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, far from hindering progress, the class struggle is on the contrary the driving force of development of society.

The Law of Class Struggle

The class struggle permeates the whole history of exploiting society. Its creative, progressive significance is felt even under conditions of the “peaceful”, evolutionary development of each formation.

The bourgeoisie likes to take the credit for the immense technical progress achieved in the epoch of capitalism. But the capitalist is least of all interested in the development of technology as such. He would prefer to swell his profits by such “simple” and “cheap"’ methods as cutting wages and lengthening the working day. Not only competi-tion, but also the persistent struggle of the working class for the protection of its own interests to a great extent forces the capitalist to seek other sources of increased profit, such as the introduction of new machinery, improvement of technological processes and adoption of inventions.

The struggle of the oppressed classes plays a tremendously progressive part in po-litical life. It is known, for example, that the French bourgeoisie in the epoch of bour-geois revolutions did not set themselves the aim of creating a republic, that they were for retaining the monarchy as a form of government which would make it easier to suppress the working people. But gradually, under the influence of the constantly widening strug-gle of the proletariat and all the working people, they were, as Lenin writes, “completely

transformed into republicans, re-educated, retrained, and regenerated”,77 and were com-pelled to set up a political system more acceptable to the working people.

If it were not for the persistent struggle of the working classes, the political life of the present-day capitalist countries would present a very different picture. We know that in the epoch of imperialism the bourgeoisie does all it can to cut down and abolish de-mocratic freedoms, to limit the power of representative bodies, of parliaments in particu-lar, and to crush all that is democratic and progressive in the culture of the capitalist countries. Only the determined class struggle of the working masses, led by the proletar-iat, is able to check these anti-popular tendencies. In present-day circumstances such a struggle can bring excellent results in defending peace, democracy and national sover-eignty, and barring the way to fascism, reaction and war.

The more persistent the struggle of the oppressed classes against their exploiters, the more successful their resistance to their oppressors, the more rapid, as a rule, is the pro-gress made in all spheres of the life of society.

Social Revolution

The part played by the class struggle as the driving force in the development of an exploiting society is particularly evident in a period when one socio-economic formation is being replaced by another, i.e., in a period of social revolutions.

The conflict between the productive forces and production relations, which forms the economic basis of the social revolution, matures slowly and gradually, in the course of the evolution of the old mode of production. The solution of this conflict, however, requires a fundamental break-up of the prevailing production relations, and this can never be achieved by means of gradual changes. For the interests of the ruling classes remain inseparably bound up with these relations even when the latter have ceased to correspond to the level of the productive forces. The ruling classes can carry on their parasitic existence and maintain their power and privileged position only while the form of property prevailing in the particular society remains inviolate. Hence no exploiting class ever has given up, or ever will give up, its property voluntarily.

The obsolete ruling class is not simply a small group of people with interests that dif-fer from the rest of society; it is an organised force, which has held the reins of power for a very long time. It controls the state, a powerful apparatus of coercion; its interests are de-fended by the political and ideological superstructure. The dominant position of the old production relations rests on the whole apparatus of the economic, political and spiritual domination of the class in power. That is why the replacement of these relations by new ones demands not evolution but revolution, which sweeps aside all the obstacles in the path of the development of new economic relations, including in the first place the politi-cal domination of the obsolete classes. Resolute struggle on the part of the oppressed classes is needed to achieve such a social revolution. The key question of revolution is the question of political power, of its transference into the hands of the class that embodies the new production relations. It is this new political power that is the force that introduces the changes in the economic and social relations of society that have matured.

But not every political upheaval is a revolution. An upheaval aimed at restoring ob-solete institutions and social relations is, on the contrary, a counter-revolution. It brings not progress but stagnation, social retrogression, and multiplies the sacrifices and suffer-ings of ions of people to no purpose.

Although the transition from one formation to another, higher formation is deter-mined in the final analysis by the development of the productive forces, this situation should not be understood to mean that under all historical conditions social revolution begins in those countries that have reached the highest level of technical progress and productivity. In the highest, imperialist stage of capitalism, when the capitalist system as a whole has grown ripe for the transition to socialism, the socialist revolution may occur first in the less developed countries, if the social and political contradictions there have become sufficiently acute. This conclusion of Lenin’s, which will be further discussed in later sections, has been confirmed, as we know, by the practical experience of history.

The Character and Driving Forces of Social Revolutions

History knows of various kinds of social revolution. They differ in character and in their driving forces. By the character of a revolution is meant its objective content, i. e., the essence of the social contradictions it resolves and the system it ultimately estab-lishes. Thus, the revolution of 1789 in France was bourgeois in character, because it was confronted with the tasks of liquidating feudal relations and establishing a capitalist sys-tem. The October Revolution of 1917 in Russia had the aim of abolishing capitalist rela-tions and setting up socialist relations. Thus it was socialist in character.

The driving forces of a revolution are the classes that carry it out. They depend not only on the character of the revolution but also on the concrete historical conditions un-der which it is accomplished. For this reason revolutions of the same type, the same character not infrequently differ as regards their driving forces. Thus, the driving force of the bourgeois revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the West European countries was not only the bourgeoisie, but also the peasantry, the poor townspeople, and the petty-bourgeois strata. The leader of these revolutions was the bourgeoisie. But in Russia, in the revolution of 1905-07, and in the bourgeois-democratic (February) revolution of 1917, the bourgeoisie, which had become a reac-tionary force, frightened by the struggle of the revolutionary proletariat, far from being the leader, did not even act as a driving force; the bourgeois-democratic revolution was carried out by the working class and the peasantry.

Creative Role of the Social Revolution

The ruling classes have a panic fear of revolution and try to portray it as a blood-thirsty monster, a blind destructive force that brings nothing but death, suffering and ruin.

As regards sacrifices, bloodshed and human suffering, they abound throughout the history of societies based on exploitation and oppression of the working masses. This is true even of the periods of evolutionary development of such societies. The creation of a

centralised state in place of the scattered petty principalities of feudalism, for example, constitutes a bloody page in the history of many countries. In exactly the same way the evolutionary development of capitalism has inflicted upon mankind incomparably greater sufferings and sacrifices than any social revolution.lt suffices to recall the world wars, the horrors of fascist terror, and the atrocities of the imperialist powers in the co-lonial countries. As regards sacrifices and sufferings, the social revolution, when it is placed on the agenda by historical development, helps to diminish them. And, on the contrary, postponement of a revolution that is due multiplies the bloody tribute that an-tagonistic class society exacts from humanity.

This does not mean, of course, that the social revolution occurs without sacrifices. It is, after all, the culmination, the peak of a struggle between classes. A victorious revolu-tion is unthinkable without the overcoming of the resistance of the obsolete classes, which, as a rule, do not stop at the use of force. But the social revolution by no means consists merely of uprisings and battles at the barricades. Such forms of struggle are characteristic only of certain of its stages (political revolution, suppression of counter-revolution, etc.).

But even in those cases when owing to concrete historical circumstances armed struggle played a large part in social revolution, it was not an aim in itself. The chief aim in every social revolution is the creation of conditions for society’s rapid advance along the path of progress. Like the surgeon’s knife, it removes what is preventing the development of the social organism, what is causing stagnation and all kinds of social disasters.

But revolution is not only the amputation of everything that is obsolete, rotten and an obstacle to progress. In place of what is destroyed it creates a new, advanced social system and social relations. The solution of such creative tasks is, as we shall see later, particularly characteristic of the socialist revolution.

On the other hand, the upheaval caused by the social revolution by no means in-volves complete rejection of everything in the old society, denial of all its achievements. If this were the case, the development of society in general would be inconceivable; af-ter every social revolution society would have to be rebuilt from nothing, and mankind would simply mark time at the most primitive level. In reality, social revolution rejects by no means everything that existed in the old society but merely that which has become out-of-date and hinders social progress. All the rest is retained and developed further. This fully applies to the productive forces and to a very great to culture—to science, lit-erature and art—where they are not directly concerned with defence of the old system and with the biology of obsolete classes.

Revolutions are periods when the struggle between the classes reaches maximum in-tensity. In these periods the political consciousness, will-power and emotional energy of the masses show themselves with particular force. Never, wrote Lenin, is the mass of the people capable of becoming such an active creator of a new social system as during a revolution. At such times social development is tremendously accelerated and society makes its most rapid and resolute advance along the path of progress. That is why Marx

called revolutions the “locomotives of history”.

Thus, both in the evolutionary and the revolutionary periods of the development of antagonistic class society the class struggle is the chief driving force of the historical process.

Hence it follows that those who gloss over class contradictions, who propose aban-doning the struggle of the working classes, who try to blunt and weaken it, and preach peace between the classes are, no matter what fine words they use for concealment, enemies of progress, defenders of stagnation and reaction. Such a position is not accept-able to the workers, or to any progressive people, who regard it as their task to develop the struggle of the oppressed classes against the exploiters. From the point of view of both the immediate and the more remote tasks confronting society this struggle is in the interests of the majority of mankind and furthers its progress.

4. The Basic Forms of the Class Struggle of the Proletariat

The class struggle of the proletariat proceeds in various forms economic, political and ideological.

Economic Struggle

The economic struggle is that waged for improving the workers’ conditions of life and labour: increased wages, a shorter working day, etc. The most widespread method of economic struggle is for the workers to state their demands and, if these demands are not satisfied, to carry out strikes. To defend its economic interests the working class creates trade unions, mutual assistance funds and other organisations.

Every worker, even the least politically developed, realises the need to protect his immediate economic interests. It is therefore with economic struggle that the workers’ movement begins. But this does not mean that economic struggle is a thing of the past in the class struggle of the proletariat. Defence of economic demands plays a large part also under present-day conditions, even in those countries where a powerful and well-organised working-class movement exists.

In the first place, the economic struggle offers definite possibilities of improving the lot of the working class even under conditions of capitalism. This is shown by the ex-perience of many countries, where the workers have wrung important concessions from the bourgeoisie. Communists—the most consistent fighters for the interests of the work-ing class and all working people—therefore devote much attention to the organisation of the proletariat’s economic struggle.

Secondly, the fight for economic demands, being the most accessible and compre-hensible to the masses, draws the broadest sections of the workers into movement and serves them as a necessary school of anti-capitalist struggle, of education in class-consciousness. Hence, to a large extent the success of the higher forms of the working-class movement depends on this fight.

Economic struggle, however, has definite limitations. Since it does not affect the foundations of the capitalist system it cannot bring satisfaction of the workers’ basic

economic interest, it cannot free them of exploitation. What is more, the successes of economic struggle, if they are not reinforced by political gains, cannot be at all secure. The bourgeoisie will seize every chance of withdrawing its concessions and launching an offensive against the economic interests of the working class.

That is why Marxism-Leninism holds that where the workers’ struggle amounts only to a struggle for their immediate economic interests the working-class movement cannot achieve considerable successes.

The genuine class struggle of the proletariat begins when this struggle goes beyond the narrow limits of defence of the workers’ immediate interests and develops into a po-litical struggle. For this the first requirement is that the advanced representatives of the working class of the whole country should begin to wage a struggle “against the whole class of capitalists and against the government that supports that class” (Lenin).78

Ideological Struggle

The working class, like any other class, wages a struggle in its own interests. These interests are the outcome of the economic relations of capitalist society, which condemn the working class to exploitation, oppression and bad living conditions. The workers’ class interests are not something that has been invented by some theoretician or party, they exist objectively.

But this does not mean that the working class arrives at once, automatically, at an awareness of its interests. The proletariat’s conditions of life give rise, of course, to cer-tain attitudes of mind on the part of every worker. He is constantly encountering facts of injustice and social inequality. This engenders among the workers a feeling of discon-tent, of spontaneous protest and indignation. But such feelings still do not amount to an awareness of class interests. Class-consciousness, as Lenin defined it, “means the work-ers’ understanding that the only way to improve their conditions and to achieve their emancipation is to conduct a struggle against the capitalist factory-owner class.... Fur-ther, the workers’ class-consciousness means their understanding that the interests of all the workers of any particular country are identical, that they all constitute one class, separate from all the other classes in society. Finally, the class-consciousness of the workers means the workers’ understanding that to achieve their aims they have to work to influence affairs of state....”79”

Such awareness does not dawn in the mind of every worker of its own accord.

Above all, it is not so simple for the worker to become aware of himself as a repre-sentative of a special class. The bricklayer and the engine-driver, the skilled turner and the labourer, the miner and the navvy all have different conditions of labour, and often different standards of life. It is no accident that the working-class movement of many countries has passed through the stage of craft unionism, where the guiding principle of unification is the narrow speciality, the trade. Working on the same railway, for in-stance, the guards, stokers and couplers may be united in trade unions that are quite separate from each other. And it has happened that the aims of these unions have been confined to winning concessions for their “own” workers at the expense of the others.

But that is not the whole story. The individual worker by no means always correctly understands his oppressed position in capitalist society. He may, for instance, regard this position as the result of personal failure. His discontent may then express itself in at-tempts to “get on in the world” by any means, even at the expense of his comrades. A few individuals may possibly succeed in doing so, but the lot of the millions remains the same.

The workers’ spontaneous protest may be directed against the wrong opponents. For example, in the age of the industrial revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centu-ries the movement for wrecking machinery (the Luddites) became widespread among the proletariat. The workers saw that the introduction of machinery was worsening their lot but they could not understand that the root of the evil lay not in the machines them-selves but in the fact that these machines belonged to capitalists, who were using them to intensify the exploitation and ruin of the working people.

The difficulty experienced by the workers in becoming aware of their class interests is increased by the corroding influence of bourgeois ideology, of the propaganda that the bourgeoisie conducts with the definite aim of misleading the working people. The de-velopment of class-consciousness among the workers may be hindered particularly by spreading among them ideas about the eternity and immutability of the system of exploi-tation, about the possibility of improving the workers’ position by agreement and com-promise with the bourgeoisie, and by ideas of national dissension calculated to split the ranks of the working people, and so on.

The formation of the class-consciousness of the proletariat is therefore a complex process. It may proceed faster or slower, with ease or difficulty, depending on the con-crete conditions in different countries. This process has been delayed in certain coun-tries, where to a great extent the proletariat remains, as Marx expressed it, “a class in itself”, and not a “class for itself”, a class that has become conscious of itself as a special class, that has understood where its basic interests lie.

The best school of class-consciousness for the workers is the day-to- day struggle, including the struggle for their immediate interests, but that alone is not enough. For the working class to reach a high level of class-consciousness a special, ideological form of struggle is needed.

The ideological struggle of the proletariat involves, above all, the working out of a world outlook, a scientific theory which will show the working class the path to libera-tion. The struggle of the working class for its immediate interests, the trade-union strug-gle in particular, is not sufficient to give birth to socialist views. The doctrine of social-ism could be created only on the basis of the most advanced philosophical, economic and political theories. This task was performed by the great thinkers Marx and Engels, who devoted their whole lives and creative work to the emancipation struggle of the working class. They evolved a teaching which reveals with scientific accuracy the basic interest of the working class—the need for it to free itself from exploitation; and the way of achieving that aim— the revolutionary destruction of capitalism and the building of socialism, and also the fundamental tactics of the working-class movement.

But the scientific world outlook of the working class that Marx and Engels created is not a list of cut-and-dried answers to the questions that may confront the working people at later stages in history, under new conditions and in new circumstances. For this world outlook to remain always a sharp weapon that the working class can use in its struggle for the building of socialist society, it must be constantly substantiated, developed and enriched by means of fresh scientific data and fresh experience of the class struggle of the millions. This creative theoretical work has been and will continue to be an impor-tant task for the Marxist-Leninist parties of the working class.

To play its part in the liberation struggle the scientific world outlook of the working class must become the possession of the masses of the workers. Hence the need for in-troducing this scientific world outlook into the working-class movement from outside the economic struggle and the sphere of relations between the workers and their em-ployers. This task is performed by the Marxist-Leninist party. According to Lenin’s definition, the party is in fact the combination of the ideas of socialism with the mass working-class movement.

Another important task of the ideological struggle is to preserve under all circum-stances the purity of the socialist world outlook of the working class, to prevent the en-emy from distorting it and thus knocking this sharp weapon out of the hands of the pro-letariat. As we know, no sooner had Marxism-Leninism become a powerful ideological force than the enemies of the working class began to wage war on it not only from the front but also from the rear, using its agents within the working-class movement. Under the pretext of “improving” Marxism they constantly strive to distort it and make it harm-less to the bourgeoisie and useless to the workers. This is what the “theoretical” work of opportunists of all kinds, reformists and revisionists, amounts to. To combat them is an essential task of all politically conscious workers and, above all, of the Marxist-Leninist parties.

But the proletariat’s ideological struggle is not confined to the tasks of developing class-consciousness among the workers and propagating the ideas of Marxism-Leninism among them. The working class does not carry on its emancipatory straggle in isolation but in alliance with all the working people, of whom it is the vanguard. The liberation of the non-proletarian masses—the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia—from the influence of bourgeois ideas, and winning them over to socialist ideas, is there-fore yet another important task in the workers’ ideological struggle.

Political Struggle

The highest form of the workers’ class struggle is political struggle.

The proletariat first experiences the need to wage this form of struggle in the course of defending its economic demands. On the side of the capitalists stands the bourgeois state, which helps them to sabotage and crush strikes and hinders the functioning of the trade unions and other workers’ organisations, and so on. Thus, life itself leads the working class to fight not only their own bosses but also the bourgeois state, which pro-tects the interests of the class of capitalists as a whole.

On the other hand, fully developed political struggle is possible only when the work-ing class or, at least, its advanced section becomes imbued with class-consciousness and correctly comprehends its interests.

The political struggle of the working class embraces the whole sphere of social life connected with its attitude to other classes and strata of bourgeois society, as well as to the bourgeois state and its activities. “Working-class consciousness,” wrote Lenin, “can-not be genuinely political consciousness unless the workers are trained to respond to all cases, without exception, of tyranny, oppression, violence and abuse, no matter what class is affected....”80 This presupposes a close connection between the defence of the interests of the working class and the fight for democratic rights and freedoms generally, the fight against the anti-popular foreign policy of the bourgeoisie, and in many coun-tries the fight for national independence, and so on.

All these directions of working-class political activity are extremely important in themselves, especially in present-day conditions. But to claim that they comprise all the tasks of the political struggle would be incorrect. “It is not enough,” wrote Lenin, “that the class struggle becomes real, consistent and developed only when it embraces the sphere of politics.... Marxism acknowledges the class struggle as being fully developed, ‘nation-wide’, only when it not merely embraces politics but when it goes to the very core of politics—the system of state power.”81 Here lies the distinction between the Marxist and the ordinary liberal, who is prepared to acknowledge the class struggle even in the sphere of politics, but on one condition—that it does not include the workers’ struggle to overthrow capitalism and capture state power.

From what has been said it is clear why Marxist-Leninist theory, while perceiving the root cause of all conflict between classes in their material, economic interests, at the same time stresses the primacy of politics over economics, singles out the political form of working-class struggle as the highest form, and regards all class struggle as political. Economic and ideological forms of struggle are not an aim in themselves; both of them, important though they may be, are subordinate to the workers’ higher, political aims and tasks, to their political struggle, which alone can secure the basic economic need of the working class — freedom from exploitation.

Depending on the situation the working class wages its political struggle by a great variety of methods, ranging from demonstrations, political strikes (i. e., strikes in de-fence of certain political demands) and campaigning at elections and in parliament, to an armed uprising. The aims and methods of political struggle demand different, higher forms of working-class organisation, above all the creation of a political party of the proletariat. As experience has shown, the appearance of such a party is a natural phe-nomenon in the history of the working-class movement. Political struggle also demands not only nation-wide but international unity of effort on the part of the working class and all working people.

Proletarian Revolution

The highest stage of the proletariat’s class struggle is revolution.

The enemies of communism depict the proletarian revolution as a coup carried out by a small group of communist “conspirators”. That is a deliberate lie. Marxism-Leninism does not recognise the tactics of “palace revolutions”, putsches, and seizure of power by armed minorities. This follows logically from the Marxist conception of social processes. The causes of revolution lie fundamentally in the material conditions of the life of society, in the conflict between the productive forces and production relations. This conflict finds its expression in a clash between large masses of people, classes, which rise to the struggle under the influence of objective causes that do not depend on the will of separate individuals, groups or even parties. The Communist Party organises the actions of the masses, directs the masses, but does not attempt to make a revolution “for them”, with its own forces.

A number of important features distinguish the socialist revolution of the working class from all previous social revolutions. Chief among them is the fact that all previous revolutions led merely to the substitution of one form of exploitation for another, whereas the socialist revolution puts an end to all exploitation and leads ultimately to the abolition of classes. It is the most profound of all transformations in history, a complete reorganisation of social relations from top to bottom. The socialist revolution marks the end of the history of exploiting class society that has lasted for thousands of years, the liberation of society from all forms of oppression, the beginning of an epoch of genuine brotherhood and equality among people, the establishment of eternal peace on earth, the complete social regeneration of humanity. Herein lies the tremendous significance of the proletarian revolution for the whole of humanity. It marks a vital turning-point in the development of mankind.

The new role of the masses in a revolutionary upheaval is determined by the charac-ter of the socialist revolution. The masses of the working people took an active part also in former revolutions against slave-owners and feudal lords. But then they were no more than a striking force that cleared the path to power for a new class of exploiters. For the result of the upheaval was merely the substitution of one form of exploitation for an-other.

The working-class revolution is a different matter. Here the workers, who constitute a large (in some countries the largest) section of the working people, are not merely a striking force; they are also the inspirers and leaders of the revolution. Moreover, the victory of the working class leads to the complete abolition of exploitation of man by man, to the liberation of the working people from all oppression.

This means that the proletarian revolution is a revolution of the mass of the working people themselves, which they make for themselves. It is not surprising that in the course of a socialist revolution the working people reveal enormous creative power, produce from their own ranks splendid leaders and revolutionaries, and create new forms of government that are different from anything that has been known in history before.

A socialist revolution in any capitalist country covers a fairly long period. First of all, it presupposes a political revolution, i. e., the capture of state power by the working

class. The transition from capitalism to socialism can take place only through the set-ting-up of working-class power.

The historic mission of the socialist revolution is the abolition of capitalist private ownership of the means of production, and of capitalist production relations, their re-placement by public, socialist ownership of the means of production, and by socialist production relations. But this replacement is impossible as long as the bourgeoisie holds power. The bourgeois state is the principal obstacle in the way of changing the capitalist system, for it serves the exploiters and guards their property with the utmost devotion. To take away the property of the ruling classes and hand it over to the whole of society, state power must be taken from the capitalists and put in the hands of the working peo-ple. The bourgeois state must be replaced by a state of the working people.

The creation of such a state is essential also because it is only with the help of state power that the working class can carry out the tremendous constructive tasks with which it is confronted by the socialist revolution.

Former revolutions were faced mainly with destructive tasks. This is clearly seen in the example of the bourgeois revolutions. Their chief aim was to sweep away feudal re-lations and thus break the fetters which the old society had placed on the development of production and clear the path for the further growth of capitalism. In so doing the bour-geois revolution fulfilled the greater part of its mission. Capitalist economic relations, however, had been developing for a long time within the framework of the feudal sys-tem. This was possible because bourgeois and feudal property are two types of private property. Although there were contradictious between them, they could coexist for a time.

The socialist revolution also performs the task of destroying obsolete relations—capitalist relations, and quite often feudal relations, too, which have survived as more or less powerful remnants of the past. But added to the tasks of destruction there are now constructive socio-economic tasks on a grand scale and of great complexity, forming the main substance of the revolution.

Socialist relations cannot come into being within capitalism. They arise after the working class has gained power, when the working people’s state has nationalised the capitalist-owned means of production, factories, mines, transport, banks, etc., and turned them into public, socialist property. It is clearly impossible to do this before power has passed into the hands of the working class.

But nationalisation of capitalist property is only the beginning of the revolutionary transformations the working class has to accomplish. To achieve socialism, it is neces-sary to establish socialist economic relations throughout the economy, to organise the people's economic life along new lines, to create an effective planned economy, to re-construct social and political relations on socialist principles, and solve complex tasks in the field of culture and education. All this means immense constructive work and in car-rying it out the socialist state plays an exceptionally important part. It is the chief tool that the workers possess for building socialism, and subsequently communism. To claim therefore, as do the opportunists, that socialism can be built while political power re-

mains in the hands of the bourgeoisie is to deceive the people and give them harmful illusions.

The political revolution of the working class may come about in various forms. It may be carried out by means of an armed uprising, as in Russia in October 1917. Under particularly favourable conditions it is possible for power to be transferred to the people peacefully, without an armed uprising and civil war. But no matter what form the prole-tarian revolution takes it is always the highest stage of development of the class struggle. As the result of the revolution the dictatorship of the proletariat is established, that is to say, state power passes into the hands of the working people led by the working class.

Having gained power, the working class is faced with the question of what to do with the old state apparatus, with the police, the courts, the administrative bodies, and so forth. In former revolutions, when the new class came to power, it adapted the old state apparatus to its needs and ruled with its aid. This was possible because these revolutions led to the replacement of the domination of one exploiting class by that of another class, also composed of exploiters.

The working class cannot take that course. The police, security services, the army, the courts and other state institutions that for centuries have served the exploiting classes cannot simply pass into the service of those whom they formerly oppressed. The state apparatus is not an ordinary machine that operates whoever controls it; its very nature is such that the bourgeois apparatus cannot serve the working class. The composition and structure of the bourgeois state apparatus are adapted to fulfil its principal function, that of keeping the working people in subordination to the bourgeoisie. That is why Marx said that all previous revolutions merely improved the old state machinery, while the task of the working-class revolution was to smash it and replace it with its own, proletar-ian state.

The creation of a new state apparatus is also important because it helps to attract the broad masses of the people to the side of the working class. The population is constantly coming into contact with government bodies. And when the working people see that men from the people are working in the state apparatus, when they see that government bodies are striving to satisfy the vital needs of the working people and not those of the rich, this convinces the masses better than any propaganda that the new government is government by the people.

How the destruction of the old state apparatus proceeds depends on many circum-stances, the main one being whether the revolution was achieved peacefully or by force. Under all circumstances, however, the destruction of the old apparatus of state power and the creation of a new one remain a task of the first importance for the proletarian revolution.

Only the working class can be the chief and decisive force behind the socialist revo-lution. But the working class does not act alone. The interests of the working class coin-cide with those of all working people, i. e., the overwhelming majority of the population. Hence the possibility arises of an alliance of the working class as the leader of the revo-lution with the broadest masses of the working people.

The mass allies of the working class usually come to support the slogan of socialist revolution and establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat not all at once, but gradually. Historical experience shows that a proletarian revolution may develop from a bourgeois-democratic revolution, from a national-liberation movement of oppressed peoples, from an anti-fascist, anti-imperialist struggle of liberation.

The proletarian revolution makes enormous demands on the parties of the working class. Resolute and skilful direction, carried out by the Marxist parties, of the struggle of the masses is the chief condition for the victory of the proletarian revolution.

The epoch of socialist revolutions is a whole stage in the development of mankind. Sooner or later socialist revolutions will embrace all peoples and all countries. Proletar-ian revolutions in the various countries take specific forms depending on the concrete historical circumstances, on national peculiarities and traditions. But in all countries so-cialist revolutions develop in accordance with the general laws discovered by Marxist-Leninist theory.

CHAPTER 6

THE ROLE OF THE MASSES AND  THE INDIVIDUAL IN HISTORY

The ideologists of the exploiting classes take special pains to distort the problem of the role of the masses and the individual in history. In order to justify the “right” of an insignificant minority to oppress the majority they have always tried to belittle the role of the masses of the people in the life and development of society. The people, ordinary men and women, the working masses are represented as a dull-witted mob, ordained by their very nature to submit to the will of others and obediently suffer poverty and hu-miliation.

For those who hold such views the masses are merely a passive factor in the histori-cal process, at best unthinking performers of the will of “great men”—kings, generals, lawgivers, etc. Such subjectivist theories not only justify a system by which a handful of exploiters is able to oppress the majority of the population, they also give grounds for a domestic policy aimed at abolishing democracy and setting up a fascist system. Such a system, the ideologists of reaction assure us, enables great men to act freely, without interference from the mob, and to “make” history by putting their will into practice. This was how the subjection of the masses and the omnipotence of the Fuhrer (leader) was justified by the Nazis and other fascists.

Besides the subjectivist view of the role of the individual in history, the fatalist view, according to which man is incapable of exercising any influence at all on the course of events, is also to be found among bourgeois ideologists. This point of view is urged with particular zeal by the churchmen, who maintain that life and the development of society are the result of divine predestination, blind fate, destiny. “Man proposes but God disposes” is the essence of their philosophy.

The fatalist theory, no less than the subjectivist theory, belittles the role of the masses in the development of society. Both of them arise from the mistaken opinion that social development proceeds independently of the activity and struggle of the masses of the working people, and each in its own fashion serves the ideological purposes of the exploiting classes, who are interested in casting disdain upon the working people.

Marxist theory has exposed the falsity both of the fatalist and the subjectivist con-ceptions of history. By revealing the laws of the historical process, Marxism-Leninism shows that historical necessity finds its main expression through the masses, the force that plays the determining role in social development.

1. The Masses Are the Makers of History

The masses are primarily the classes and social strata that set social production in motion and that live by their own labour, that is to say, they are the masses of the work-ing people. Taken as a whole, they comprise the bulk of society, its overwhelming ma-jority. What actual classes and strata go to make up the masses depends on the epoch, on the character of the social formation in question. Consequently, using the concept of

“the masses” by no means does away with the need to approach society from the point of view of class, to determine the actual class content of the movement in which the masses are involved.

The Production Activity of the Masses Is the Decisive Factor  in the Life and Development of Society

The production activity of the masses is of primary importance in the life of society. The masses create the instruments of labour, improve them, accumulate labour skills and hand them down from generation to generation, and produce all the material values without which society could not exist for a single day.

With the replacement of one socio-economic formation by another the class nature of the producers changed, but their production activity always was and will be a natural necessity, the prime condition of the existence of society. “...Whatever changes took place in the upper, non-producing ranks of society,” Engels stresses, “society could not live without a class of producers. This class, then, is necessary under all circumstances though the time must come, when it will no longer be a class, when it will comprise all society.”82

The daily labour activity of millions of ordinary people developing production not only provides society with all that is necessary existence but also creates the material basis for consecutive replacement of socio-economic formations, i.e., for progressive development, for human progress.

The production activity of the masses alone would suffice for them to be acknowl-edged the real creators of history. But their role in social development does not stop there.

The Masses in Politics

The masses also play a large part in political life. Without their political activity, the very development of society and, above all, social revolutions would be inconceivable. No matter what class comes to power as a result of revolution, its chief driving force has always been the masses of the people.

In periods of revolution the creative role of the masses becomes particularly appar-ent. “Revolutions are the festivals of the oppressed and the exploited,” wrote Lenin. “At no other time are the masses of the people in a position to come forward so actively as creators of a new social order as at a time of revolution. At such times the people are capable of performing miracles.”83

The role of the masses is equally great in the struggle for national liberation, in de-fence of the motherland from foreign invaders, in just wars.

The exploiting classes have always posed as the sole defenders of the national inter-ests. But, as the facts show, at times of great national stress the outcome is decided not by a handful of exploiters, but by the people, the masses, who rise up in arms to defend their country and fight devotedly for its independence.

The selfless and devoted struggle of the broad masses of the Russian people played

a decisive part in the liberation of Russia from the Tatar yoke, and also in ridding the country of Napoleon’s hordes in 1812. Many other countries, too, owe their national independence to the heroism of the working people—Italy, which long suffered under foreign domination; Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and other Balkan countries, which lan-guished under the Turkish yoke, and so on.

In our own day it was the great masses of the working people who saved Europe from fascist enslavement and defeated fascism. An outstanding part in this historic vic-tory was played by the peoples of the Soviet Union, who bore the chief burden of the anti-fascist war.

Thanks to the selfless struggle of the mass of the people of the colonial and depend-ent countries, many of these have freed themselves of colonial oppression, and others are on the way to freedom and national independence.

During “peaceful” periods of history the role of the masses in the political life of an exploiting society is not so obvious. By using every instrument of physical and spiritual coercion—the police and army, religion and the judiciary, the administrative apparatus and the schools—the ruling classes strive to reduce the role of the masses in politics to a minimum, to crush their political activity or divert it to a channel that is safe for the ex-ploiting classes. This is an inseparable feature of a social system based on exploitation. The working people can be oppressed and the fruits of their labour appropriated only by subordinating the masses politically and ensuring the domination of the parasitic classes in political life. The masses of the working people can therefore determine policy only when the power of the exploiters has been overthrown.

But this does not mean that the masses play no part in political life under conditions of domination by capitalists or other exploiters. Politics are a field of stubborn class con-flict, primarily conflict between the exploiters and the exploited. Its final results depend not only on the will of the ruling class but on the persistence and resolution with which the working people defend their interests, on the actual balance of forces in this conflict.

Even under capitalist conditions the masses can exercise a considerable influence on ruling class policy by preventing the execution of the anti-popular plans of the reaction-ary forces and compelling the ruling circles to make concessions in many important mat-ters of internal and foreign policy. As noted in the preceding chapter, this day-to-day political struggle waged by the working people plays a large part in the development of society.

Role of the Masses in the Development of Culture

Reactionary ideologists, who deny the creative ability of the working people, of or-dinary men and women, show particular zeal in distorting the role of the masses in the development of culture. Culture, they claim, is the work of “the elect”, mankind owes the development of science, literature and art to a small handful of men of genius.

At first sight such assertions may appear to be correct. Indeed, in almost every field of intellectual creation one can mention a few dozen names, such as Newton, Lo-monosov and Einstein in physics, Mendeleyev and Butlerov in chemistry, Darwin and

Michurin in biology, Shakespeare and Tolstoi in literature, Beethoven and Chaikovsky in music, without whom it would be hard to imagine culture as we know it today.

Marxists fully acknowledge the services of the great masters. But they are well aware that an invaluable contribution to culture has been made by the working people, by the masses. It is the masses who have laid the foundations of all man’s spiritual cul-ture, who have created the conditions for its progress.

We know, for instance, that literature and art developed for a long time exclusively as folk art. Folk epics, folk tales, legends, proverbs and songs were the foundation on which literature was developed by professional writers and poets. In exactly the same way, the fine and applied arts practised by the people, and folk architecture, laid the foundation for the subsequent work of artists and architects. Even today folk art still possesses intrinsic artistic value; it is an inexhaustible treasure-house of imagery and means of expression, a source inspiration to writers and artists. It is in folk art that the national form of the art and literature of every country is conceived and takes shape.

The creative genius of the people also laid the foundations of science. We are amazed by the achievements of gifted scientists who discover new sources of energy and miraculous vaccines, who invent wonderful machines and new materials transforming our life. But no less astonishing than these achievements was the creative feat of the masses of the people, who bit by bit in their daily work wrested the first secrets from nature, who discovered fire, evolved ways of cultivating cereals and smelting metals, invented and perfected the first instruments of labour, and stored up our first knowledge of the things and phenomena by which man is surrounded.

In the early stages of the development of culture, therefore, the working people were the direct creators of all cultural values.

There was bound to be a change in the situation after the separation of mental labour from physical labour, after activity in the field of literature, art and science, along with state activity, was monopolised by the exploiting ruling classes and the social strata that served their interests. All kinds of measures, economic and political, were used to make every kind of mental work, including work in the sphere of culture, a privilege of the propertied classes. In the hands of the exploiters alienation of the masses of the people from culture, the imposition of ignorance, became one of the guarantees of class su-premacy

Such conditions, naturally, limited the active participation of the toiling masses in the development of science, art and literature.

The ideologists of the modern bourgeoisie make great play with this fact. They ar-gue that complex kinds of intellectual work connected with the direction of politics and the economy and with creative activity in the sphere of culture can be understood only by the “elect”, that is to say, representatives of the ruling classes of exploiting society. These bourgeois theoreticians proclaim that the masses, the working people, are intellec-tually “inferior” and capable only of “crude” physical labour.

But in reality, brains and talent are not a class privilege. It is only the opportunity for intelligence and talent to show themselves in politics, science, art and literature that be-

comes such a privilege in an exploiting society. In class society this opportunity is, as a rule, presented to people from the propertied classes.

One cannot but be amazed by the strength of mind, talent and will-power of the many thousands of working people who even in the conditions of an exploiting society have been able to come to the fore; and make considerable contributions to the most di-verse fields of intellectual culture, or even to become outstanding figures in political life. History shows many such examples. Newton and Lomonosov, both of them sons of peasants, lived to become the greatest scientists of their age. Abraham Lincoln, a rail-splitter, played an outstanding part in the American Civil War and was elected President. A child of poor townspeople, Maxim Gorky became a great writer. Many other names could be mentioned. But for every one of them there are hundreds and thousands of gifted sons of the people who died without showing their ability. The history of exploit-ing society is a veritable graveyard of popular talent.

One of the greatest advantages of socialism is that it puts an end to this senseless waste of the greatest wealth that society possesses—human talent. By abolishing all es-tate, political and economic privileges socialism creates conditions for the all-round de-velopment and rational use of people’s abilities, which in itself leads to an enormous acceleration of progress in all fields of social life.

Significance of the Marxist Thesis of the Decisive Role of the Masses in History

In the theory of Marxism-Leninism the thesis of the decisive role of the masses in the development of society occupies an important place. It provides social science with the key to understanding the historical process and removes the basic defect of all pre-Marxian theories of history, which did not take into account the activity of the masses. The study of society now becomes directed towards investigating the activity of the masses of the people and their conditions of life, without which the course of history cannot be understood.

For the Marxist-Leninist parties, for every member of these parties, a correct under-standing of the role of the masses in history serves as a guide in their practical activity. It helps them to distinguish the most important aspect of their work, viz., organisational, ideological and educational work among all kinds of working people, and to concentrate their attention and energy on this field. Quite a number of parties in history (including parties created for the purpose of defending the interests of the working people) have disappeared from the political arena precisely because they failed to understand the im-portance of such work and were unable to rally the support of the masses. Thus, one of the basic causes of the collapse of the Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will)* party in Russia was that its leaders under-estimated the masses, relied entirely on the activity of “criti-cally-minded individuals”, and reduced their struggle against the oppressors to individ-

• Narodnaya Volya (see footnote Narodniks, p. 182)—a revolutionary terrorist organisation formed in Russia in 1879. Members of this organisation assassinated Tsar Alexander II in 1881. It was suppressed by the tsarist police in the eighties.—Ed.

ual acts of terrorism.

The Marxist-Leninist thesis of the people as the creators of history is also of great importance to the masses of the working people themselves. By dethroning one of the cherished myths of all exploiters—the myth that human society owes everything to a handful of the élite, without whom it could not live and develop—this thesis awakens the consciousness of the masses, inspires them to fight for emancipation, imbues them with faith in victory, in the feasibility of a society in which the masses themselves will be the full masters.

The Marxist thesis of the decisive role of the masses in history at the same time awakens in the working people a profound feeling of responsibility for the fate of soci-ety. It shows them that it is no use relying on a “saviour”, that the only hero who can free the peoples from oppression and remould society in accordance with the aspirations of the majority of mankind are the workers themselves.

2. The Role of the Individual in History

Individual Leadership Is an Essential Element of the Historical Process

While it proves the decisive role of the masses in the history of society, Marxist the-ory at the same time allots an important place to the activity of outstanding people, of leaders and organisers, and shows that they perform a function that is essential to soci-ety. This refers not only to scientists, writers and artists without whose work the devel-opment of science and culture would be inconceivable in present-day conditions, but also to men engaged in public affairs and politics, the leaders of the masses, of the pro-gressive classes and political parties.

No class of society can govern without the help of some kind of organisation. And to be effective, every class organisation must have leadership and, consequently, leaders. This is true both of parties and other social organisations, and of the state. The leaders work out and formulate the policy of a class, state or party, organise its practical execu-tion and direct the activities of millions of people.

Leaders are especially essential to classes that are coming to the fore, that are wag-ing a revolutionary struggle for power, because the chief force that an oppressed class can counterpose to the state organisation of the ruling class is the force of revolutionary organisation. But revolutionary organisation is inconceivable without experienced, skilled and energetic leaders. “No class in history has achieved supremacy without pro-ducing its own political leaders, its own advanced representatives, capable of organising the movement and directing it,”84 wrote Lenin.

There is therefore an objective necessity for the activity of leaders. It is this circum-stance that gives rise to the illusion that the leaders, certain outstanding figures, are the creators of history. The activity of the leaders is seen on the surface of events, it is more visible, more noticeable, it strikes the eye more rapidly. Confining themselves to the surface of events, bourgeois ideologists try to prove that certain outstanding individuals “create” all events, that the cause of the revolutions and wars that took place in Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, for example, was the activity of the

leaders of the French bourgeois revolution and of Napoleon, or that the class struggle waged by the workers is due to “incitement” by communist leaders.

In reality, the course of history is determined by the struggle of large social groups, classes and masses. The role of great men in history can be understood only by examin-ing their activity in relation to the class struggle, to the activity of large social groups and to the struggle between these groups.

What Is the Source of the Strength of Outstanding Historical Figures?

Outstanding public figures are not the creators of events and movements but the leaders of the masses, of social classes. The support they receive from large social groups is, in fact, the source of their strength. No matter how gifted and intelligent these leaders may be in themselves, without such support they are powerless and incapable of exercising any significant influence on the course of events, “When, therefore,” Engels stated, “it is a question of investigating the driving powers which—consciously or un-consciously, and indeed very often unconsciously—lie behind the motives of men who act in history and which constitute the real ultimate driving forces of history, then it is not a question so much of the motives of single individuals, however eminent, as of those motives which set in motion great masses, whole peoples, and again whole classes of the people in each people.”85 The motives of the masses, of classes are not formed by chance. They express historical necessity, the law of history.

The fundamental mistake of the subjectivists lies in the fact that they cannot even correctly formulate the problem of the relation between the law-governed character of social development and the activity of outstanding people, because they regard social laws and this activity as mutually exclusive forces. They see the greatness of leaders in the ability to “have their own way” in spite of everything, to enforce their will.

Of course, among the leaders of various social movements there have been and still are people who go against the objective laws of history. Such leaders are typical of the reactionary classes, for these classes have a stake in defending the obsolete social forms with which their existence and well-being are bound up. It is no accident therefore that the deeds of the leaders of these classes bear the stamp of adventurism. A striking exam-ple of such adventurism is provided by the activity of Hitler, or by the contemporary imperialist politicians who dream of destroying communism. But such activities eventu-ally always end in failure. The history of states and peoples has proved a thousand times that no man, even of the most exceptional will-power, even if he possesses absolute au-thority, can arbitrarily annul the laws of history or reverse their effect.

The activity of all people, great men included, proceeds under definite social condi-tions. These social conditions determine the objective laws of development, the tasks that confront society. The outstanding people produced by the advanced classes are great because they recognise better and earlier than others what these tasks are, what society needs in its progressive movement, and what is needed by the class that is fighting for progress. They indicate the aim of the struggle, the path towards the achievement of this aim, and they fight for it with tremendous energy, attracting the support of other repre-

sentatives of their class, organising them and leading them.

Many people have made their mark in history because of the role they have played in it. But far from all of them can be called great. The great men of history are only those outstanding figures whose deeds further the development of society, who serve the cause of social progress. Their activity can accelerate the course of history, hasten the victory of the new, make the path to that victory easier for the advanced classes and so-ciety and alleviate the birth pains of the new in the life of society.

Social Need and Great Men

Whether people with exceptional abilities come to the fore or not is inseparably connected with the operation of historical law.

There are always talented, gifted people in society. But only the appearance of a so-cial need for people possessing certain capabilities, certain qualities of mind and charac-ter, can bring such people to the fore and create the necessary conditions for this. This is seen particularly strikingly in an epoch of revolutions, when hundreds and thousands of people come to direct public affairs, people who shortly before were quite unknown and who under the conditions of the old system could find no application for their talents and abilities. In exactly the same way the social demand in time of war creates conditions for the promotion of people possessing qualities of generalship.

Who it is who comes to the fore under certain social conditions remains, of course, a matter of chance, but the actual fact of the promotion of people whose qualities corre-spond to the needs of the age has the character of a natural law.

Engels wrote: “That such and such a man and precisely that man arises at a particu-lar time in a particular country is, of course, pure chance. But cut him out and there will be a demand for a substitute, and this substitute will be found, good or bad, but in the long run he will be found. That Napoleon, just that particular Corsican, should have been the military dictator whom the French Republic, exhausted by its own warfare, had rendered necessary, was chance; but that, if a Napoleon had been lacking, another would have filled the place, is proved by the fact that the man was always found as soon as he became necessary: Caesar, Augustus, Cromwell, etc.”86

Whether a particular outstanding public figure arises or not is a matter of chance, but this does not mean that anybody could occupy his place and carry out his historical mis-sion. To perform that task appropriate qualities and abilities are needed. It is usually therefore people possessing such qualities to a greater or lesser degree who come to the fore as leaders.

As for the nature of these qualities, they may be infinitely varied depending on the sphere of action of the people in question, on the conditions of the age, on the class na-ture of the social movements that produce these leaders, and so on.

Each class produces leaders in accordance with its social character, its position in society, the tasks it has to perform. For the leaders of the working class, for example, special qualities are needed: the revolutionary determination and daring that are de-manded by the very nature of the proletariat’s historic mission; theoretical ability, essen-

tial because the struggle of the working class relies on scientific theory; close ties with the Party and the masses; ability and experience in organising the masses; faith in the creative power of the working people; the ability not only to teach the masses but also to learn from them, and so on.

The Cult of the Individual Contradicts Marxism-Leninism

Marxism-Leninism proceeds from the fact that the decisive role in history is played by the activity and struggle of the classes, the activity of the masses of the people. The real part played by leaders can be understood only when it is related to the class strug-gle, the activity of the masses, to the social demands created by this struggle.

Such an understanding of history is incompatible with the cult of the individual—the worship of an outstanding leader, to whom superhuman merits and virtues are ascribed. The cult of the individual is an ideology contrary to Marxism, an ideology that has its roots in the world outlook of feudalism and bourgeois individualism.

Moreover the cult of the individual provides a breeding ground for bad practical ac-tivity that runs counter to the needs and interests of the socialist movement.

Unrestrained adulation of a leader, exaggeration of his merits, whether intended or not, exercises a harmful influence on the masses and prevents them from being educated in the correct spirit. The cult of the individual instils in the masses the erroneous idea that the tasks confronting the working people can be performed by someone else, that the leader’s abilities and merits are such that the millions who are led can rely on a great man and passively follow the plans and directions of “the chief”, who is supposed to know everything and foresee everything, thus freeing the rank-and-file members of the socialist movement from the duty of thinking, of showing initiative, of creating, of ac-tively influencing the course of events. Such views weaken the sense of responsibility of every working man and woman for the fate and success of the socialist movement, they weaken that invaluable feeling of being master of one’s destiny, which is so clearly and convincingly expressed in the lines of the Party anthem, the Internationale:

To make the thief disgorge his booty,

To free the spirit from its cell,

We must ourselves decide our duty.

We must decide and do it well.

But that is not all. When transferred from the sphere of ideology to that of practice, the cult of the individual inevitably narrows and undermines the profound democracy that is organically inherent in the socialist movement. It leads to the limitation of those standards of life evolved through practical struggle that help the masses to take an active part in the movement, and its leaders to learn from the masses by generalising the ex-perience gained from their struggle and activity. Instead, other standards become ac-cepted that endow leaders with excessive rights and transfer the centre of gravity of leadership to the decisions, instructions and directives of a single person. Such practices not only undermine the desire of the masses to show initiative and develop their creative

activity to the full, they make it impossible for them to do so.

Thus the cult of the individual prevents the broad masses from being drawn into the struggle against capitalism and for the construction of the new socialist society. And yet one of the greatest advantages of the socialist movement is that it is capable of awaken-ing millions of working people to active participation in the creative work of making history. In the struggle for the abolition of capitalism and the building of socialism it is important to use this advantage to the maximum. Even the most brilliant intelligence is no substitute for the collective intelligence of the masses and the Party, even the richest and most varied personal experience is no substitute for the collective experience of mil-lions of people, even the greatest personal feat cannot replace that of the masses of the working people who have risen to fight against capitalism and build socialism.

Hence it follows that the cult of the individual does direct harm to the socialist movement by limiting the opportunities of using its tremendous historical advantages.

Moreover, in the atmosphere created by the cult of the individual there may be in-troduced into the socialist movement fortuitous, unnecessary and even harmful features that are foreign to its nature, being connected with certain negative traits in the character of a particular leader.

As we stated above, a man becomes the leader of a class or movement thanks to cer-tain essential qualities. It is these qualities that enable him by and large to reflect in his activities the needs of this class or movement. But besides these essential qualities, a man who has become a leader may possess other personal traits which, though secon-dary, may in certain circumstances have a harmful influence on his social activities.

J. V. Stalin, for instance, rose to a position of leadership because he possessed a number of qualities essential for a leader of the revolutionary movement, qualities such as devotion to the cause of the working class, organising abilities, implacability in fight-ing the enemy. Stalin had merits also in the theoretical field, mainly, it is true, as a popu-lariser of Marxism-Leninism. All this enabled him to occupy an outstanding position in the Party and the state, as well as in the international working-class movement.

But Stalin's character possessed other features, to which Lenin had already drawn the attention of the Party. “Comrade Stalin, having become General Secretary, has con-centrated boundless authority in his hands,” Lenin wrote, “and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution....” “Stalin is too harsh”, Lenin pointed out, indicating also other features characteristic of Stalin—intolerance, disloyalty, an inattentive attitude to comrades, caprice, etc.87 In the course of years, Stalin’s negative qualities became still more marked, especially in the last period of his life.

The circumstances in which Stalin was acting were complex. The building of social-ism in an economically backward country, under conditions of capitalist encirclement, of bitter class struggle and of attacks by trends hostile to the Party demanded a special degree of centralisation; Stalin tried to carry this to extreme lengths. He took the path of serious violation of Lenin’s behests, rudely trampled underfoot Lenin’s principles of leadership, acted arbitrarily and abused his authority. Under such circumstances his

negative personal characteristics began to affect his social and Party activities. This gave rise to certain phenomena which were deeply alien to Marxism-Leninism and socialism as a social system: departure from democratic principles in a number of important ques-tions of policy, grave violations of socialist legality, mass acts of repression against hon-est Soviet people, the promotion to important posts of certain people completely unsuit-able for the Party and alien to it, who wormed their way into positions of trust by means of flattery and servility.

The enemies of socialism tried to use these facts as proof that abuse of power and other distortions are a consequence of the very nature of the socialist system. This, of course, is a crude slander. On the contrary, socialism presupposes all-round development of collective leadership, effective control over leaders by the masses, wide democracy for the working people, criticism and self-criticism. Stalin’s violation of these standards was in direct contradiction to the laws of life of socialist society and was not at all a re-sult of them.

These negative phenomena did not, of course, change the socialist nature of Soviet society. During that period, too, it continued to develop along the socialist path, the path of consolidating socialist ownership of the means of production, rapid growth of the productive forces, and raising the standard of life, culture and consciousness of the working people. In spite of all the negative consequences of the cult of Stalin’s personal-ity, the peoples of the Soviet country achieved in that period outstanding victories. However, their successes would have been even greater but for Stalin’s mistakes and the cult of the individual.

The cult of the individual is therefore alien to the whole spirit and requirements of the socialist movement and incompatible with Marxism-Leninism. It was no accident that Marx, Engels and Lenin always fought against any manifestation of this cult, were incapable of tolerating flattery and adulation, and more than once warned the working class and its Party against the practice of magnifying and over-praising its leaders.

Inspired by these traditions of the revolutionary movement, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union waged a resolute struggle against the cult of Stalin’s personality. Of course, even before the Twentieth Congress of the Party it was possible to foresee that the decision to tell the people the whole truth about the abuses of power and an open condemnation of the cult of Stalin’s personality would evoke a certain bitterness in the Party’s ranks and in the nation; result in certain losses and create temporary difficulties for the C.P.S.U. and other Marxist-Leninist parties. But the Party boldly took this step. It was an act of great political courage, a new proof of the high political maturity of the C.P.S.U. The Party was confident that in the final analysis the cause of Communism would gain immeasurably from the resolute break with the legacy of the cult of the indi-vidual.

The struggle of the C.P.S.U. against the cult of the individual included, on the one hand, educational and ideological work, and,' on the other, measures aimed at preventing any possibility of a re-appearance of the cult of the individual, at developing socialist democracy and restoring Leninist standards of Party life. Defining the laws of Party life,

the Programme of the C.P.S.U. adopted by the Twenty-Second Congress, points out that “the cult of the individual, and the violations of collectivism in leadership, of inner-Party democracy and socialist legality arising out of it, are incompatible with the Leninist principles of Party life”. These propositions are embodied in organisational form in the new Rules of the C.P.S.U., which provide for measures against the possibility of exces-sive concentration of power in the hands of individual officials and their escape from control by the collective (systematic renewal of the composition of all leading organs, strengthening of the principle of election and accountability, and so on).

The struggle of the C.P.S.U. against the cult of the individual of fundamental impor-tance for the world communist movement. The bourgeoisie together with reformists and revisionists of all varieties tried to use the criticism of the cult of Stalin’s personality to slander the Soviet Union and the socialist system, to undermine the moral authority of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and to sow discord and confusion in the work-ing-class movement. But these attempts ended in failure. In spite of all the efforts of these servants of imperialism, the ultimate outcome of the struggle against the cult of the individual has been a further upsurge of the socialist movement and the strengthening of its solidarity and unity.

The Marxist-Leninist parties have also been able to give a timely rebuff to nihilistic views on the role of leaders and to the anarchistic moods carefully fostered by the ene-mies of socialism. Reaction has long pursued the aim of slandering and compromising the leaders of the working people in order to undermine and disorganise the working-class movement. But the overwhelming majority of the working people realise that the prestige and popularity of outstanding leaders of the working class has nothing in com-mon with the cult of the individual, which the Party has condemned. Prestige and popu-larity are not only the natural result of the activity of the best working-class leaders. They are at the same time an important weapon of the working-class movement in the fight for socialism. This is shown by the whole experience of the workers’ struggle for emancipation. Without authoritative leaders who have close ties with the masses and are popular among them there can be no organised workers’ movement, there cannot be great victories in the struggle for socialism. As Lenin wrote, “the working class, which throughout the world leads the difficult and stubborn struggle for complete emancipa-tion, needs authoritative leaders”.88 The best leaders of the working class, who have close ties with the people and successfully direct the people’s struggle for their vital in-terests ideals, play an outstanding part in history and deserve the of the people.

3. The Role of the Masses in Socio-Political Life at the Present Time

The Marxist thesis that the people are the makers of history is true of all periods and all ages. But the activity of the masses must be examined in its development. The social conditions in which the work and struggle of the masses take place vary from one for-mation to another and the role of the masses in the life and development of society changes accordingly. Ever since the division of society into classes these changes have been in the general direction of a growing influence of the working masses on the devel-

opment of various sides of social life, above all, on politics.

Growth of the Role of the Masses in Politics

In a society based on exploitation, the functions of ruling society, of conducting its external and internal affairs, are monopolised by the dominant exploiting classes. Resis-tance to the exploiters, the class struggle, is the only means of influencing politics at the disposal of the masses. In these circumstances the role of the masses of the people in political life is entirely determined by the level of the working people’s class struggle against their oppressors. This level constantly rises as society passes from one socio-economic formation to another.

The history of slave society contains not a few examples of self-sacrificing struggle by slaves. But the slave class was a mass of people from different races speaking differ-ent languages who had difficulty in uniting to form a powerful social force and pos-sessed an extremely low level of class-consciousness. As a rule, those who took part in slave uprisings had no thought of fighting the slave system and were merely striving to return to their own country and so achieve freedom.

The transition to feudalism opened up for the working people wider possibilities of struggle against their oppressors. The serfs lived and worked in their own country, they spoke the same language, and to a far greater extent than slaves were aware of their soli-darity in the struggle against their feudal lords. They gradually learned to make contact with the poor townspeople and sought alliance with them. The peasant struggle quite often took the form of uprisings embracing large districts. Nevertheless, the peasant movements also had their organic defects, connected with the character of the peasantry as a class—the limited local character of the uprisings, organisational weakness, etc.

The working class has raised the struggle against the exploiters to its highest level. It is the most organised of all oppressed classes in history. The working class is the only class that enters the struggle fully armed with a scientific world outlook. It is not only a national but an international force, welded together by strong links of proletarian soli-darity. All this makes the workers’ class struggle particularly powerful and enables it even in non-revolutionary, “peaceful” periods to play an immense part in political life.

The development of this struggle achieves its peak in the period of the socialist revolution. This marks a vital turning-point in history. From now on the masses of the working people, led by the working class and its Party, themselves begin to determine and direct policy. From being an object of official policy they become its subject. This follows from the nature of socialist society and is guaranteed by its whole way of life.

The Masses Are the Decisive Political Force of Modern Times

The growth of the part played by the masses in socio-political life is therefore a law of historical development. The more difficult the tasks confronting society, the more profound and fundamental the social changes required to solve these tasks, the more do the broad masses act as conscious makers of history, as the agents of social change. This proposition, Lenin emphasised, is one of the profoundest, and most important in Marxist

theory.89 In particular, it explains why in our epoch—the epoch of the final collapse of the reign of the exploiters and the building of communism—the role of the masses in social life is growing at exceptional speed. “History is now being made by millions and tens of millions of people independently,”90 wrote Lenin.

What actual evidence is there of this?

The main evidence is that in countries whose total population amounts to a third of mankind the masses have achieved a fundamental historical change and broken away for ever from a system that condemned them to ignorance, oppression and humiliation. In the socialist countries the working people have become masters of their own life, the sole force determining the fate of society. By so doing they have exploded the myth cre-ated by the exploiters that without oppressors a society, with its economy, civilisation and culture, would inevitably decline and perish.

In the colonial and dependent countries, too, huge masses of working people have awakened to action. The time when the imperialist rulers discounted them entirely and treated them as if they were cattle has passed and will never return. The working people of these countries have proclaimed to the whole world that they are people with rights as much as anyone else and demand human conditions of existence. The break-up of the colonial system has put end to the division of the population of our planet into a handful of privileged nations deciding the fate of the world, and the mass of the oppressed and exploited peoples, whom the imperialists bossed with impunity for so long.

Great changes have also taken place in the position of the working people of the capitalist countries. They have not yet freed themselves from oppression. But can their role in political life be compared with what it was a few decades ago, not to mention past historical epochs? Today the working people, even in the countries where exploiters still rule, have become a great force with which the imperialist bosses are compelled to reckon. The working people have their political parties, quite frequently they have con-siderably representation in elected government bodies, they have their own press and all kinds of organisations. The interest of ordinary men and women in social and political problems, even in those problems that until a short while ago were solely the concern of professional politicians, has grown enormously. The advanced section of the working people has acquired a clear understanding of its interests and is showing increasing mas-tery of the essential forms of struggle for these interests.

The growing influence of the masses in the bourgeois countries on politics opens up before them broad prospects of successful struggle for their immediate economic and political interests. Particularly important is the fact that with a powerful socialist system in existence and a constantly expanding zone of peace the masses of the people have for the first time in history the opportunity of preventing a new war, which with destructive techniques at their present level would threaten the very existence of hundreds of mil-lions of people.

Intensification of the political activity of the working people also offers them fresh possibilities in the struggle for their ultimate aims, hastens the birth of a new, socialist society, makes it less painful and difficult, and under favourable circumstances make

possible a peaceful transition to socialism.

Enlisting the millions of the working people in the making of history is thus of tre-mendous significance to the life of contemporary society.

The reactionary bourgeoisie sees in the growing influence of the masses of the peo-ple on social life a threat to the existence of the capitalist system, a permanent obstacle to pursuing the domestic and foreign policy that suits it. The conscious participation of millions of working people in the task of making history therefore arouses the deepest alarm and confusion among bourgeois politicians and ideologists. They speak with hor-ror of an era of “the mass society”, an era of “mob rule”, which, they claim, will upset the normal course of history and threaten society with all kinds of disasters.

But the bourgeoisie not only slanders the masses. It makes every effort to reduce the role of the working people in politics to the minimum, to deprive them of the opportu-nity of influencing the life and development of society. Evidence of this is provided by the campaign of the imperialist bourgeoisie against democracy, its persistent attempts to introduce a fascist system, the aim of which is to eliminate the influence of the masses on the life of society.

At the same time the reactionary bourgeoisie resorts to a skilled campaign of lies and demagogy designed to attract the masses and subordinate them to its influence. This is the last gamble of the anti-popular forces. The dangers of such trickery should not be under-estimated. The imperialists have on their side financial resources running into bil-lions, they have a powerful propaganda machine, they have also immense experience of spiritual enslavement of the working people, accumulated over centuries of the rule of capital. Taking advantage of the backwardness of some sections of the masses, particu-larly the petty-bourgeois elements, the reactionary bourgeoisie has more than once suc-ceeded in tempting to its side considerable sections of the population and making them the instrument of their policy. That is what happened in Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. A not inconsiderable part of the working people of the capitalist countries is still under the influence of the bourgeoisie today.

Even in countries where the working class has gained power, the world bourgeoisie does not miss the smallest opportunity of sowing dissension in the ranks of the working people and makes use of the slightest weakness, the slightest mistake to bring part at least of the masses under its influence.

But no matter how hard the bourgeoisie tries, no matter what ruses it adopts, the masses refuse to follow its lead. It may deceive part of the working people for a time, but since it remains an exploiting, oppressor class it can never establish a firm alliance with the masses. That is why the growing role of the masses in socio-political life is a source of weakness to the reactionary bourgeoisie, an omen of the approaching collapse of its domination.

The working class is in a different position. It itself constitutes a considerable part, in many countries the greater part, of the working population, the mass of the people. What is more, the working class is linked with all working people by basic common in-terests both in the period of struggle against the bourgeoisie and in the period of building

a new, socialist society. That is why the enhancement of the role of the masses in the life of society is a source of strength to the working class, consolidates the positions of so-cialism, and is the great historical achievement of this class.

But this does not free the most conscious section of the working class, its Marxist-Leninist vanguard, from the responsibility of strengthening its ties with the masses. The struggle for the masses remains the basis of the policy of the Marxist-Leninist parties. The drawing of fresh millions of people into socio-political life makes rallying, organis-ing and training them even more imperative.

The increasing role played by the masses in socio-political life leads to a tremendous acceleration in the rate of historical development of social progress. This rate has in-creased to such an extent in our times that every decade of the present age in its signifi-cance for human progress may be compared to whole centuries of previous history.

Acceleration of development in the present age means faster progress towards so-cialism and communism.

Lenin wrote: “Victory will go to the exploited, for with them is life, the strength of numbers, the strength of the masses, the strength of inexhaustible sources of all that is unselfish, high-principled, honest, forward-straining, and awakening for the task of building the new, all the gigantic store of energy and talent of the so-called ‘common folk’, the workers and peasants. Victory lies with them.”91

CHAPTER 7

SOCIAL PROGRESS

1. The Progressive Character of Social Development

The development of society as a whole takes an ascending line, represents progress, a forward movement from lower to higher forms. Marxist theory reaches this conclusion by scientific analysis of the historical process, based not on subjective desires and hopes but on strictly objective criteria, which make it possible to judge what type of society, what epoch of its development is the more progressive.

Criteria of Progress

The objective criteria of progress vary in different spheres of life. Progress in the sphere of health and material welfare, for example, can be judged by the average expec-tation of life. Indices such as the percentage of literacy, and of people with secondary and higher education, the number of schools, libraries, scientific institutions and thea-tres, etc., give one an idea of the progress of culture. Similar criteria of progress can be found for many other spheres of social life.

To form an estimate of the progressive development of a whole society and not merely certain individual aspects of it, a criterion of a different kind, an all-embracing criterion is required. The science of Marxism-Leninism considers such a criterion, i.e., an indicator of the progressive nature of a given formation, to be the development of the productive forces. The more progressive formation is that which opens up fresh possi-bilities for the development of the productive forces, raises them to a higher level and ensures faster rates of their growth.

Why do Marxists attach prime importance to this criterion?

Mainly it is because the development of the productive forces is a direct index of progress in such an important sphere as the production of the means of human existence. By developing techniques and accumulating labour skills and knowledge of his natural environment, man gradually frees himself from domination by the blind forces of nature, masters them, makes ever wider use of them and transforms nature in his own interests. Thus the degree of development of the productive forces determines the extent to which man rules nature. But this is not all. In the final analysis progress in other fields of social life—social relations, culture, etc.—also depends on the development of the productive forces.

We know, for example, that only after human labour began to yield surplus products in addition to the means of subsistence essential for sustaining the life of the producers themselves, were some of the members of society able to free themselves from physical labour and engage in science, art and literature. And this led to the first notable progress in culture.

The development of the productive forces, which in the final analysis determines the consecutive replacement of one formation by another, results in socio-political changes

that make progress possible in various important spheres of social life. In the course of the history of class society the crudest forms of personal dependence and oppression of the working people—slavery and subsequently serfdom—have been abolished. As the productive forces have developed, so the culture of the working people, their class con-sciousness and organisation, have increased. As a result, the socio-political activity of the masses, their role in the life of society, has grown from one formation to the next.

The development of the productive forces, which brings about changes in the eco-nomic system, ultimately paves the way for the complete liberation of mankind from the oppression of social forces that for thousands of years have operated just as blindly, vio-lently and destructively as the forces of nature. We are referring to the social and eco-nomic relations of a system based on exploitation, under which the people who produce material wealth cannot dispose of it, and whole classes, comprising the majority of soci-ety, fall into subjection to a handful of oppressors, losing the right to control their own labour, their own destiny, and even their own lives.

The root cause of man’s enslavement by social forces that are alien to him lies in private ownership of the means of production, exploitation of man by man, the division of society into hostile classes. Only when the productive forces have reached a suffi-ciently high level of development can man get rid of exploitation and free himself from the enslaving social and economic relations of a society marked by class antagonism. This occurs under socialism. With the victory of socialism and in the course of building communism, man acquires mastery over the forces of social development, enabling him to take a fresh decisive step forward in conquering the forces of nature, and to make conscious and planned use of these forces in the interests of the whole of society,

“The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of man, who for the first time becomes the real, conscious lord of nature, because he has now become master of his own social organisation...

“The extraneous objective forces that have hitherto governed history pass under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself, with full consciousness, make his own history— only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom”92 (Engels).

Once we have recognised that the development of the productive forces is the deci-sive criterion of progress, we inevitably come to the conclusion that the character of the development of society is progressive. For at each stage of this development the level of the productive forces has grown, every formation has revealed fresh possibilities of technical improvement and increased productivity, and these changes in social produc-tion have been followed by progressive changes in the whole life of society.

From the fact that the development of the productive forces lies at the root of social progress there follows another deduction: the forward movement of society, the direc-tion of its movement, is a historical necessity. This means that neither individuals nor

classes can halt this movement or change its direction at will.

As we know, such attempts have been made more than once, but they have always ended in complete failure. What desperate efforts imperialism made to restore the capi-talist system in the Soviet Union! Yet all its efforts suffered ignominious disaster. The imperialists of the United States suffered similar disaster when they tried to block the path of the socialist revolution in China and other countries of people’s democracy and to preserve the obsolete reactionary system there.

At the present time social progress is inseparably bound up with transition to social-ism. Capitalism has exhausted its possibilities. Its production relations have become fet-ters on the development of the productive forces. The preservation of these relations is becoming more and more burdensome and dangerous to society. In defending the idea of the progressive development of society Marxism-Leninism expresses the views and in-terests of the most revolutionary class of modern times—the working class. This class not fear the future, it is full of faith in progress, which will bring freedom both to it and to the whole of mankind.

The Ideology of the Imperialist Bourgeoisie Is Hostile to Progress

It is a different matter with the present-day bourgeoisie. Having become a reaction-ary, declining class, it rejects the idea of progress which its best representatives enthusi-astically defended at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centu-ries. In our times the bourgeoisie finds far more to its taste theories that justify not pro-gress but stagnation or even retrogression on the part of society. This, incidentally, is the secret of the success enjoyed in the bourgeois world by the theory of the historical cycle which was evolved by the German reactionary philosopher Oswald Spengler, and which is being preached today by the British historian and sociologist Arnold Toynbee. Ac-cording to this theory, every society in its development passes through four essential stages: spring, summer, autumn and winter, or childhood, youth, maturity and old age. The completion of this cycle marks the destruction of the given society and its return to the starting-point of its development. The new cycle brings not progress but merely an-other revolution of the eternal wheel of history. Applied to the present age, this should mean, according to Spengler, Toynbee and their followers, that although bourgeois civi-lisation is in a state of decline (this not even the apologists of capitalism can deny), its collapse and replacement by another, i.e., socialist, civilisation will not be progress but, on the contrary, a transition to a lower stage of social development from which a new cycle will begin.

Many apologists of the bourgeoisie choose another means of combating scientific socialism. Denying the laws of history, they reject the very conception of social devel-opment and progress and instead propose that we should speak only of “social change”. In their opinion, this change is of an accidental nature, it may take any direction under the influence of all kinds of circumstances. This view, states the West German sociolo-gist L. von Wiese, makes it possible “to refrain from any judgement as to better or worse, or even as to a causal connection between the past and the present, still less with

future, and to determine merely alteration or change”. Thus for the sake of their class interests modern bourgeois sociologists throw overboard the important achievement of nineteenth-century science—the concept of progressive development, governed by ob-jective laws.

According to theories that have gained wide currency in bourgeois ideology, pro-gress, forward development, is possible only in science and technology but not in the sphere of social relations, politics and morals (the so-called theory of “moral backward-ness” or “moral lag”). These spheres of social life, say reactionary theoreticians, are de-termined by the eternal and immutable qualities of “human nature”, which lead people to commit acts of violence, crime, aggression, etc. The development of science and tech-nology, they say, merely gives these destructive instincts new and more dangerous weapons. Thus the calamities and ulcers caused by the rotting capitalist system are laid at the door of a mythical “human nature”.

In their efforts to protect capitalism from criticism, the supporters of these views single out science and technology as the chief evil. Quite often they openly preach a re-turn to a feudal system, to rural life, to the domination of the Church in all spheres of social life, and claim that only in this way can mankind still be saved from approaching disaster.

Certain works of fiction, such as those of Aldous Huxley, enable us to judge how dark and grim the ideologists of the bourgeoisie imagine the future of society will be.

In these novels there is not a trace of the bright hopes and faith in the future, of that life-asserting optimism that permeated most of the utopian works of the past. The best that the authors of contemporary bourgeois utopias can promise the world today is a so-ciety where a certain material well-being is achieved at the cost of complete rejection of democracy, culture and human dignity, a society inhabited by people who have nothing human in them, people who have become mere appendages of the machine, its slaves. Not infrequently they prophesy an even grimmer future for humanity—return to barba-rism. All that will remain of civilisation, so these “prophets” tell us, will be the ruins of cities and desecrated graves, where starving crowds of brutalised and degenerate crea-tures will scavenge for clothing and ornaments.

A hopeless pessimism infects the whole ideology of the reactionary bourgeoisie of today, and also its culture, giving rise to decadent trends in art and to amorality. These gloomy moods are not accidental. The era of the supremacy of capitalism is drawing to a close; capitalism now bars the path to social progress. And with the blindness character-istic of the ideologists of a dying class the modern bourgeois theoreticians and writers equate the fate of their class with the fate of humanity and represent the decline and in-evitable ruin of that class as the decline and ruin of civilisation as a whole.

Theories that deny the possibility of progress reflect, however, not only the decline of capitalism but also a definite political aim of the bourgeoisie. With the aid of such theories its ideologists try to disarm the working people ideologically and imbue them with the idea that the struggle against capitalism is pointless. Ahead lie only inevitable retrogression, decline and ruin, so it is senseless to fight for a better, progressive system.

That is what the servants of the bourgeoisie wish to prove to the working people.

In contrast to the gloomy prophecies of these bourgeois soothsayers, Marxism-Leninism offers scientific arguments, based on facts, that the history of society presents a picture of progress, of law-governed movement from lower to higher forms, that the forward movement of society is a law of human history, both past and present, and that ahead lies an inevitable and law-governed transition to the highest, progressive form of society—communism. This view of history is an integral part of the world outlook of the working class.

The fact that society is moving forward according to definite laws does not mean for a moment that its movement occurs by itself, without the conscious activity of man. The whole point is that the activity of people, of parties and classes for remaking society and bringing about its progressive transformation proceeds according to definite laws. And the more conscious, organised, resolute and purposeful this activity is, the more it em-braces the broad masses, the more fundamental and rapid that progress will be. This has been proved already by the immense acceleration of social development that is charac-teristic of our epoch, when millions of people, who have been awakened to the task of consciously making history, have swung into action. It is in their power to sweep aside all obstacles that reaction may place in the path of progress.

The whole practical experience of society bears out the historical optimism of the Marxist world outlook. This optimism expresses the confidence of the working class in its future, its conviction of the advantages and invincibility of socialism. At the same time the Marxist-Leninist conception of social progress is a powerful weapon of the working people in their struggle for liberation. It gives them a sound perspective, en-courages, and inspires them in their struggle for the building of a new, communist soci-ety, and fosters cheerfulness and a firm faith in the success of that struggle.

2. Social Progress in an Exploiting Society and Under Socialism

While asserting that the history of society constitutes an ascending movement, Marxist theory at the same time takes full account of the complexity and contradictory nature of the historical process. History should not be thought of as harmonious, uninter-rupted and unhindered social progress. The progressive nature of social development has been proved by science. But it is also incontrovertible that this progressive movement is only a general tendency, which operates through bitter struggle and by overcoming tem-porary diversions and retreats.

Science has accumulated a number of facts that show that in the history of various countries there have been many periods of stagnation and retrogression and even occa-sions when certain civilisations have perished. It is on these peculiarities of the social development of preceding eras that reactionary ideologists speculate in trying to refute the very idea of progress.

In reality, such facts merely show the contradictory and uneven character of social progress under the conditions of an exploiting system, “Since the exploitation of one class by another is the basis of civilisation, its whole development moves in a continu-

ous contradiction,”93 wrote Engels of antagonistic class societies.

One of the manifestations of this contradictoriness lies in the fact that under condi-tions of domination by exploiters the countries that forged ahead checked and stifled the development of others which lagged behind, not infrequently throwing them even fur-ther back, and built their own prosperity on the ruins of shattered civilisations. Thus for a long time the progressive development of mankind proceeded along a very narrow front and not in parade- ground style with all countries and peoples moving forward shoulder to shoulder. Like a small but persistently trickling stream, progress forced its way through innumerable obstacles, only gradually gathering strength and speed and swelling into a mighty flood embracing the whole of mankind.

But this is not all. Even within one and the same society progress for some was bound to mean regress for others, the liberation of one class, fresh oppression for an-other.

The development of various aspects of social life also remained extremely uneven. The replacement of slave society by feudal society in the countries of Western Europe, for example, opened up broad prospects for the development of the productive forces. But by subjecting spiritual life to the suffocating influence of the Catholic Church it forced society back in matters of culture as compared with ancient Greece and Rome. Only centuries later were the achievements of the ancient world in science, art and phi-losophy rediscovered and then a higher level reached. Dozens of such examples could be cited. The development of society, dominated by blind socio-economic forces unknown to man and unsusceptible to his influence, could not proceed otherwise.

The history of capitalist society provides a classical example of the unevenness and contradictory character of progress under conditions of a system based on exploitation.

Contradictions of Progress Under Capitalism

Capitalism was a big step forward along the path of progress. Suffice it to recall the rapid development of the productive forces capitalism, the creation of great industries, the speedy growth of engineering, and finally, the rise of the class struggle of the work-ing people to a higher level than had been attained in any previous formation. But an unbelievably high price was paid for these historical successes that capitalism brought mankind.

The very birth of capitalist society involved agonising suffering for the masses of the people. The setting up of capitalist production was inconceivable without the crea-tion of an army of workers deprived of the means of production. The prologue to capital-ism was therefore the expropriation of the masses, which was carried out with ruthless cruelty. The deeds of this epoch, as Marx put it, have been written in the annals of man-kind in letters of blood and fire.

After the victory of capitalist relations, every fresh step on the road of progress con-tinued to bring benefit to some and misfortunes to others, advance in one sphere of the life of society, decline in another. “In our days,” wrote Marx, “everything seems preg-nant with its contrary. Machinery, gifted with the wonderful power of shortening and

fructifying human labour, we behold starving and overworking it. The new-fangled sources of wealth, by some strange weird spell, are turned into sources of want. The vic-tories of art seem bought by the loss of character. At the same pace that mankind mas-ters nature, man seems to become enslaved to other men or to his own infamy. Even the pure light of science seems unable to shine but on the dark background of ignorance. All our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and in stultifying human life into a material force.”94

It is characteristic of capitalism that the development of some countries takes place at the cost of suffering and disaster for the peoples of other countries. For the soaring development of the economy and culture of the so-called “civilised world”—a handful of capitalist powers of Europe and North America—the majority of the world’s popula-tion, the peoples of Asia, Africa, Latin America and Australia paid a terrible price. The colonisation of these continents made possible the rapid development of capitalism in the West. But to the enslaved peoples it brought ruin, poverty and monstrous political oppression. In the process of colonisation, “cultured” Europe not only destroyed many civilisations of other continents (the Inca, Maya and Aztec civilisations in America, for example, and many civilisations in Africa and the Asiatic countries), it also exterminated whole peoples. Not one man of the aboriginal population of Tasmania survived the colonisation of that country, for example. The aboriginal population of Australia was reduced from 300,000 to 47,000. During the “assimilation” of territories in America nearly 30 million Indians were destroyed. And the “assimilation” of Africa led to the extermination or forced transportation abroad, as slaves, of nearly 100 million Negroes.

In Europe itself the rapid development of some countries (those of Western Europe) was accompanied by the economic enslavement of others (the East European countries) which retarded their development.

The extremely contradictory character of progress under capitalism applies even to different regions of one and the same country. The comparatively rapid development of the towns and industrial centres is, as a rule, accompanied by lagging and decline in the agricultural districts (the Southern States of the U.S.A., for example, or South Italy).

At the beginning of the twentieth century, when capitalism entered its final, imperi-alist stage of development, its production relations turned into an obstacle in the path of further development. In the sphere of social relations, politics, morality, culture and art, the domination of the monopolies became a source of retrogression. Ample evidence of this is provided by the experience of the fascist states and also the reactionary, fascist tendencies in the social and political life of the larger capitalist countries. It is true that even in the epoch of imperialism the rapid development of science and engineering does not cease. But progress in this sphere under conditions of capitalism is used in the selfish interests of the financial oligarchy and very often only brings new misfortunes for the working people. The capitalist economy is more and more frequently shaken by crises and the decline of production they involve. Under the conditions of a general slowing-down of the rate at which production develops and shrinking markets, technical im-provements condemn many millions of the working people to constant unemployment.

The burden of militarism becomes ever more intolerable; the tremendous scientific and technical achievements of modern civilisation are used for preparing the slaughter of millions of people and destroying enormous material values.

Progress Under Socialism

These antagonistic contradictions of progress will not always accompany the pro-gressive development of society. They are caused only by the specific conditions of an exploiting society and disappear with it. This means that one should seek to get rid of these contradictions not by returning to past stages of development, but by struggle for more rapid progress, for socialism. Only after the victory of socialism, said Marx, “will human progress cease to resemble that hideous pagan idol, who would not drink the nec-tar but from the skulls of the slain”.95

What are the basic features of social progress under socialism?  

Above all, it does not profit merely the chosen few but all working people. The rise of all previous formations was unavoidably bound up with enslavement, with disaster and deprivation for ever new sections of the population, for whole classes constituting the majority of society. Slave society could arise only after the greater part of people had been turned into slaves, feudal society only the free peasants had become feudal vassals under the power of the overlords, capitalist society only after the ruin of the mass of small property-owners. Socialism, on the contrary, liberates the oppressed and exploited. It has no privileged classes. All the fruits of progress go to the working people. The steady growth of the material well-being and culture of the masses, the flowering of de-mocracy for the working people, is a law of socialist development.

All this does not mean, of course, that the building of socialism is achieved without difficulties. Socialism has to be built in the face of bitter resistance from the imperialist camp, which exerts every effort to crush the socialist countries. What is more, historical conditions developed in such a way that the first countries to take the path of socialism were those with a comparatively backward economy and culture. In the course of social-ist construction the peoples of these countries have had to complete the work that w left undone by capitalism—create modern industries, overcome survivals of pre-capitalist formations in economy and culture, and in people’s minds. All this demanded additional effort and sacrifice, from which the peoples of the economically more developed coun-tries, when they undertake the building of socialism, will be free.

Further, a characteristic feature of progress under socialism is that progressive de-velopment is not confined merely to one side of the life of society but embraces all its aspects. Thus, the steady development of production and technical progress is accompa-nied in socialist countries by a rapid development of culture, democracy, etc.

In contrast to capitalism, progress under socialism is not achieved at the cost of other countries, regions or nations but embraces al socialist nations and countries and every part and every member of the population of each country. This leads to an equal level of development being attained by the various countries and regions. The more ad-vanced lend a hand to the backward, thus eliminating the unevenness of economic, po-

litical and cultural development of the peoples inherited from capitalism.

Under socialist conditions, social progress becomes increasingly the result of con-scious and planned human activity. The planning of the economy leads to a considerable acceleration of the rate of growth of the productive forces and saves society from many losses. The planning of scientific research, and the planned development of culture and of the training of personnel also yield great results.

The direct, active and conscious participation of the broadest masses of the people in building the new society is a very important feature and a powerful factor of progress under socialism. This something that is possible only in a society whose development is wholly subordinated to the interests of the working people.

All these advantages of progress under socialism ensure a rate social advance never achieved in history before. Since the establishment of Soviet power formerly backward Russia has built up a powerful economy, abolished illiteracy* and raised culture, science and art to a high level. The unprecedented possibilities of social progress constitute one of the main advantages of the socialist system. “...Only under socialism will a rapid, genuine, really mass forward movement, embracing first the majority and then the whole of the population, commence in all spheres of public and personal life.”96

• In 1906, a certain Russian magazine calculated that to abolish illiteracy in Central Asia it would take (at the rate of growth of education that then existed) 4,600 years. Under socialist conditions this task has been fulfilled hundreds of times faster.

This advance will continue at an even faster rate after the victory of communism, for communism marks not the end of historical development but the beginning of extremely rapid and practically infinite progress toward mastery of the forces of nature, develop-ment of the energies and abilities of the human personality, and complete satisfaction of the constantly growing material and spiritual requirements of all members of society.

3. Marxism-Leninism and the Ideals of Social Progress

The ideals of social progress, the general conception of the aims of the proletariat's struggle, of the society that will be built as a result of that struggle, constitute an impor-tant part of the world outlook of the working class.

The ideological hacks of the bourgeoisie in their efforts to weaken the attraction of Marxism have worked hard to distort and falsify the Marxist view of social progress. To listen to them one would think that in the world outlook of the proletariat there was no place at all for humanism, civilisation, freedom of the individual and human happiness. Such high ideals, say the critics of Marxism, are organically foreign to crude material-ism, which is alleged to be concerned with nothing but the “low” material needs of hu-man beings.

These assertions are a vicious caricature of Marxism and a shameless attempt to make capital out of the philistine’s notion of materialism. Ridiculing this notion, Engels wrote that “by the word materialism the Philistine understands gluttony, drunkenness, lust of the eye, lust of the flesh, arrogance, cupidity, avarice, covetousness, profit-

hunting and stock-exchange swindling—in short, all the filthy vices in which he himself indulges in private”.97

Marxist materialism has nothing in common with such a caricature. This is best proved by the fact that the most consistent materialists, the Communists, have shown themselves to be selfless fighters for the freedom, independence and happiness of the people, fighters of a kind and quality that no other movement known to history has ever produced.

True, unlike the ideologists of the classes forming the “haves”, who have never known want and privation, Marxists consider that there can be no talk of human happi-ness while the masses live in poverty and hunger. But this certainly does not mean that they imagine the only aim of social progress to be that of clothing, feeding and freeing from poverty all members of society. The Marxist’s ideals of social progress are far richer and broader. They embrace all aspects of social life, not only the economy but politics, culture and morality. Their embodiment is communist society.

The task of building communism, a society in which private property, exploitation, the very existence of classes and the state, will be abolished once and for all, could be undertaken only by the working class. But this does not mean that such features of so-cialist and communist society as universal well-being, national equality, peace between nations, political freedom and democracy, the flowering of culture, relations of brotherly co-operation between individuals and between peoples, the all-round development of the personality, and many other such things, are the ideals of the working class alone. In reality they are shared by all working people, the overwhelming majority of mankind.

There is nothing surprising in this. Ideals of society—man’s conception of the high-est aims of his activity, of a happy future—have their root, like all ideas, in the condi-tions of the society in which people live. The conditions of a society based on exploita-tion condemn not only the workers but all working people to every kind of hardship. The inevitable result of this is that the workers and the representatives of other working classes are united by many aspirations and desires that they have in common. Life itself, everyday experience shows them the deformities from which society must be freed in order that people may enjoy a free and happy, life.

The definite continuity that links the ideals of the working class of today with the ideals of the toiling masses of the past can be explained by similarities in their condi-tions of life. In both cases these ideals were born in the class struggle against exploiters, in the course of defending the interests of the working people. Marxism, Lenin empha-sised, is not a sectarian doctrine that has sprung up far away from the main road of de-velopment of world civilisation. And this applies not only to Marxist philosophy and political economy, which are a generalisation and summing-up of the whole develop-ment of world science, but also to the Marxist conceptions of communism, which em-body all that is best and progressive in the ideals of the working people and the progres-sive classes of the past. Socialism and communism are the actual realisation of the most noble ideals evolved by mankind on its arduous path.

This does not mean, of course, that the Marxist conceptions of social progress em-

body all the ideals of the toiling classes of the past and present. Some conceptions of an ideal social system found among non-proletarian sections of the people have contained and still contain quite a lot that is wrong, unacceptable to the working class, and utopian, which Marxism-Leninism had to cast aside or at least subject to critical revision.

The basic distinguishing feature of the Marxist ideal of social progress is that it rests not on well-meaning desires but on scientific prevision of the subsequent stages of social development. Marxist theory, based on a profound understanding of the laws of social development, transforms the ancient dreams of a better future, of a just world into firm knowledge of the stage of development of society to which the laws of history, the ob-jective process of development of the productive forces and production relations, the process of development of the class struggle in modern society must lead.

It may be asked, why have the laws of history, which previously have led merely to the replacement of some forms of exploitation and oppression by others, now suddenly revealed broad prospects of realising the brightest hopes and yearnings of mankind? Is it just chance? A happy coincidence?

No, it is not chance. As we have already noted, the working people’s dreams of a happy future arose on a definite material basis, and were engendered by the conditions of life in an exploiting society. The substance of the working people’s social aspirations has always in some way or another been connected with ridding people of the troubles and disasters to which they are doomed by the system of exploitation. It is for this rea-son that as soon as the law-governed development of society places the abolition of this system on the agenda, the realisation of the ideals of the working class and all working people becomes possible and essential, and they are transformed from a utopian dream into a scientifically based prevision.

“Wherever you look you come at every step across problems which humanity is quite capable of solving immediately,” wrote Lenin. Capitalism prevents this. It has amassed enormous wealth—and has made men the slaves of this wealth. It has solved the most complicated technical problems—and has prevented the application of techni-cal improvements because of the poverty and ignorance of millions of the population, because of the stupid niggardliness of a handful of millionaires.

Under capitalism civilisation, freedom and wealth call to mind the rich glutton who is rotting alive through overeating but will not let what is young live on.  

“But the young is growing and will emerge supreme in spite of all.”98

These words of Lenin’s have been confirmed by history, which has shown that al-ready in socialist society many of the working people’s long-cherished dreams have proved capable of realisation. The victory of socialism put an end once and for all to the exploitation of man by man, to national oppression, to the poverty of the masses, and created possibilities as yet unknown in history for the flowering of the human personal-ity, the expansion of democracy, and so on. Other social ideals of Marxism that express the ancient dreams of the people and of advanced thinkers will become reality under the conditions of communism, when the supremacy of man over the forces of nature and of social development will have immeasurably increased.

In this lies one of the sources of the immense power of attraction of the socialist and communist aims of the working class for the broadest working masses, for all progres-sive people, irrespective of their social position. More and more people are coming to accept these aims, becoming convinced that they express the sole practical way of realis-ing the desires and hopes of all working people.

Even many hard-headed leaders of the reactionary bourgeoisie are beginning to un-derstand that it is here and not in the “conspiracies” which they ascribe to the Commu-nists that one must see the reason for the enormous success of the forces of progress and socialism, and that, consequently, they can combat communism only with the help of “constructive ideas’" and “high ideals”.

But the reactionary bourgeoisie neither has nor can have ideas and ideals capable of attracting the broad masses to its side. That is why it resorts to deliberate deception and tries to operate with the bourgeois-democratic ideals of its revolutionary youth which it has denied and betrayed, or with ideals filched from the working people’s own fight for liberation. Democracy, humanism, freedom, civilisation, peace—these words are today constantly on the lip of bourgeois propagandists, although, as history has shown, imperi-alism is in reality the bitterest enemy of peace and equality the peoples, of freedom and democracy, humanism and civilisation.

The Communist and Workers’ Parties have always fought such attempts at decep-tion, attempts to portray the inhuman way life of the exploiting system as “ideal”. The opponents of Marxism would like to represent this fight on the part of Communists as an attack on aspirations that are shared by the majority of mankind. But such assertions are a piece of obvious falsehood and slander.

While exposing the falsity of bourgeois democracy, Communists remain convinced defenders of democracy. They are against bourgeois democracy because they are support-ers of real democracy, democracy for the people, which can be achieved only by getting rid of the system of exploitation. While exposing the falsity of bourgeois humanism, they do not oppose humanism in general. They are for real humanism, of which communism is the embodiment. In exactly the same way, while opposing bourgeois individualism and supporting collectivism, Communists in no way belittle the value, dignity and freedom of the human personality. They reject only the counterposing of the individual to the collec-tive, to the masses of the people; they reject the right of the bourgeois “individual” to de-velop by humiliating and crushing hundreds and thousands of other individuals.

By revealing the deception of reactionary propaganda, which tries to beautify the chains of capitalist oppression and exploitation, the Communist and Workers’ Parties make a big contribution to the realisation of the ideals of social progress. “Criticism,” wrote Marx, “has stripped the chains of the artificial flowers that adorned them not in order that mankind should continue to bear these chains just as they are, without joy or pleasure, but that it should throw off its chains and reach out for the living flower.”99

In our times the world has before it a real path to the achievement of the great ideals cherished by the best representatives of mankind. That path lies through rebuilding soci-ety on socialist and then on communist principles.

PART THREE

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF CAPITALISM

Economic relations, as indicated earlier, determine the character of every social formation. Hence, to understand social life it is necessary, in the first place, to investi-gate the economic structure of society. Marxist political economy is concerned with this study.

Political economy is the science that studies production relations between people, the laws of development of social production and distribution of material wealth at the various stages of human society. “It is not with ‘production’,” wrote Lenin, “that politi-cal economy deals, but with the social relations of men in production, with the social system of production.”100 Some elements of this science arose in the period of slavery in connection with the management of household affairs. Thus, its original name “oikono-mia” is made up of the Greek words oikos—household, and nomos—law. Political economy began to develop as a science with the rise of the capitalist mode of produc-tion. It was a weapon in the hands of bourgeois ideologists in their struggle against feu-dalism.

When the bourgeoisie made its appearance on the historical scene as a progressive class it had an interest in scientific knowledge of the laws of development of capitalist production and in eliminating feudal relations which hampered capital from establishing and consolidating its power. This period witnessed the rise of scientific bourgeois politi-cal economy, which has been called classical political economy. Its founders were the Englishmen William Petty (1623-1687), Adam Smith (1723-1790) and David Ricardo (1772- 1823). English bourgeois classical political economy was one of the sources drawn on by Karl Marx for the creation of the political economy of the working class.

From its inception, political economy developed as a partisan science based on class interest. Owing to its bourgeois character, classical political economy, in spite of having made a number of important discoveries, could not fully lay bare the contradictions of capitalism. Bourgeois economists, as a result of class limitation, regarded capitalism as the natural and sole possible form of organisation of social production. They did not and could not see its historically transient nature.

With the advent of the working class as an independent and powerful force, bour-geois economists abandoned the scientific analysis of the objective laws governing so-cial development. By 1830, the antagonistic contradictions between the bourgeoisie and the working class came into sharp relief in Western Europe. “Thenceforth,” wrote Marx, “the class struggle, practically as well as theoretically, took on more and more outspo-ken and threatening forms. It sounded the knell of scientific bourgeois economy. It was thenceforth no longer a question, whether this theorem or that was true, but whether it was useful to capital or harmful, expedient or inexpedient, politically dangerous or not. In place of disinterested inquirers, there were hired prize-fighters; in place of genuine scientific research, the bad conscience and the evil intent of apologetic.”101

Bourgeois political economy from then on became anti-scientific and its bankruptcy

at that time was, noted Marx, “an event on which the great Russian scholar and critic, N. Chernyshevsky, has thrown the light of a master mind”.102 With the sharpening of the class struggle, bourgeois political economy has become increasingly apologetic and anti-scientific, and to expose the deceit and illusions that it spreads is one of the most impor-tant tasks of Marxist-Leninist political economy.

There also arose a petty-bourgeois trend in political economy. Large-scale produc-tion ruined the small peasant proprietor and drove the handicraftsmen out of their work-shops, forcing them to become “free” proletarians and to submit to the barrack-like dis-cipline of labour in capitalist enterprises.

Petty-bourgeois political economy reflected the ideology of the despairing small proprietor. It fostered the illusion of a possible return to the “golden age” of the inde-pendent production of peasants and handicraftsmen. Its founder was the Swiss econo-mist Simonde de Sismondi (1773-1842), who put forward a petty-bourgeois criticism of capitalism because he failed to appreciate its historical significance as a necessary stage in the development of social production. Sismondi’s followers persistently concentrated on the weak aspects of his theory, namely, the reactionary utopian idea of turning the clock of history back through replacing large-scale production, which ensures higher labour productivity, by the primitive small-scale production of a peasant commune, in which agriculture should be combined with handicrafts.

The ideas of Sismondi were propagated in Russia by the Narodniks,* whose eco-nomic views Lenin subjected to devastating criticism. Petty-bourgeois political economy gained most influence in countries with poorly developed capitalist production and a high proportion of petty production by peasants and handicraftsmen. Petty-bourgeois political economy is incapable of correctly determining the trend of social development, although it often plays a useful part by its criticism of the evils of capitalism and modern imperialism.

• Narodniks (Populists)—participants in a petty-bourgeois trend in the Russian revolutionary movement that emerged in the late sixties and early seventies of the last century, chiefly among the democratic intelligentsia. The revolutionary youth “went to the people” (hence the name—Populists) to arouse the peasants in a struggle against the autocracy, but met with no support. The Narodniks maintained that capitalism would not develop in Russia, that the peasants and not the proletariat were the revolutionary force, and that the peasant commune was the basis for the de-velopment of socialism. They believed that history is made by heroes, by outstanding individuals who are passively followed by the “crowd”. A part of the Narodniks (Narodnaya Volya) chose terror as a method of fighting against the autocracy. In the eighties and nineties the Narodniks abandoned the revolutionary struggle and went over to appeasement with tsarism. They advanced a programme of petty, insignificant reforms in the countryside that were of benefit to the kulaks alone. In other words, Narodism changed from a revolutionary to a liberal movement.—Ed.

Marx and Engels, the great leaders and teachers of the working class, made a genu-ine scientific analysis of the capitalist mode of production, as well as of the preceding primitive-communal, slave and feudal modes of production.

By disclosing the economic laws of the rise and development of capitalist produc-

tion, Marxism not only threw light on the past of mankind, but also enabled it to see its future. Marxism, the scientific accuracy of which was strikingly corroborated by the course of history, determined the conditions under which capitalism would inevitably be replaced by a more advanced mode of production—socialism and communism. The principal work of Marx, Capital, is a most important theoretical weapon in the hands of the working class. This work of genius possesses remarkable vitality, its logical force and fiery militant spirit having stood the test of time. Half a century after the first vol-ume of Capital appeared, Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism was published. This book further developed the general theory of capitalism and concretely examined its new stage—imperialism. Here, as in his other studies of the political econ-omy of capitalism, Lenin gave a brilliant economic substantiation for the laws governing the development of the proletarian revolution in the imperialist period.

Economic theory is a vital component of Marxism-Leninism. It discloses the action of objective economic laws, the correct understanding of which is indispensable for the successful practical activities of Communist and Workers’ Parties. It helps the working people in capitalist countries to develop correct tactics in the class struggle against the bourgeoisie. Marxist-Leninist parties in the socialist countries, guided by the laws of political economy, are directing the economic life of their countries along the path to communism.

CHAPTER 8

PRE-MONOPOLY CAPITALISM

1. The Rise of Capitalist Relations

Two conditions are necessary for capitalist production: firstly, the concentration of the basic means of production as the private property of capitalists, and, secondly, the absence of means of production among the majority, or a considerable portion, of the members of society. This compels those who possess nothing but their capacity to work to become wage-workers in capitalist enterprises in order to keep starvation from their door.

Landlords were the ruling class of feudal society. They exploited the peasants and handicraftsmen who worked on their estates and on the feudal domains, these peasants and handicraftsmen possessing their own means of production. The transformation from feudal to capitalist society became possible only after considerable numbers of peasants and handicraftsmen, that is, producers, had been deprived of their means of production. Apart from this, it required that the feudal lords, as the ruling economic force, should be replaced by capitalists possessing the monetary and material means for carrying on pro-duction with the help of wage-workers.

To clear the ground for the development of capitalist production required an entire historical epoch of transition from feudalism to capitalism. This period was character-ised by the breaking-up of the feudal order, an agonising and bloody epic spelling the ruin of peasantry and handicraftsmen; the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the rising bourgeoisie by means of colonial plunder, the slave trade, usury, piracy, and other forms of crime and violence. Those who were driven out of the villages and separated from the land were compelled to become wage-workers. Growing capitalism used not only the whip of hunger, but also brute force to drive the former peasants and handi-craftsmen into the capitalist factories, where they were taught the discipline of wage-labour by methods of bloody repression. The development of capitalism left thousands and thousands of ruined and tortured persons in its wake.

“New-born capital,” wrote Marx, “comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.”103

Two simultaneous processes—the appearance of wage-labourers (proletarians) and the accumulation of wealth in the hands of capitalists—were designated by Marx as primitive accumulation. This historical forerunner of bourgeois society should be distin-guished from the accumulation of capital which continually occurs as a result of exploi-tation in capitalist factories. However, primitive accumulation of capital relates not only to the past, for some of its methods are still being applied today in the colonial and eco-nomically underdeveloped countries.

Capitalist relations arose in the epoch of primitive accumulation of capital. A new class of exploiters appeared—the capitalist class, and a new class of exploited—wage-workers, or proletarians. The transition from feudalism to capitalism took place in West

European countries through the bourgeois revolutions of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, as a result of which the bourgeoisie became the ruling force politically as well as economically.

In Russia, feudalism was abolished later than in many other countries, and its sur-vivals persisted until the October Socialist Revolution. The abolition of serfdom in Rus-sia in 1861 marked the beginning of the capitalist epoch, the replacement of feudal soci-ety by capitalism.

2. Commodity Production. Commodities. Law of Value and Money

Capitalism is the highest form of commodity production. Accordingly Marx, in Capital, begins his analysis of capitalism with an examination of commodities. The ex-change of commodities, wrote Lenin, appears as the “simplest, most ordinary, and fun-damental, most common and everyday relation of bourgeois (commodity) society, a re-lation encountered billions of times”.104 Marx disclosed that the embryonic contradic-tions and peculiarities of capitalism lay hidden in the commodity and the exchange of one commodity for another.

Commodity production is the production of goods for exchange or for sale. It re-placed the natural economy that was the dominant form of production under slavery and feudalism. Commodity production arose in the period of disintegration of primitive-communal society and gradually acquired increasing importance. In its first stages it was simple commodity production based on the private property and personal labour of the small producers—the craftsmen and peasants—who did not exploit the labour of others. The social division of labour and private ownership of the means of production are pre-requisites of commodity production.

Commodity

Not every product of labour is a commodity. If the product of an individual’s labour satisfies his own needs, or those of his family, then it is only a product, a thing, but not a commodity. A product of labour becomes a commodity only when transferred to another for consumption through exchange (purchase-sale). A commodity has a twofold charac-ter. The capacity to satisfy some human want gives a commodity its use-value, A use-value, such as bread, for example, is exchanged in the market for the use-value of an-other kind, e.g., iron. The capacity of a commodity to be exchanged for another com-modity gives it exchange-value. The exchange of one commodity for another shows that they have something in common, which makes it possible to compare them by some common measure. It is not their physical properties—weight, volume, form, etc.— that they have in common; on the contrary, the physical properties of commodities are ex-ceedingly diverse. Their common characteristic is that they are all products of human labour. Every commodity is as it were a crystallisation of human labour. And, as the embodiment of the labour it contains, a commodity is a value. The proportion in which two different commodities are exchanged or one another is a definite, not an arbitrary

one. Exchange-value, which reflects the quantitative relationship of exchange, expresses merely the form in which the value contained in a commodity appears. A commodity represents a unity of use-value and value.

The magnitude of value of a commodity is determined by labour, but not by that la-bour which was expended for the production of the given article. Similar commodities may be produced by different persons using different instruments of labour and expend-ing varying periods of time, i.e., unequal quantities of labour. Value is determined, how-ever, not by the individual period of labour, but by the quantity of labour required in a given society for the production of the given type of commodity. This labour is called socially-necessary labour. It can be measured by labour-time. “The labour-time socially necessary,” wrote Marx, “is that required to produce an article under the normal condi-tions of production, and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time.”105 The value of commodities is reduced with the growing productivity of social labour, inasmuch as the production of a single commodity requires less and less labour, less labour-time.

Labour Embodied in Commodities

The labour theory of value was first elaborated by Adam Smith and David Ricardo, representatives of bourgeois classical political economy. Marx, however, was the first to give a comprehensive and consistent development to this theory. He made a brilliant discovery by disclosing the twofold character of the labour embodied in commodities,

Marx established that the dual character of a commodity—use- value and value—are determined by the twofold nature of the labour embodied in it.

The use-value of a commodity is created by labour expended in a definite form—concrete labour. Use-values are as diverse as the concrete kinds of labour of which they are the product. The kinds of labour differ from one another in the methods and means of labour applied. A definite kind of concrete labour is thus embodied in each use-value. However, irrespective of its concrete features, labour is always an expenditure of human energy—physical, mental and nervous—and in this sense it is homogeneous human la-bour, labour in general. Labour considered as an expenditure of human labour-power generally, without regard to its concrete form, is abstract labour, and it is this that cre-ates the value of a commodity.

Abstract and concrete labour are two aspects of the labour embodied in a commod-ity. “On the one hand, all labour is, speaking physiologically, an expenditure of human labour-power, and in its character of identical abstract human labour, it creates and forms the value of commodities. On the other hand, all labour is the expenditure of hu-man labour-power in a special form and with a definite aim, and in this, its character of concrete useful labour, it produces use-values.”106

Just as one use-value differs qualitatively from another use-value, so one form of concrete labour is qualitatively different from another. And just as the value of one commodity differs only quantitatively from the value of another, so the abstract labour embodied in the one commodity differs only quantitatively from that in the other.

In exchanging commodities, producers equate the most varied kinds of labour with one another. The social division of labour lies behind relations of exchange, which ex-press the mutual relations in the market of commodity producers engaged in social pro-duction. Thus, value and the value-relation therefore represent not a relation between things, but a relation between people, between commodity producers. Value is a social, production relationship which is only covered by a material envelope and is manifested in the relations between things. The value of a commodity is created by the labour ex-pended in its production, but it appears only in the course of exchange, only in equating one commodity to another.

Money

Exchange, at first, was highly infrequent and a matter of chance. One product was exchanged directly for another. With the development of the social division of labour, exchange became increasingly regular. A growing number of products of labour were produced especially for exchange, and the most marketable commodity gradually as-sumed the role of universal equivalent, i. e., the commodity acting as the medium of ex-change. In place of direct barter by individuals for the articles required by them (which necessitates finding a purchaser who possesses the product needed by the seller), people began to exchange their goods for the universal equivalent, for which one could always acquire any product. The role of universal equivalent was played in different localities by various articles, e. g., cattle, fur, salt, copper, iron, etc. Later on, the precious metals, gold and silver, became the universal equivalent.

By their very nature, the precious metals are particularly adapted to fulfil the role of a universal equivalent. They always retain a uniform quality, do not deteriorate and are easily divisible into the smallest portions. With the development of exchange, therefore, they naturally came to act as the universal equivalent, fulfilling the function of money.

Money represents a special commodity which acts as the universal equivalent for all commodities. It did not arise by decree, it was not the invention of any particular indi-vidual or the result of an agreement between people. The precious metals were selected out of the world of commodities and became money thanks to a long process of devel-opment of commodity exchange. Money is a special commodity which serves in the ex-change of all other commodities. Its suitability as a universal equivalent represents the use-value of this commodity. The essence of money is expressed in those functions which it fulfils in the commodity economy.

The fundamental function of money is to serve as a measure of value for all other commodities. The value of every commodity is expressed in money terms. People do not say that one pair of boots equals one metre of cloth, but rather that boots cost so many rubles, dollars, pounds, or crowns as the case may be. The value of a commodity ex-pressed in money is its price.

Money fulfils the function of circulation medium. The cloth-maker does not ex-change his cloth for boots. He sells it for money, and uses money to buy boots. With the appearance of money, the direct barter of products is replaced by the circulation of

commodities, i. e., exchange by means of money. The formula for this circulation is:

Commodity—Money—Commodity

The amount of money needed for the circulation of commodities is determined by the total of the prices of all commodities divided the number of turnovers of money units. Thus, if the sum of the prices of all commodities in a country sold within a given period, let us say one year, amounts to ten thousand million money units (dollars, francs, marks, etc.), and each money unit performs 10 turnovers a year, then the amount of money needed for the circulation of all commodities equals one thousand million.  

In the process of circulation, gold coins were frequently replaced by silver and cop-per, and later by paper money. The state issues paper money to take the place of gold as circulation medium. Paper money represents gold, and the quantity issued must corre-spond to the amount of gold required as circulation medium. If the quantity of paper money put into circulation exceeds the amount of full-value gold money needed for commodity circulation, then paper money will be depreciated. If one thousand million gold units are needed in a given country for the circulation of commodities and the state issues two thousand million paper money units, each unit of paper money, let us say 10 dollars, will be able to purchase only as many commodities as five gold dollars.

The history of capitalist money circulation since the First World War has been marked by the extreme instability of paper money. It has often been depreciated as a result of excessively large issues. This depreciation, known as inflation, leads to a reduc-tion in the standard of living of the working people, who live on salaries and wages.

Money functions as a means of accumulation. It is a universal token of wealth, for money can always buy any commodity. In bourgeois society, therefore, money is the most mobile form of the accumulation of wealth.

In making purchases and sales on credit, money functions as a means of payment. Thanks to credit, the amount of cash needed for circulation is reduced.

In trade between countries, money fulfils the function of universal money, gold be-ing used for this purpose.

Law of Value

The law of value is the economic law of commodity production, according to which the exchange of commodities is effected in accordance with the amount of socially-necessary labour expended on their production. Under the influence of this law, the prices of commodities gravitate towards their values. Under conditions of commodity production, each producer works on his own account and produces commodities for the market, where the demand is unknown to him beforehand. The equalisation of supply and demand under the conditions of such anarchy of production can take place only as a matter of chance, as a result of constant fluctuations. This leads to the prices of com-modities continually diverging from their values, being either above or below them. When the supply exceeds the demand, prices fall below values; and when demand is greater than supply, commodities are sold at prices which are higher than their values.

The prices of commodities, however, gravitate towards their values. If the price of a commodity is higher than its value, this evokes an increase in production and conse-quently a greater supply of the given commodity, which inevitably tends to reduce the price to the level of its value. When the price of a commodity falls lower than its value, production is curtailed, creating a shortage of the given commodity, and ultimately the price will rise to the level of value. Thus, the deviations of prices above and below val-ues, on the whole, mutually counterbalance one another. At any particular moment, the price of a commodity may deviate from its value for a variety of reasons. But average prices over an extended period fairly accurately coincide with values.

In a society based on private property, the law of value operating through the mechanism of competition regulates the proportions in which social labour and means of production are distributed among the different branches of the economy. Continual price fluctuations force part of the commodity producers to leave those branches where supply exceeds demand and the prices of commodities have fallen below their values. The drop in prices affects various groups of commodity producers in different ways. Those who are more clever, enterprising and powerful strengthen their position, while the weak are ruined. Enrichment of the few at the expense of the mass of producers—such is the re-sult of the continual fluctuations of prices and the deviations from their values. The mass of small producers, however, are crushed by competition not merely because of the de-viation of prices from value. They would not be saved by the sale of commodities at their values. The law of value is the law of spontaneous development of the productive forces. Commodity producers who utilise the latest techniques are in a more advanta-geous position, inasmuch as they produce commodities with a smaller outlay than the amount socially necessary. At the same time, the labour outlay per unit of production of many producers exceeds the level which is socially necessary. They cannot compete with their more powerful rivals. As a result, an insignificant minority of producers be-come capitalists, while the mass of small commodity producers are ruined and com-pelled to live by the sale of their labour-power. The means of production are thus in-creasingly concentrated in the hands of the capitalists, and simple commodity production is inevitably transformed into capitalist production.

Thus, the law of value operating in the commodity economy through the mechanism of competition fulfils three important functions: it acts as regulator in the distribution of labour-power and means of production between the various branches of production; it acts as a motive force of technical progress; and it leads to the development of capitalist relations, dooming the small commodity producer to ruin and destruction.

3. The Theory of Surplus-Value Is the Corner-Stone of Marx’s Economic Doctrine

Marx showed the antagonistic character of the relations between capital and labour that form the axis about which the entire capitalist economy revolves. By his investiga-tion of surplus-value he provided an exhaustive scientific explanation of the process of the exploitation of the workers by the capitalists.

Marx’s analysis proceeds from the simple and well-known fact that capitalists first

buy the commodities needed for production, and then sell their products for a greater amount of money than they themselves expended.

Under simple commodity circulation, the owner of a commodity sells it to buy an-other commodity. The ultimate end of simply commodity circulation is to satisfy wants, and its formula is:

Commodity—Money—Commodity.

The process of circulation assumes a different appearance when a commodity is bought not for satisfying a particular need, but for selling. The formula of this new proc-ess is:

Money—Commodity—Money.

Buying for the purpose of selling makes sense only if more money is obtained as the result of such circulation than was first expended. Whoever buys with the aim of selling also buys to sell dearer. This augmentation of the initial value converts it into capital. Capital is self-expanding value, and money is the initial form of capital. The capitalist process of production begins with the purchase means of production and labour-power, that is, the conversion of capital from its money form into the form of productive capital. The capitalist sells on the market the commodities which have been produced, and thereby transforms commodity capital into money capital. Thus, capital returns to its original form. However, the capitalist gains more money than he expended to begin with. The exchange takes place according to value (for if some sell dearer and others cheaper these deviations are equalised on the scale the whole society). The question arises: how can the owner of money; the capitalist, who buys and sells commodities at their values, nevertheless extract a greater value from circulation? Marx provided the answer, which bourgeois political economy was unable to give. The answer is that the owner of money can do this solely because he finds a commodity on the market, whose consumption possesses the special property of being a source of new value. This com-modity is labour-power. Let us see what the specific features of the commodity are. Engels develops the subject as follows.

Production of Surplus-Value

What is the value of labour-power? The value of any commodity is measured by the labour necessary for its production. Labour-power exists in the form of a living worker, who requires a definite quantity of the means of subsistence to maintain himself and his family. The labour-time requisite for the production of these means of subsistence de-termines the value of labour-power.

“Let us assume,” wrote Engels, “that these means of subsistence represent six hours of labour-time daily. Our incipient capitalist, who buys labour-power for carrying on his business, i.e., hires a labourer, consequently pays this labourer the full value of his day’s labour-power if he pays him a sum of money which also represents six hours of labour. And as soon as the labourer has worked six hours in the employment of the incipient

capitalist, he has fully reimbursed the latter for his outlay, for the value of the day’s la-bour-power which he had paid. But so far the money would not have been converted into capital, it would not have produced any surplus-value. And for this reason the buyer of labour-power has quite a different notion of the nature of the transaction he has car-ried out. The fact that only six hours’ labour is necessary to keep the labourer alive for twenty-four hours, does not in any way prevent him from working twelve hours out of the twenty-four. The value of the labour-power, and the value which that labour-power creates in the labour-process, are two different magnitudes.... On our assumption, there-fore, the labourer each day costs the owner of money the value of the product of six hours' labour, but he hands over to him each day the value of the product of twelve hours’ labour. The difference in favour of the owner of the money is—six hours of un-paid surplus-labour, a surplus-product for which he does not pay and in which six hours’ labour is embodied. The trick has been performed. Surplus-value has been produced; money has been converted into capital.”107

This example vividly reveals the origin of surplus-value. The value of labour-power is paid for, but this value is much smaller than that which the capitalist extracts from labour-power in the course of its use, this difference, unpaid labour, is precisely the share which falls to the capitalist, or more accurately, to the capitalist class.

All the non-working members of society are maintained by this unpaid labour. It provides the payments for state and municipal taxes which fall on the capitalist class, the ground-rent of land-owners, etc. Indeed, the whole capitalist social structure rests upon it.

Capitalist Exploitation

During one portion of his labour-time, the wage-worker creates a product which is necessary for his own maintenance. Marx calls this portion necessary labour-time, and the labour expended during this time necessary labour. During another portion of his labour-time, surplus labour-time, the worker creates surplus-value by his surplus-labour, Surplus-value (m) is the value created by the labour of a wage-worker over and above the value of his labour-power and appropriated without payment by the capitalist.

The essence of capitalist exploitation is the production of surplus-value. Capitalists are not interested in producing means of production and consumer goods that are useful and needed by society, but in extracting as much surplus-value as possible. In this re-spect, their appetites are insatiable.

Capital

The exploitation of wage-workers under capitalism is a means of maintaining and increasing values belonging to the capitalists, of extending the power and domination of capital. Capital is value which produces surplus-value. Bourgeois economists assert that every means of production is capital, and thus deliberately conceal the essential fact that means of production become capital only when transformed into a means of exploiting workers, and that capital is not a thing but a social relationship between the main classes

of bourgeois society, a relationship of the exploitation of wage-workers by the owners of the means of production.

The Marxist-Leninist understanding of capital as a social relationship reveals the es-sence of the bourgeois mode of production—the exploitation by the capitalist class of the class of wage-workers who live by the sale of their labour-power.

Two parts of capital should be differentiated: constant capital (c), which is spent on the means of production (buildings, machinery, fuel, raw materials, etc.), and variable capital (v), which is spent on labour-power. They play different roles in the production of surplus-value. The means of production do not create any new value by taking part in the process of production. The value of constant capital is transferred in whole or in part to the finished product. Variable capital, on the other hand, acts quite differently. It grows by creating surplus-value in the production process. The ratio of surplus-value to variable capital (m/v) expresses the degree of exploitation of labour by capital and is called the rate of surplus-value.

The growth of surplus-value takes place in two ways. The first way consists in pro-longing the working day or intensifying labour (increased labour intensity, or greater expenditure of human energy per unit time). Marx called this surplus-value absolute surplus-value. The second way consists in decreasing the necessary labour-time. Marx called this surplus-value relative surplus-value.

The capitalist would, if it were possible, extend the working day to 24 hours, since the longer the working day, the greater the amount of surplus-value created. The worker, on the other hand, has an interest in shortening the working day. Hence, a struggle en-sues for reducing the length of the working day. This struggle, which began with the first workers' actions in the early part of the nineteenth century, has never ceased. That is why the capitalists are not able to extend the working day without limit. Today, the pro-duction of absolute surplus-value takes place under capitalism mainly through intensifi-cation of labour.

Relative surplus-value results from lengthening the surplus labour-time—while the total length of the working day remains unchanged—by reducing the portion of labour-time necessary for replacing the value of labour-power. This is a consequence of in-creased labour productivity in the branches of industry manufacturing for the workers those necessaries of life that determine the value of labour-power. The greater the pro-ductivity of labour in these branches and the lower the value of their products, the shorter will be the necessary labour-time and, therefore, the greater the surplus labour-time in all capitalist enterprises.

A reduction in the necessary labour-time also takes place as a result of increased la-bour productivity in those branches which produce the means of production used in making consumer goods.

Individual capitalists may also obtain extra surplus-value. This accrues to the capi-talist who introduces technical improvements which others do not possess. His expendi-ture per unit of output will be lower, but he will sell his commodities at the generally prevailing prices. Thus, the capitalist who employs advanced technological methods re-

ceives surplus-value in excess of the usual rate of surplus-value.

However, the other capitalists also strive for additional surplus-value. Therefore, they, too, introduce technical improvements in their hunt for extra surplus-value. Indeed, competition compels them to do so.

In analysing the creation of relative surplus-value, Marx investigated three historical stages of increasing productivity of labour lender capitalism: (1) simple co-operation, (2) manufacture, and (3) large-scale machine industry.

Capitalist simple co-operation is the concentration of a more or less considerable number of wage-workers under the supervision of a capitalist in order to manufacture one and the same kind of product. Production is based on handicraft technique, and there of labour. But the bringing together of many workers makes for a definite increase in labour productivity.

Manufacture is capitalist co-operation based on the division of labour, but it still rests on handicraft technique. It makes possible a significant rise in the productivity of labour as compared with simple co-operation. However, manufacture was not able to supplant petty production and to become the dominant form of production. Capitalism was able to achieve complete supremacy only when it passed over to machine industry, the highest form of development of large-scale capitalist production. Machine industry led to the disintegration of petty production and expanded the sphere of the domination of capital, thereby creating conditions for a maximum increase in surplus-value.

Marx’s theory of surplus-value reveals how the process of exploitation of the worker by the capitalist takes place in bourgeois society. It demonstrates that only the labour of wage-workers provides a constant and inexhaustible source of enrichment for the capi-talists. This theory exposes the hypocrisy of the claim that the bourgeois social structure is based on equality between worker and capitalist and on a harmony of interests. It re-veals the irreconcilable an increasingly antagonistic nature of the interests of capital and labour and mobilises the masses for the struggle against capitalism.

4. Wages

The theory of wages affects basic class interests in bourgeois society and is one of the most acute problems of economics.

Under capitalism, wages are the price of labour-power. However the false impres-sion is created that wages are the price of labour and that the capitalist pays the worker for his labour, i.e., for whole of his expended labour. But the fact is that labour creates value; labour itself has no value. Furthermore, the capitalist pays the worker not for his labour but for his labour-power.

“Wages are not what they appear to be, namely, the value, price, of labour, but only a masked form for the value, or price, of labour-power.”108

Since wages seem to be something else than what they really are, Marx calls them the transmuted form of the value, or price, labour-power.

The magnitude of wages comprises two elements: a) purely physical, which consists of the value of the means of subsistence that are absolutely necessary for the worker’s

existence, the maintenance of his ability to work and support his family; b) historical, or social, which depends on the development of the vital needs a: cultural requirements of the working class of a given country.

The capitalists seek to reduce wages to their physical minimum. The working class, on the other hand, fights to raise its standard living. Consequently, the movement of wages depends essentially on the class struggle waged by the proletariat, its organisa-tional strength and the resistance it offers to the employers. The struggle of the working class for the improvement of labour conditions and its standard of living, without alter-ing the system of private ownership of the means of production and of political power in the hands of the bourgeoisie, can make its position easier. However, this struggle does not affect the basis of capitalism and cannot free the working people from the system of wage slavery.

The basic forms of wages under capitalism are time-wages and piece-wages. Time-wages directly reflect the hourly, daily, weekly or monthly value of labour-power. Under this form, wages are paid by the hour, day, week or month. Piece-wages are fixed on the basis of time-wages. Let us suppose that the hourly wage is 90 cents. If a worker can pro-duce two articles of a particular kind per hour, he will receive 45 cents for each article.

Under the piece-wage system, the personal interest of the worker drives him to work with greatest possible intensity. If the worker in our example begins to produce not two, but three articles of a given commodity per hour, his wages will increase by 50 per cent. However, the worker’s well-being is extremely short-lived. The capitalist will usually modify the piece-rate immediately, and the benefit of the increased intensity of labour will, in the final analysis, accrue to him. Even under the system of time-wages, the use of the conveyor belt and other machinery, whose rate of movement compels the worker to work uninterruptedly under tremendous pressure, permits the capitalist to achieve an extraordinarily high intensity of labour.

Increased output at the expense of greater intensity of labour results in a rise in the value of labour-power since more of it is expended. Consequently, a rise in wages should take place, but such an increase, as a rule, does not correspond to the heightened intensity of labour.

A rise in the price of labour-power does not at all mean that this price rises above its value. “On the contrary,” noted Marx, “the rise in price may be accompanied by a fall in value. This occurs whenever the rise in the price of labour-power does not compensate for its increased wear and tear.”109

A rise in wages under capitalism takes place only as a result of bitter class struggle and appears each time as a lagging reaction to a rise in the value of labour-power conse-quent to increased intensity of labour. It takes place following a reduction in wages (e. g., during periods of economic recovery and boom subsequent to economic prises), or under conditions in which a sharp drop in real wages has been brought about by inflation or inflated monopoly prices of consumer goods, rent increases, higher taxes, etc. If the workers were to renounce their day-to-day struggle with capital for the improvement of their standard of living, in the words of Marx, “they would be degraded to one level

mass of broken wretches past salvation”.110 The Communist and Workers’ Parties con-sider it their sacred duty to carry on a struggle not only for the ultimate goal, but also for the immediate needs of the working class.

5. Growth of Profit—Aim and Limit of Capitalist Production

In the economic practice of the capitalist, surplus-value appears as profit.

Profit is the excess of the value of a commodity over the expenses incurred by the capitalist in its production or the increase of the whole capital advanced by him.

Profit is the motive force and main aim of every capitalist. For the capitalist, produc-tion is solely a means of making profit. The requirements of the people in a capitalist economy are taken into account only insofar as they are necessary conditions for extract-ing profit. Apart from this, the concept “requirements of the people” has no meaning for the capitalist.

Capital seeks in every way possible to augment the mass and rate of profit.

The rate of profit denotes the ratio of surplus-value to the total capital invested in an enterprise. The rate of profit is an index of the profitability of a capitalist enterprise.

Differences exist between individual branches of industry in the process of produc-ing surplus-value. In some branches the capitalist has to invest the larger portion of his capital in the means production—buildings, machinery, etc., which in themselves not bring in profit although they are essential for obtaining it. In other less technically equipped branches, the larger proportion the capital is expended on hiring labour-power. The proportion between constant and variable capital determines the organic composi-tion of capital, whether in a particular enterprise or in the branch of industry as a whole. The larger the relative share of constant capital in the total capital, the higher is the or-ganic composition.

Average Profit

Equal capitals invested in different branches of production having varying organic compositions produce different amounts surplus-value. The surplus-value created in branches with a low organic composition of capital is larger than in those with a high organic composition.

However, branches with different organic composition of capital could not coexist unless capitalists received the same amount profit on capitals of equal size. Indeed, what would be the sense of capitalist investing capital in a branch with a low rate of profit. Experience proves that equal capitals invested in different branches of industry, regard-less of organic composition, yield more or less the same profit. This is explained by the fact that alongside the competition between capitalists within each branch for the sale of commodities of the same kind, there exists competition between the capitalists of differ-ent branches over the most profitable way of investing capital. The flow of capital from one branch to another leads to the raising of prices in some branches and their lowering in others. Capital forsakes those branches in which there is an overproduction of com-modities, causing prices to fall sharply and enterprises to go bankrupt; it finds its way to

those branches where a shortage of commodities has caused prices to rise. Thus, the spontaneous equalisation of rates of profit in branches of industry with different organic compositions of capital leads to the formation of an average (or general) rate of profit. Thanks to this flow of capital, the total amount of surplus-value produced by the work-ing class is distributed among the various capitalists approximately in proportion to the magnitude of their capital.

Price of Production

As a result of the equalisation of the rates of profit, the prices of commodities under capitalism are determined by the price of production, which equals the cost of produc-tion plus the average profit. Every capitalist seeks to sell his commodity at a price that will bring him not only the cost of production but also the average profit which is nor-mal for the given country at that time. The price of production of the individual com-modity may, therefore, be higher or lower than its value. However, the sum of the prices of production equals the sum of the values of all commodities.

Let us suppose, for example, that the value of commodities in branches with a high organic composition of capital amounts to 120 monetary units (constant capital—90, variable capital — 10, and surplus-value—20 units); and that in branches with a low organic composition the total value is 140 units (constant capital—80, variable capital—20, and surplus-value—40 units).

Under these conditions, the price of production, which equals the outlay of capital and the average profit, amounts to:

100 + (20 + 40) / 2 = 130 units.

The commodities of branches with a high organic composition of capital are sold at 10 units higher than their values, while the commodities of branches with a low organic composition of capital—at 10 units lower than their values. Individual deviations from value cancel one another, and the sum of values of all commodities (120 + 140 = 260) coincides with the sum of the prices of production (130 + 130 = 260).

The theory of average profit and prices of production is of great significance for un-derstanding the basic tasks facing the proletariat in the class struggle. This theory dem-onstrates that every capitalist has an interest in raising the degree of exploitation not only of his own workers but of the working class as a whole, since, in the final analysis, the profit of each capitalist represents his share in the total mass of surplus-value created by the working class. It is understandable, wrote Marx, “why capitalists form a veritable freemason society vis-a-vis the whole working class, while there is little love lost be-tween them in competition among themselves”.111

The theory of average profit thus reveals the material basis of capitalist class solidar-ity. To this capitalist class solidarity, which is based on the selfish aim of extracting as much as possible out of the worker, the working class counterposes its own unity, which is based on the legitimate aspiration to abolish capitalist exploitation. The struggle of the working class against the rule of capital cannot be limited to action against individual

employers for the improvement of labour conditions in a given enterprise, or a particular branch. The ultimate goal of working-class struggle is the elimination of the capitalist system of exploitation and the bourgeois social structure.

The theory of average profit shows that the competition between capitalists of dif-ferent branches of production reduces the different profits to the usual average profit, irrespective of the organic composition of capital in one or another branch. The average rate of profit changes in the course of time, but for each country at any given period it is sufficiently stable to be reckoned with by all businessmen.

A rise in the organic composition of capital implies a more rapid growth of constant capital compared with variable capital. And since constant capital by itself yields no profit, it is clear that the rate of profit (i.e., the ratio of surplus-value to the total capital and not only to its variable proportion) tends to fall. To diminish this tendency capital-ists try to raise the rate of exploitation, resorting to various methods of counteraction. But this in its turn aggravates the contradictions between labour and capital.

Profit of Enterprise and Interest

Capitalist profit dis divided into profit of enterprise and interest. The capitalist en-trepreneur usually does not limit himself to the use of his own capital. He also puts loan capital into circulation. The portion of profit which the functioning capitalist surrenders to another capitalist or bank in return for the use of capital is called interest. The part which remains after interest is deducted from profit is call profit of enterprise. Under capitalism banks act as intermediaries in settling accounts between capitalists, gather money capital and receipts (through deposits and other operations) and place them at the disposal of capitalists. By facilitating the development of capitalist production and the centralisation of capital, banks simultaneously consolidate the rule of capital over la-bour. They create the conditions under which big capitalists dispose not only of their own capital but of an increasing proportion of the money and income of the other strata of the population.

Profit Is a Limitation of Capitalist Production

Bourgeois economists extol capitalist profit as the greatest stimulus to technical pro-gress and unlimited growth of production. They never mention that capitalist profit re-sults from exploitation and the exhaustion of labour-power. They gloss over the fact that the subordination of production to the principle of capitalist profit is not only a stimulus but also a limitation of capitalist production. Capitalists produce only those things, and such amounts of them, that can yield a profit. It not infrequently happens that capitalists, especially under present-day conditions, restrict production, hold back technical pro-gress, and destroy masses of products in order to raise the rate of profit. Moreover, capi-talist monopolies unleash wars, which cause mankind untold destruction, and all this is done for the sake of profit.

6. Capitalist Development in Agriculture. Ground-Rent

The economic laws of capitalism operate as inexorably in agriculture as in industry.

With the development of the social division of labour, agricultural products are pro-duced for sale and become commodities. Agriculture is transformed into a branch of the economy producing commodities. A fierce competitive struggle breaks out between the individual commodity producers, making most precarious the position of the small culti-vator who possesses the least amount of land, implements and draught animals, The small producers are ruined en masse and thrown into the ranks of the proletariat. A con-siderable share of production is concentrated in the hands of the capitalist upper strata of the countryside. Two extreme groups develop there: on the one hand, poor peasants and farm-labourers, and, on the other, the rural bourgeoisie—kulaks, capitalist farmers and the more or less bourgeoisified landlords who continue to exist in many capitalist coun-tries. The middle peasantry occupy an intermediate position between these two groups.

Agriculture lags considerably behind industry in the process of capitalist develop-ment. This applies not only to backward countries where the development of capitalism in agriculture is retarded by feudal survivals but also, in some measure, to the highly developed capitalist countries. One of the most important reasons for this backwardness lies in the fact that part of the surplus-value which is created in the agricultural economy is appropriated by the parasitic class of landowners in the form of ground-rent.

Ground-Rent

In capitalist agriculture, as distinct from industry, all newly created value is divided among three classes. The agricultural worker receives his wages, the capitalist tenant-farmer receives the general average profit, and the landowner—rent. The question is: In what way does the special share of surplus-value which is taken from the capitalist farmer by the landowner in the form of ground rent arise, in addition to the normal profit on capital?

In examining this question, Marx drew attention to certain economic peculiarities of agriculture. Differences exist in the fertility of various cultivated pieces of land and in their location with respect to markets. Given similar outlays, plots of land of better qual-ity will yield richer crops than worse lands. The same holds true of differences in the location of plots of land in relation to markets. Those farms which are situated nearer to the market will be able to transport their products more cheaply and thus operate more profitably.

For the sake of brevity, these two differences, i.e., varying fertility and location, may be summarised as differences between better and worse lands. Since the output of the best and medium-quality lands is insufficient to meet the demands of society, it is also necessary to cultivate the worst lands. Moreover, not only the capitalists who farm the best and medium plots of land, but also those who farm the worst lands must receive the average profit in addition to compensation for their outlays. Hence, the price of produc-tion of agricultural commodities equals the costs of production on the worst land plus the average profit. Medium and best lands yield an excess profit—over and above the

average profit—which the capitalist tenant-farmer must pay to the owner of the land.

Differential rent I is the excess profit obtained on lands of better quality, or on those more advantageously situated with respect to the market, as compared with lands of worse quality, or those more disadvantageously located; it comes about as a result of difference in the quality of land. These differences in fertility and location of individual plots of land, however, are only the conditions, the natural basis for the creation of dif-ferential rent I. Its origin is the surplus-value created by agricultural workers.

Excess profit may be obtained by a capitalist farmer on a plot of land of any quality as a result of additional capital investment. This permits him to obtain a greater yield than that from the worst land, the latter yield determining the price of a unit of produc-tion The extra profit gained from cultivated plots of land as a result new capital outlays, i. e., intensive farming, is called differential rent II. If it is acquired while the former tenancy agreement is still in force, the differential rent II is appropriated by the capitalist farmer himself. However, prior to concluding a new agreement, the landowner will usu-ally take into account the results of intensive cultivation and will raise the rent to include this differential rent II.

Bourgeois political economy seeks to explain differential rent through the alleged existence in agriculture of a “law of diminishing returns”. Marx and Lenin have demon-strated that this mythical “law of diminishing returns” is in no way related to the theory of rent. It has been invented and is propagated by bourgeois economists to absolve capi-talists and large landowners from responsibility for the high prices of agricultural com-modities, the impoverishment of the masses and the barbarous exploitation of the soil. All this is blamed on the operation of an eternal and inexorable “law”. One of the foun-ders of vulgar political economy, the Rev. T. R. Malthus, on the basis of this “law”, de-clared that the growth of population will always outstrip the increase in agricultural out-put. Hence, wars, epidemics and the artificial restriction of child-bearing among the poorer classes are necessary to maintain a certain “equilibrium”. Neo-Malthusians use the same “law” to justify aggressive wars and the mass extermination of people.

The appropriation of differential rent by the landowners, who, as a rule, use it for unproductive purposes, acts as a brake on agricultural development. Of even greater sig-nificance in this respect is the role of absolute rent.

The worst lands, as already noted, do not yield differential rent. Bat, the owners of these plots of land do not grant them to capitalist entrepreneurs without compensation, without rent.

This brings us to an examination of the source of rent on the worst lands. To begin with, only variable capital gives rise to surplus-value. In agriculture the technical level is lower than in industry, for the capitalist who leases the land for only a given period is unwilling to invest as much in machines, buildings, etc., as the industrialist invests in his enterprise. As a consequence of the lower organic composition of capital, the amount of surplus-value produced in agriculture on a given capital is greater than on a capital of comparable size in industry. Let us assume that 100 money units are expended in pro-duction: in industry — constant capital (90) and variable capital (10); and in agricul-

ture—constant capital (80) and variable capital (20). Assuming a rate of exploitation equal to 100 per cent, the surplus-value produced in industry will amount to 10 units, and agriculture—20 units. The monopoly of private property in land, however, is an ob-stacle to the free flow of capital into agriculture and consequently there cannot be an equalisation of the rate of profit between industry and agriculture.

The prices of agricultural products are therefore established in accordance with their value, and not their price of production. The difference between the value and the price of production constitutes absolute rent. This difference simultaneously represents the disparity between the higher surplus-value derived in agriculture as compared with in-dustry (in our example—10 money units).

The tribute which society is obliged to pay the large landowners in the form of ground-rent makes foodstuffs and industrial crops dearer. This worsens the conditions of the working people both in town and country. Owners of land also exact a tribute from mining and extractive industries, which increases the prices of minerals. Furthermore rent paid for urban building lots increases the rental for dwelling-space. Finally, increas-ing rents worsen the position of peasants who do not possess their own land.

Rent and the Ruin of Small and Middle Peasants

Rent paid by the capitalist farmer to the owner of land represents an excess of sur-plus-value over the average profit. The landowner and the capitalist divide up between them the unpaid labour of the workers. But the small and middle peasants are in a com-pletely different position. Their rent to the landowners, as a rule, absorbs not only their entire surplus product, but even a portion of their necessary product. The rent which is demanded of the small peasant often dooms him to ruin.

The Marxist theory of ground-rent scientifically demonstrates the antithesis between the interests of the mass of peasants and those of the large landowners. The entire course of history has confirmed Marx’s analysis and shown that the working peasantry can de-fend their rights only through alliance with the proletariat in the struggle against capital-ism.

7. Reproduction of Social Capital and Economic Crises

New material wealth must be produced to replace the continually consumed means of production and means of subsistence—machines, foodstuffs, clothing, etc. This proc-ess of constant renewal of production is called reproduction. Reproduction takes place within individual enterprises as well as on a social scale.

Reproduction may occur either as simple reproduction—with no change in the vol-ume of production; or extended reproduction—with the volume of production increasing from year to year. Extended reproduction is characteristic of capitalism.

Marx made the first scientific analysis of capitalist reproduction. The process of simple reproduction yields to the capitalist a product of greater value than the capital invested by him in production. By realising the commodities produced by the workers, the capitalist once more becomes the possessor of capital, which provides him with the

opportunity to exploit wage-workers. The proletarian, however, on completing the pro-duction process possesses nothing but his labour-power and must seek employment from the capitalist. Thus, it follows that in the course of capitalist reproduction the capitalist relations of exploitation are constantly reproduced. The analysis of simple reproduction of an individual capital also shows that a given initial capital investment in production can be consumed very quickly by a capitalist. Indeed, under simple reproduction, the entire surplus-value created by the workers goes to the capitalist’s personal consump-tion. If $100,000 are invested in production and $10,000 withdrawn annually for his needs, the capitalist will eat up his invested capital in 10 years if he does not gain any profit. However, even at the end of the 10-year period the capitalist continues to receive profit. Consequently, his entire capital represents in essence the accumulated surplus-value which was created by the labour of the wage-workers and appropriated without compensation by the capitalist.

Marx’s analysis of the simple reproduction of social capital discloses the laws of motion of the capitalist economy as a whole. Marx showed that it was impossible to es-tablish the law of the reproduction of social capital without dividing the whole of social production into two major departments: the production of means of production (Depart-ment I) and the production of consumer goods (Department II). Further, it was necessary to combine the analysis of the motion of the produced social product in its natural form of means of production and articles of consumption with the analysis of its motion in the form of values. With this aim in view, the annual aggregate social product—the total mass of means of production and consumer goods which society has produced in a year—is divided with respect to value into three parts: the first part replaces the constant capital expended during the year, the second replaces variable capital, and the third is surplus-value. The value of the annual product of each department of social production consists of these three component parts.

As shown by Marx, for all the capitalists to sell, i.e., realise the commodities pro-duced in their enterprises, a certain relationship must exist between the first and second departments. Under simple reproduction, it is necessary that the sum of variable capital and surplus-value of Department I equals the constant capital of Department II: I(v + m) = IIc. In the process of the mutual exchange of these parts of the social product, the workers and capitalists of Department I receive consumer goods, and the capitalists of Department II receive constant capital for new production. Thus, Department I provides the means of production for both departments, and Department II supplies consumer goods to the workers and capitalists of both departments.

Under extended reproduction, the sum of the variable capital and surplus-value of Department I is greater than the value of the constant capital of Department II: I(v + m) is greater than IIc. The difference between the first and second of these quantities forms the excess which goes to accumulation. With the progress of accumulation, the share of constant capital grows, while the share of variable capital diminishes. The more rapid growth of constant capital as compared with variable capital is a law of accumulation of capital. It follows from this that constant capital in each department grows more rapidly

than the variable capital and surplus-value. Moreover, the growth of the constant capital of Department I must outstrip even to a greater extent the growth of the constant capital of Department II. The latter, as shown above, increases more slowly than the variable capital and surplus-value of Department I. Hence, under extended reproduction, the most rapid growth occurs in the production of means of production for producing means of production. This is followed by the production of means of production for turning out consumer goods, while the production of consumer goods grows slowest of all.

Priority growth of the production of means of production is an economic law of all extended reproduction. Without such priority growth, extended reproduction is not pos-sible.

The motive for extended reproduction under capitalism is the endeavour to extract more and more surplus-value. Competition spurs this process on. In the course of ex-tended capitalist reproduction, capitalist relations of exploitation are reproduced on an extended scale, the army of workers grows, and concentration and centralisation of capi-tal takes place.

Marx’s analysis of simple and extended reproduction of social capital showed that proportionality between Departments I and II, and between the individual branches within each of them, can be established only through economic crises, and then for only a very short period, and that antagonistic contradictions are inherent in capitalist repro-duction making economic crises of over-production inevitable.

Economic Crises of Over-Production

The capitalist aim of unlimited expansion of production, under conditions of limited demand resulting from the narrow bounds of mass purchasing power, finds expression in increased output achieved mainly through increased production of means of production. Under capitalism, expanding the production of means of production, while being a sign of technological progress, is at the same time a kind of temporary escape from the mar-keting difficulties engendered by insufficient mass purchasing power. However, this increased production under conditions when the production of consumer goods is lim-ited because of the low income of the masses periodically leads to economic crises of over-production. Since the final goal of production is the production of consumer goods, the ultimate cause of all economic crises, Marx pointed out, is the poverty and limited purchasing power of the masses. This is an expression of the basic contradiction of capi-talism—the contradiction between the social character of production and the private capitalist form of appropriation.

The first economic crisis of general over-production broke out in Britain in 1825. From then on, crises recurred at first at an average of every ten years, and later at less definite intervals. Between 1825 and 1938, Britain experienced 13 economic crises. Cri-ses made their appearance somewhat later in other capitalist countries—after they had embarked on large-scale industrialisation.

Economic crises appear in the form of an over-production of commodities, acute dif-ficulties in finding markets, a fall in prices and a sharp curtailment of production. During

the crisis, unemployment increases sharply, the wages of workers still employed are cut, credit facilities break down and many people are ruined, particularly small employers.

In the course of the crisis and the period of stagnation (depression) which usually follows, accumulated stocks of commodities are gradually sold at reduced prices. Capi-talists seek to make profits at the prevailing low prices by raising labour productivity through the renewal of their plant and equipment. This creates a demand for means of production. Little by little the market begins to revive, and then follows a period of boom. This succession from crisis to depression, followed by recovery and boom, and then again crisis, is evidence of the cyclic character of the development of capitalist pro-duction; the phases of the cycle are repeated, much like the seasons in nature. Capitalist extended reproduction is not an uninterrupted process. The alternation of boom, decline and stagnation, and the constant breaks in the upward curve of production are a law of capitalist extended reproduction.

“Capitalist production,” wrote Lenin, “cannot develop otherwise than by leaps and bounds — two steps forward and one step (and sometimes two) back.”112

Crises are caused by the basic contradiction of capitalism—contradiction between the social character of production and the private form of appropriating the fruits of la-bour. The social character of production is manifested, in the first place, in the develop-ment of specialisation of production and the division of labour between enterprises and industries, under which each individual production is a component part of the social process of production; and secondly, in the concentration of production in the largest enterprises. Both of these offer tremendous opportunities for expanding production. In the period of recovery, and even more so during the boom, the huge growth of produc-tion is based mainly on the increased production of means of production. While the con-struction of new factories, railroads, power stations, etc., goes on there is some growing demand for additional labour-power and consequently also for consumer goods. Never-theless, these increases by no means correspond to the growth in the demand for means of production. Sooner or later, therefore, as a result of the anarchy of production charac-teristic of capitalism, the vast potentialities of large-scale industry for expansion come up against the narrow limits of consumption, the inability of markets to keep step with the growth of production. It is found that the mass of commodities thrown upon the market cannot be paid for by the mass of purchasers in view of their limited incomes and purchasing power.

In an article entitled “Karl Marx”, Lenin pointed out that the possibility for the rapid expansion of industry “in conjunction with credit facilities and the accumulation of capi-tal in means of production, incidentally furnishes the clue to the crises of over-production that occur periodically in capitalist countries—at first at an average of every ten years, and later at more lengthy and less definite intervals”.113

Accumulation of the means of production also explains the periodical nature of cri-ses.

The low level of prices and the sharpened competitive struggle in the period of stag-nation forces the capitalist to replace his morally obsolete machinery, machine tools and

equipment, i.e., to renew his fixed capital. Driven by the fear of lagging behind his com-petitors, each entrepreneur strives to reduce his production outlays through the introduc-tion of improved technology. Marx wrote: "... A crisis always forms the starting-point of large new investments. Therefore, from the point of view of society as a whole, a crisis is, more or less, a new material basis for the next turnover cycle.”114

Crises are visible proof of the ever-growing discrepancy between bourgeois produc-tion relations and the character of modern productive forces. Crises of over-production graphically demonstrate the limitations of the capitalist mode of production, its inability to provide full scope for the development of the productive forces.

Crises prove that present-day society could produce an incomparably greater quan-tity of products making for a better life for all working people if the means of production were utilised not for the sake of capitalist profit, but for the satisfaction of the require-ments of all members of society. But this is only possible through private ownership of the means of production being replaced by public ownership.

8. The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation

The development of large-scale machine industry and improvements in agriculture and other branches of the economy reduce the number of workers required to produce a given quantity of products. In other words, as capitalism develops the portion of capital expended for means of production, i.e., constant capital, increases, while the portion ex-pended for labour-power, i.e., variable capital, diminishes.

The more rapid growth of constant capital as compared with variable capital leads to a relative decrease in the demand of capitalist production for living labour, despite the fact that the total number of industrial workers grows as capitalism develops. Techno-logical progress under capitalism hurls millions of people into the ranks of the unem-ployed, and the threat of unemployment hangs like a Damocles sword over every worker. He can never feel certain what tomorrow will bring.

Marx's theory of capitalist accumulation reveals the mistakes of classical bourgeois political economy. Adam Smith and David Ricardo assumed that the demand for labour-power increases in proportion to the growth of production, and that in the course of capi-talist accumulation the conditions of the working class must necessarily improve. In ac-tual fact, capitalist accumulation accelerates the process of supplanting the worker by the machine, and it creates an industrial reserve army.

“The greater the social wealth, the functioning capital, the extent and energy of its growth, and, therefore, also the absolute mass of the proletariat and the productiveness of its labour, the greater is the industrial reserve army.... The relative mass of the indus-trial reserve army increases therefore with the potential energy of wealth. But the greater this reserve army in proportion to the active labour army, the greater is the mass of a consolidated surplus-population, whose misery is in direct ratio to its torment of la-bour.... This is the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation” (Marx).115

The larger the industrial reserve army, the worse are the conditions of employed workers, since the capitalist can dismiss dissatisfied and “troublesome” workers, being

able to replace them from the ranks of the unemployed.

Under capitalist ownership of the means of production, technological progress is ac-companied by increased capitalist profits and greater want and privation among wide sections of the population.

Worsening of the Position of the Working Class

Thus, owing to its own laws, capitalism inevitably gives rise to privation, unem-ployment and poverty among the working people of the population.

The deterioration in the living conditions of the working people is glaringly revealed during crises of over-production. Unemployment grows, wages fall and increasing num-bers of small and medium producers are forced into bankruptcy. In the draft programme of the R.C.P.(B.), Lenin wrote: “Crises and periods of industrial stagnation increase the dependence of wage-workers on capital and more rapidly lead to a relative, and some-times absolute, worsening of the position of the working class.”116

A deterioration of the position of the working people can occur even when wages rise somewhat. Greater intensity of labour increases the demand for better nourishment, medical care, etc. And when this growing demand is not satisfied, or only partially so, the position of the working class worsens and its privation grows, even if wages are slightly raised.

Even more glaring under capitalism is the inherent relative worsening of the position of the working class, i.e., the decreasing share of the working class in the national in-come. This is characteristic of the position of the working class compared with the capi-talist class. The growth of social wealth in bourgeois society inevitably leads to in-creased social inequality between capitalists and working people. The tendency towards a worsened position of the working class as capitalism develops, discovered by Marx, continues to operate at the present day.

Opponents of Marxism refuse to admit this. They distort reality, generalise from a few particular cases, and misinterpret certain phenomena of the day. They attempt to show that history does not corroborate Marx’s theory and that modern capitalism opens up unlimited prospects for the improvement of workers’ conditions.

Not only are the conditions of the working class misrepresented, but Marx’s theory as well. Bourgeois and reformist critics simplify their task by vulgarising this theory, ascribing to Marx and the Marxists preposterous ideas which they have neither advanced nor upheld.

In particular, the Marxist thesis concerning the tendency towards a worsened posi-tion of the working class is represented as a dogma, according to which, under capital-ism, an absolute deterioration of the workers’ living conditions takes place uninterrupt-edly from year to year, and from decade to decade. However, Marx had in mind not a continuous process, but a tendency of capitalism, which is realised unevenly in different countries and periods owing to deviations and irregularities, and which is counteracted by other forces.

One of these opposing forces is the struggle of the working class to raise wages and

improve working conditions. After the Second World War this struggle was more in-tense than ever before. German and Italian fascism, the stronghold of international reac-tion, had been routed, and the organisational strength and unity of the working class in the capitalist countries increased. Furthermore, the achievements gained by the socialist countries compelled the bourgeoisie to make concessions to the working people.

All this, of course, could not fail to have its effect. The workers in a number of countries saw the opportunity to improve their position and seized it. Clearly, this cannot in the slightest serve as a refutation of Marxism. Only by misrepresentation can it be claimed that according to the theory of Marx and Lenin the standard of living of the workers of all capitalist countries should be lower today than, say, at the turn of the cen-tury.

Many of the facts on which would-be refuters of Marxism like to dwell are due to the effect of different phases of the economic cycle on the tendency towards a worsened position of the working class. It stands to reason that during the boom phase of the cycle the workers should live better than at the time of a crisis. This should be taken into ac-count in comparing the conditions of the working class in the crisis and depression of the thirties with the favourable economic conditions of the fifties.

Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation

With the accumulation of capital, large numbers of workers and colossal means of production are concentrated in gigantic enterprises.

The operation of the immanent laws of capitalist production leads to the crushing of the weaker capitalists by the stronger ones. Side by side with the centralisation of capi-tal, or the expropriation of the many capitalists by the few, there develops the deliberate application of science to production, the methodical cultivation of the land, and the transformation of the instruments of labour into such instruments as can be used only in common. The moment comes when it becomes not only possible but essential to convert the decisive means of production into social property. This is because the contradiction between the social character of production and the private capitalist form of appropria-tion has become intensified to an extreme degree.

The accumulation of capital creates not only the objective, but also the subjective, prerequisites for the transition from capitalism to socialism. Society becomes more and more sharply split into a handful of financial magnates on one side, and opposing them the mass of the workers united by large-scale industrial production. The proletariat rises with increasing determination to struggle against capital. The working class strives to convert capitalist property into socialised property. This process is incomparably less protracted than the transformation of scattered private property, arising from the per-sonal labour of the small handicraftsman and peasant, into capitalist property. Under capitalism, the mass of the people, led by the working class, is confronted with the task of liberating society from the yoke of a few usurpers.

Along with the constantly diminishing number of financial magnates, who appropri-ate all the benefits of the developing productive forces, grows the indignation of the

working class, which is disciplined, united and organised by the very process of capital-ist production itself. The capitalist mode of production becomes a fetter upon develop-ment of the productive forces of human society. “Centralisation of the means of produc-tion and socialisation of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.”117 This is the historical tendency of capitalist accumulation.

The necessity for the revolutionary transformation of capitalist society into socialist society was a conclusion drawn by Marx not because of any utopian aspirations, but wholly and exclusively on the basis of the objective economic law of development of capitalist society. At the same time, he showed that the abolition of capitalism would be carried out by the working people led by the working class. Only by abolishing the pri-vate ownership of the means of production by the magnates of capital and large land-owners can the masses of the people in the capitalist countries ensure the victory of so-cialism and open wide the gates to further social progress.

The objective laws of capitalist development, therefore, inevitably lead to the revo-lutionary transformation from capitalist to socialist society. In elaborating the general law of capitalist accumulation, Marx provided the economic explanation of the necessity and inevitability of the proletarian revolution.

CHAPTER 9

IMPERIALISM, THE HIGHEST AND LAST STAGE  OF CAPITALISM

At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, capitalism en-tered a new stage of its development—the imperialist stage. In 1916, Lenin made an ex-haustive scientific analysis of imperialism in his classic work Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, as well as in a number of other works. Lenin showed that imperial-ism is a special stage—-the highest and last—in the development of capitalism, and he gave the following definition of it: “Imperialism is a special historical stage of capital-ism. Its specific character is threefold: imperialism is (1) monopoly capitalism; (2) para-sitic, or decaying capitalism; (3) moribund capitalism.”'118

1. Imperialism as Monopoly Capitalism

Concentration of Production and Monopolies

In his work Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin began his investiga-tion of the new stage in the development of capitalism with an analysis of the changes in the sphere of production. He established five fundamental economic features of imperi-alism: “(1) The concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; (2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this ‘fi-nance capital’, of a financial oligarchy; (3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; (4) the formation of interna-tional monopolist capitalist alliances which share the world among themselves; and (5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is com-pleted.119

The initial and basic factor in the transition to imperialism was enormous increase in concentration of production, i. e., the growth of the importance of large enterprises and their share in the total output; the concentration in these enterprises of a larger and larger portion of the labour force and productive capacity. In the U.S.A., for example, in 1909, enterprises with more than 500 workers each, constituted 1.1 per cent of the total num-ber of enterprises and employed 30.5 percent of all workers in industry. The process of concentration of production was further accelerated during and after the Second World War. Thus, in mining and manufacturing in 1960, the 500 largest companies, constitut-ing 0.3 per cent of the total number, embraced 54 per cent of the workers and other em-ployees, sold 57 per cent of the overall product and received 72 per cent of all company profits. Of these, the top 40 companies sold almost as much as the remaining 460.

The large enterprises strive to seize markets, eliminate competitors or make agree-ments with them, and dictate prices. Several dozen giant corporations can more easily come to terms among themselves than can hundreds and thousands of small ones. The tendency to seek agreement is caused also by the desire to reduce the costs of battling

against competitors, since such costs increase as competition grows sharper. Concentra-tion of production at a certain stage of development—when, for example, two, three or at most five corporations produce more than one-half of the industrial production in ba-sic branches of industry—inevitably leads to the formation of monopolies.

A monopoly is an association or alliance between capitalists who have concentrated in their hands the production and marketing of a considerable, and at times preponder-ant, share of the output of one or several branches of the economy. It is characterised by enormous economic power and the important role it plays in the given field of produc-tion and trade. This gives it a dominant position, enabling it to fix monopoly prices and, thereby, to obtain high monopoly profits. Its monopoly position enables it to increase its profit by merely inflating prices—without increasing the production of commodities. Thus, it makes a profit by fleecing the buyer through the high monopoly prices de-manded for its commodities. A monopoly is an alliance of capitalists directed against the workers whom they exploit. Owing to their monopoly, the employers are able to make agreements among themselves on systematic measures to suppress the class struggle of the workers.

The basic forms of monopoly are cartels, syndicates, trusts and concerns.

A cartel is an agreement between several large capitalist enterprises, in which the participants divide the markets among themselves, decide the quantity of goods to be produced, and fix prices, conditions of sale, dates of payment, etc. As a result, the par-ticipants in the cartel are able to restrict competition and to receive high monopoly prof-its. Each enterprise belonging to the cartel can act independently with respect to ques-tions of production and marketing. It is limited solely by the conditions of the cartel agreement. A syndicate differs from a cartel in that the enterprises belonging to it lose their commercial independence. The sale of goods, and sometimes the purchase of raw materials as well, is effected through a common office. In a trust, the enterprises com-pletely lose their independence. The trust is in charge of the entire production, sale of goods and finance of the previously independent enterprises. A concern is an association of a number of enterprises in different branches of industry—commercial firms, banks, transport and insurance companies—which are formally independent, but completely controlled by a big capitalist or a group of capitalists.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, cartels were most widespread in Ger-many, particularly in the coal and iron and steel industries. In Russia, the syndicate was the prevailing form of monopoly alliance. A syndicate of sugar-factory owners was formed as early as 1887. At the beginning of the twentieth century, a number of large syndicates were formed in Russia in the iron and steel, metalworking and other key in-dustries.

The trust became the dominant and characteristic form of monopoly in the United States. The phenomenal expansion of some firms, the amalgamation of numerous com-panies into one, and the absorption of smaller enterprises by large ones led to the forma-tion of trusts. As a result of the first large wave of amalgamations and mergers in 1898-1903, such giant monopolies as Morgan’s U.S. Steel Corporation and General Electric

were created. Rockefeller’s giant oil trust, Standard Oil, was founded as early as 1870, and by the end of the nineteenth century it had 90 per cent of U.S. petroleum production concentrated in its hands. In describing the omnipotence of U.S. monopolies, Lenin wrote in 1912 that in America about one-third of the country’s total national wealth, amounting to the equivalent of 80 thousand million rubles, “belongs to, or is controlled by, two trusts—Rockefeller and Morgan!”120

The replacement of free competition by monopoly is the basic economic feature, the essence, of imperialism. The first and most important feature of imperialism is that it is monopoly capitalism, “if it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of im-perialism,” Lenin wrote, “we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism.”121

Monopoly grows out of free competition. However, it does not eliminate the com-petitive struggle, but, on the contrary, makes it fiercer and more destructive. Under im-perialism, this struggle takes three forms.

Firstly, competition between the monopolies and the numerous non-monopolistic enterprises does not cease. Despite the dominant of monopolies in capitalist countries, there remain many middle small capitalists, and a mass of small producers — peasants and handicraftsmen. No matter how powerful the monopolies, no matter how swift the process of ousting non-monopolistic enterprises, the latter continue to exist side by side with the monopolies. They invariably spring up in new branches of industry where the dominance of large enterprises, as a rule, is not firmly established at the very outset. The supplanting of small-scale economy should not be understood to mean its immediate and complete elimination. It is very often manifested in a more difficult struggle for exis-tence, in an inordinate intensification of labour, and in an extremely low standard of liv-ing for the small proprietor. It is therefore a long and agonising process. Big business not only pushes out small and middle independent producers, but small and middle capi-talists as well. By fixing extremely high prices, the monopolies gather increased profits, and thereby cut into the profits of the non-monopolistic enterprises which buy from them. Those who do not submit to the monopolies are strangled and relations of free competition give way to relations of domination and coercion.

Secondly, a fierce competitive struggle takes place between the monopolies them-selves. The complete absorption of an entire branch of industry by a single monopoly a very rare occurrence, and even that provides no guarantee against penetration by a pow-erful competitor. Competition between monopolies is a life-and-death struggle in which the contestants make use of all available means, fair or foul, to crush their rivals, includ-ing direct force, bribery, blackmail and even sabotage and other criminal acts.

Thirdly, competition rages not only between, but within the monopolies as well. The members of a monopoly fight among themselves for key positions in the controlling bodies of the corporations, for a greater share in production, marketing, profits, etc.

Thus, competition gives birth to monopoly, but monopoly does not eliminate com-petition. Monopolies exist above competition and side by side with it. They do not eliminate the anarchic and chaotic nature of capitalist production.

Bourgeois ideologists glorify competition as a powerful force for progress in pro-duction, as a constant stimulus to initiative, enterprise and resourcefulness. Competition, however, possessed such progressive features to a limited extent only until the epoch of imperialism. In regard to competition under conditions of imperialism, Lenin wrote: “...Capitalism long ago replaced small, independent commodity production, under which competition could develop enterprise, energy and bold initiative to any considerable extent, with large and very large-scale factory production, joint-stock companies, syndi-cates and other monopolies. Under such capitalism, competition means the incredibly brutal suppression of the enterprise, energy and bold initiative of the mass of the popula-tion, of its overwhelming majority, of ninety-nine out of every hundred toilers; it also means that competition is replaced by financial fraud, despotism, servility on the upper rungs of the social ladder.”122

Increasing concentration of production, which gives rise to monopolies, is a gigantic step forward in the socialisation of production. Large-scale production replaces produc-tion on a small scale, and giant factories supplant small ones. Specialisation of produc-tion develops more and more, linking together numerous enterprises and branches of industry. Production becomes ever more social in character. Enterprises, however, con-tinue to remain the private property of individuals or groups of capitalists, who are only interested in amassing large profits. The oppression of the population as a whole by a few monopolists becomes unbearable. The contradiction between the social character of production and the appropriation of fruits of production by private capitalists becomes ever sharper.

The sharpening of this basic contradiction of capitalism in the imperialist era is the best proof that imperialism does not fundamentally alter the basic features of capitalism. The general laws of capitalist economics, as described in Chapter 8, continue to operate under monopoly capitalism. Thus, monopoly prices and monopoly profits do not do away with the law of value, of surplus-value, of average profit and its tendency to fall, but are formed on the basis of these laws, which have undergone a change of form under the rule of the monopolies. “Imperialism,” wrote Lenin, “complicates and sharpens the contradictions of capitalism, ‘entangles’ monopolies with freedom of competition, but imperialism cannot abolish exchange, the market, competition, crises, etc.”123

Finance Capital

Concentration of production is accompanied by concentration and centralisation of banking capital. This leads to the formation of banking monopolies and to a fundamental change in the role played by banks.

“As banking develops and becomes concentrated in a small number of establish-ments,” Lenin wrote, “the banks grow from humble middlemen into powerful monopolies having at their command almost the whole of the money capital of all the capitalists and small proprietors and also the larger part of the means of production and of the sources of raw materials of the given country and in a number of countries. This transformation of numerous humble middlemen into a handful of monopolists represents one of the funda-

mental processes in the growth of capitalism into capitalist imperialism....”124

Banks become co-owners of industrial enterprises. Monopoly industrial capital, in turn, penetrates into the banking business. Thus, monopoly banking capital and monop-oly industrial capital coalesce and give rise to finance capital.

Magnates of finance capital, controlling large industrial enterprises and banks, are simultaneously industrialists and bankers.

The concentration of production; the monopolies arising therefrom; merging or coa-lescence of the banks with industry—such is the history of the rise of finance capital and such is the content of this term.”125

In the process of formation of finance capital—the interlocking and coalescence of the banks with industry—a large role was played by joint-stock companies. They began to arise before the advent of imperialism, but became the characteristic form of capitalist enterprise under imperialism.

The capital of a joint-stock company consists of the capitals of persons acquiring its shares. Shares or stocks are certificates which give the owner the right to a certain part of the profit. The price of the share is determined primarily by the magnitude of the an-ticipated dividend. The stockholder may sell his shares on the stock exchange, i.e., the market where trade takes place in shares and other securities and where rates of ex-change of various types of securities are established. A joint-stock company is formally controlled by all of its shareholders and all questions are decided by a majority vote. Votes, however, are governed by shares—the greater the number of shares held, the more votes one is entitled to cast. Thus, the capitalist or group of capitalists owning a significant number, or so-called controlling block, of shares rules the roost in a joint-stock company.

In a joint-stock company, numerous individual capitals are transformed into a single consolidated capital. As a result of the centralisation of capital, it thus becomes possible to organise larger enterprises than could be created by individual capitalists acting singly.

A joint-stock company’s capital also includes the funds of small shareholders—office employees, a relatively small number of workers, etc. Large corporations have thousands, and at times tens and hundreds of thousands, of shareholders. When a worker buys several shares for $100, 8200 or $300 and receives $5, $10 or $15 in dividends an-nually, he does not automatically become a capitalist or the owner of a large company. What say can he have in the management of a multi-million dollar company? Usually, he cannot even participate in the shareholders’ meetings, since for this purpose it is nec-essary to have the time, and not infrequently the money, to travel to another city, etc. A few score dollars in annual dividends do not change the class status of a small share-holder, nor do they reduce his dependence on the company for which he works, nor se-cure his future.

For the big capitalists who control the joint-stock companies, it is highly advanta-geous to sell shares of small denominations and increase the number of shareholders. This is a method of increasing the capital at their disposal. Furthermore, the greater the number of small shareholders, the fewer the shares required to attain a majority of votes.

In many companies today, a controlling block consists of 10-20 per cent of all the shares.

Domination of the joint-stock company is used by the big capitalist (or group of capitalists) to augment his financial power and to gain more profits.

The big capitalist who buys up a controlling block of shares achieves control over a powerful joint-stock company. This joint-stock company buys up a controlling interest in another company, the latter, in turn, in a third, etc. As a result, the big capitalist has at his disposal a joint-stock company whose capital exceeds that of his own by a large fac-tor, and a whole pyramid of “daughter companies”, which are controlled by the “parent” company. Thus arises a so-called “holding system”, which provides Big Business with unlimited possibilities for its enrichment through the plunder of society,

A small group of the biggest financial magnates is transformed into a financial oli-garchy, which obtains control of the key economic positions in the capitalist countries. The power of the financial oligarchy is greatly multiplied as a result of the system of joint-stock companies, which places vast sums of capital belonging to others at its dis-posal. Thus, for example, the capital controlled by the Morgan, Rockefeller, Du Pont and Mellon financial groups greatly exceeds the value of their own holdings. In 1956, the Rockefeller group owned $3,500 million in shares, while the capital of the corpora-tions under its control amounted to $6,100 million. In the same year, the value of the Du Pont group’s shares was slightly more than $4,500 million, while the assets under its control amounted to $16,000 million. Shares owned by the Morgan group barely ex-ceeded 5 per cent of the total capital controlled by them, which reached the enormous sum of $65.3 thousand million.

The control of joint-stock companies enables the financial oligarchy to conduct highly varied and profitable financial transactions. It reaps huge profits through the es-tablishment of new joint-stock companies, the additional issue of shares, the purchase of government bonds, speculation in real estate, etc. Thus, all of society is forced to pay a tribute that finds its way into the pockets of the monopolists.

”The twentieth century,” wrote Lenin, “marks the turning-point from the old capital-ism to the new, from the domination of capital in general to the domination of finance capital.”126

Export of Capital

The domination of finance capital within the most developed capitalist countries in-evitably leads to domination by a small number of imperialist states over the entire capi-talist world. An important factor in this is the export of capital.

“Typical of the old capitalism, when free competition had undivided sway,” wrote Lenin, “was the export of goods. Typical of the latest stage of capitalism, when monopo-lies rule, is the export of capital.”127

Export of capital is the investment of capital abroad in order to appropriate surplus-value created by the working people of another country. It becomes possible to export capital when a number of underdeveloped countries are drawn into the sphere of opera-

tion of world capitalism and provide the primary requirements for capitalist develop-ment on the basis of cheap local labour-power. The need to export capital arises from the fact that capitalism has become “overripe” in a few countries.

The monopoly position of a handful of the most developed imperialist countries, where the accumulation of capital has reached gigantic proportions, leads to the forma-tion there of vast amounts of “surplus capital”. Capital fails to find a field for profitable investment within the country. “Surplus capital” is, of course, a relative rather than an absolute concept. If capitalist profits were used to raise the standard of living of the working masses or improve the state of agriculture, there would be no “surplus capital”. But then capitalism would not be capitalism.

Export of capital takes place in two forms: firstly, as productive capital; secondly, as loan capital. The export of productive capital consists of investments in industry, trans-port, trade, etc., while the export of loan capital occurs in the form of government loans and private credit.

Capital is exported predominantly to underdeveloped, colonial and dependent coun-tries. Profits there are usually high because capital is scarce, land is relatively inexpen-sive, wages are low and raw materials are cheap. Thus, in 1960, 48 per cent of all profits accruing to the U.S.A. from direct capital investments abroad were derived from the countries of the Middle and Far East (excluding Japan) and Latin America. The rate of profit on capital invested in the Middle East was 5.4 times that on capital invested in countries where capitalism was well-developed.

A characteristic feature of the last decade is that large amounts of capital have been exported from the U.S.A. to the countries of Western Europe. From 1950 to 1960 direct foreign capital investments of the U.S.A. increased as a whole by 177 per cent, including increases of 88 per cent in Latin America and of 130 per cent in capitalist countries of Asia, while the increase in the countries of Western Europe was almost fourfold. The investments of the large U.S. monopolies in Britain, West Germany and France are very considerable.

In the export of capital, political motives may at times predominate. The part played by the political factor became especially great after the Second World War. The export of U.S. capital has been widely used to support reactionary forces in other countries and to “buy” military allies.

Before the First World War, the chief countries exporting capital were Britain, France and Germany. In the period between the two world wars, the United States cap-tured first place in the export of capital. At present, U.S. capital invested abroad exceeds the combined investments and credits of all other capitalist countries. A fierce struggle, however, rages between the imperialist powers over spheres for the investment of capi-tal. In particular, during the last few years, the export of capital from Britain and West Germany has been increasing.

The export of capital transforms most capitalist countries into the debtors and de-pendents of a few imperialist states. It is a weapon used by a handful of monopolists to exploit millions of people in other countries.

Formation of International Monopoly Alliances

The export of capital and the concomitant sharpening of competition on the world market impel the monopolies to apportion spheres of influence on a world scale. This, in turn, naturally leads to the formation of international monopolies. International monopo-lies are agreements concluded between the biggest monopolies of various countries on the division of markets, price policy, and the volume of production. The appearance of international monopolies is a sign that the world-wide concentration of capital and pro-duction has reached a new level.

Under capitalism, the world market as well as the domestic market is divided in ac-cordance with the amount of capital possessed, the “strength” of the parties involved. The balance of forces, however, between the monopolies is always changing. Each mo-nopoly unceasingly struggles to enlarge its share of the world’s wealth. International monopolies are notoriously unstable. They do not, and cannot, eliminate intense compe-tition. As far back as 1927, Alfred Mond, owner of the British Imperial Chemical Indus-tries Trust, openly declared: “The cartel or combination... is in reality nothing more than an armistice in industrial warfare.” Under conditions of the undivided sway of imperial-ism, rivalry on the world market inevitably led in the final analysis to the growth of ar-maments and an armed struggle between the imperialist states in defence of the interests of “their” monopolies.

International monopolies are one of the forms of establishing closer economic ties between various regions of the world as a result of a division of labour among countries. The process is, however, replete with distortions and contradictions, being a form of ex-ploitation by the highly developed imperialist powers of the underdeveloped countries and even of entire continents. The establishment of closer economic ties cannot lead to the peaceful union of all countries under the rule of a single world trust. The contradic-tions stemming from the pursuit of profit are too sharp, and the appetites of the monopo-lies too large.

“There is no doubt,” wrote Lenin, “that the development is in the direction of a sin-gle united world trust embracing all enterprises without exception, and all states without exception. But the development is taking place under such circumstances and with such speed, with such contradictions, conflicts and upheavals—by no means only economic, but political, national, etc., etc,—that certainly before a single world trust or ultra-imperialistic world union of national finance capitals is established, imperialism will inevitably break down and capitalism will be transformed into its antithesis.”128

Territorial Division of the World

Closely connected with the economic division of markets by the international mo-nopoly alliances is the striving of the imperialists to achieve a territorial division of the world.

At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, the rule of the monopolies was fully consolidated in the chief capitalist countries and by this time the territorial division of the world between a few Great Powers was in the main completed.

The reason for the coincidence in time of these two events is clear: the endeavour to win new markets, new raw material sources and territories of economic value is an inherent characteristic of the monopolies. “Colonial possession alone,” Lenin wrote, “gives the monopolies complete guarantee against all contingencies in the struggle with competi-tors....”129 This can be explained by the following circumstances.

Monopoly domination is most secure when all sources of raw material are concen-trated in the monopoly’s own hands. Finance capital is interested not only in discovered sources of raw materials, but in potential sources as well. Land that is useless today may prove to be profitable tomorrow. Hence the inevitable urge of finance capital to extend the territory of economic value under its control and to seize territory in general. It is also impelled to adopt colonialism for the sake of exporting capital, for competitors are more easily eliminated in the colonial market. The urge to acquire and retain colonies is further reinforced because it is a way by which finance capital seeks to escape from the sharpening class contradictions at home. Finally, the imperialist states are interested in colonies as strategic military bases.

Between 1876 and 1914, i.e., the period in which capitalistic monopolies were formed, developed and consolidated, the colonial possessions of six Great Powers (Brit-ain, Russia, France, Germany, the United States and Japan) increased by 25 million sq. km., which was one-and-a-half times the area of the metropolitan countries themselves.

In 1914, out of a total world area of 133.9 million sq. km., the six Great Powers and their colonies accounted for 81.5 million sq. km., of which 65 million sq. km. consti-tuted colonial territory, i.e., almost one-half of the world’s territory. Of the remaining 52.4 million sq. km., semi-colonies (China, Persia and Turkey) accounted for 14.5 mil-lion sq. km. and colonies of small states (Belgium, Holland, etc.)—9.9 million sq. km. Thus, by this time colonies and semi-colonies accounted for 89.4 million sq. km., or two-thirds of all the world’s territory.

All these facts enabled Lenin to conclude that by the beginning of the twentieth cen-tury “capitalism had grown into a world system of colonial oppression and of the finan-cial strangulation of the overwhelming majority of the population of the world by a handful of ‘advanced’ countries”.130 With the final division of the world, the colonial system—one of the chief bulwarks of imperialism—was established. High monopoly profits, raw materials, cheap labour power and cannon fodder were all provided by the colonies.

After the territorial division of the world between the Great Powers was complete it was possible to obtain new colonies or spheres of influence only by wresting them from some other colonial power. Consequently, the struggle between the imperialist states for the redivision of colonial possessions is intensified. The uneven and spasmodic devel-opment of the imperialist countries leads sooner or later to the colonial possessions of one or another power ceasing to correspond to its economic and military might. Thus by 1914 the colonial possessions of Britain covered 33.5 million sq. km., which was 11.5 times the area held by Germany and 112 times that held by the United States. Yet at that time not only the U.S.A. but also Germany had already succeeded in overtaking Britain

as regards economic might. In 1913 the U.S. share in world industrial production amounted to about 36 per cent, that of Germany to 16 per cent, and that of Britain to 14 per cent. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Japan too had considerably out-stripped Britain in its rate of growth of production. The area of the Japanese colonies, however, was less than one-hundredth of the area of Britain’s colonial possessions. This discrepancy between the economic might and rate of growth of individual powers, on the one hand, and the distribution of colonies and “spheres of influence”, on the other, was one of the main causes of the First World War.

It should be noted that it is not only the two main groups of countries—the posses-sors of colonies and the colonies themselves—that are typical of imperialism, but also the dependent countries, formally independent politically but in fact entangled in nets of financial and diplomatic dependence. Thus, although the United States does not formally and legally possess a single important colony, it is, in fact, the biggest colonial power at the present time. By capital investment, shackling loans and one-sided agreements, the U.S. monopolies have brought under their control the natural wealth and economies of many countries of the American continent. The oil of Venezuela, the copper of Chile, the tin of Bolivia, and the iron and coffee of Brazil are owned by U.S. monopolies.

The countries of Latin America are used by the United States as sources of strategic materials and as military bases. U.S. monopolies own the major part of the oil of the Middle East, where about two-thirds of the known oil resources of the capitalist world are concentrated, U.S., and in part British, monopolies extract enormous profits from this region of the world, leaving as the Arabs’ share the “ear of the camel”, as the Arab saying has it.

The inevitable consequence of the oppression and financial subjection of the colo-nies and dependent countries by world imperialism is their economic backwardness. The yoke of the monopolies makes an all-round economic development of these countries impossible.

2. Imperialism Is Parasitic or Decaying Capitalism

Monopolies inevitably lead to the decay of capitalism. Lenin pointed out that all monopoly under private ownership of the means of production engenders a tendency to stagnation and decay, or parasitism.131

Tendency to Retardation of the Growth of Productive Forces

Monopoly hinders the growth of the productive forces and technological progress. “Since monopoly prices are established, even temporarily,” wrote Lenin, “the motive causes of technical and, consequently, of all other progress disappear to a certain extent and, further, the economic possibility arises of artificially retarding technical pro-gress.”132

Capitalists introduce technical innovations in order to gain super-profits. If these su-per-profits, however, can be obtained as a result of a monopoly on the market, then the stimulus to technological improvement is naturally weakened. Under pre-monopoly

capitalism a capitalist got the better of his competitor mainly by   methods of production, reducing costs and lowering prices. To maintain his position on the market, a capitalist had to replace old by new machinery, he had to improve his methods of production. When free competition gave place to monopoly, the situation changed drastically. New methods of obtaining high monopoly profits peculiar to imperialism made their appear-ance. As a rule, monopolies do not resort to reducing prices in order to maintain and strengthen their positions. In fighting their competitors, they make use of direct pressure and all sorts of financial manipulation (withdrawal of credit, deprivation of raw materi-als, boycotts, etc.).

Monopolies often artificially restrict the production of certain commodities in order to maintain prices and profits at a high level. This, of course, considerably hampers technological progress. Retaining old equipment in which enormous capital has been invested also hinders technological progress. It is only when economies resulting from the introduction of new technique rapidly cover the depreciation of old investments, or in the case of new enterprises and new branches of industry in which old investments are relatively small, that technological progress takes place unimpeded.

Many bourgeois economists, recognising that monopolies hold up technological progress, have called for a return to the era of free competition. Lenin showed how completely unfounded were such hopes for a return to the past. “Even if monopolies have now begun to retard progress,” he said, “it is not an argument in favour of free competition, which has become impossible after it has given rise to monopoly.”133

Retarded growth of the productive forces thus becomes a tendency of monopoly capitalism primarily manifested in the latter’s direct hindrance to technological progress. It is further manifested in the increasing discrepancy between the possibilities offered by science and engineering on the one hand, and the extent to which these possibilities are made use of, on the other; and in the unequal technological development in various countries and branches of industry. Finally, this tendency is revealed in the fact that, in the era of imperialism, people—the chief productive force—are more and more divorced from socially useful work, the creation of material values. Unemployment grows, while productive capacity is not utilised to the full. The number of workers not engaged in cre-ating material values, but employed in the sphere of circulation, the state apparatus, the army, and personal services, also grows.

However, the growth of productive forces under imperialism by no means comes to a halt. Monopolies can never eliminate competition completely or for long. Technologi-cal progress enables them to reduce costs of production sharply, and by slightly reducing the selling prices of their products they are able to squeeze out competitors. By barring the latter from access to technical improvements and new methods of production, mo-nopolies can obtain high monopoly profits even at reduced prices.

Capitalist monopolies enjoy enormous advantages over medium and small-sized en-terprises in making use of the achievements of modern science and technology. It is well known, for example, that in various industries scientific research is conducted chiefly by large companies. With few exceptions, small firms do not possess the financial resources

necessary to maintain research organisations. As a result, there is a monopolisation of technical improvements and inventions.

Thus, the general tendency to retard technological progress by no means precludes the rapid improvement of technique and the growth of the productive forces during cer-tain periods.

“It would be a mistake to believe,” wrote Lenin, “that this tendency to decay pre-cludes the rapid growth of capitalism. It does not. In epoch of imperialism, certain branches of industry, certain strata of the bourgeoisie and certain countries betray, to a greater or lesser degree, now one and now another of these tendencies.”134

Growth of a Stratum of Rentiers

Parasitism in the epoch of imperialism is clearly reflected in the growth of a stratum of rentiers—persons owning securities (shares and bonds) who live by “coupon-clipping”. The growth of joint-stock companies divorces the overwhelming majority of capitalists from the management of production.

The financial oligarchy, while concentrating in its own hands the key economic po-sitions in the capitalist countries, as a rule does not itself take part in the management of the hundreds and thousands of industrial companies, banks, railways and other enter-prises which it controls. The “activity” of the financial groups more and more consists in expanding their domination by acquiring controlling interests in the many new compa-nies being formed and by various financial manipulations. The direct management of the enterprises, however, gradually passes into the hands of hired managers.

The section of the population engaged in services to the exploiters, in catering to their parasitic whims, steadily expands. At the same time, the monopoly-dominated ma-chinery of state, the police force and the army also grow.

Some imperialist countries become transformed into rentier-states. This is the result of an increase in the export of capital, which makes it possible for creditor countries to reap huge profits in debtor countries. The returns on capital invested by Britain abroad before the First World War, when her trade was the largest in the world, was five times as much as her returns from foreign trade. At present, the United States is the biggest commercial power in the capitalist world. Nevertheless, it is the export of capital and not the export of commodities that plays the decisive role in its economic expansion abroad. Today the United States is the world’s biggest creditor.

Political Reaction

Capitalism was victorious over feudalism under the banner of “liberty, equality and fraternity”. Bourgeois democracy, as a form of political domination, met the needs of pre-monopoly capitalism. However, the situation changed with the transition to imperi-alism. The formation of monopolies meant a transition from relations of free competi-tion to relations of domination and the coercion associated with it. Monopolies became the rulers of economic life.

Once they achieve economic domination, however, monopolies strive to dominate

politically as well, to have the machinery of the bourgeois state at their service. When they have concentrated power in their own hands, monopolies more often than not dis-card the methods of bourgeois democracy and resort to political reaction, which clearly reveals the decaying character of capitalism. It is also a result of this decay, a conse-quence of the fact that the capitalist method of production has ceased to develop in an ascending line, that in the epoch of imperialism capitalist relations have begun to ham-per the growth of the productive forces.

A typical example of the offensive of political reaction is fascism—a terroristic dic-tatorship of the monopolist bourgeoisie. Fascism means the brutal suppression of work-ers’ and peasants’ movements, savage reprisals against proletarian and other democratic parties and social organisations, the militarisation of the country, and the inauguration of a policy of military adventure. Prior to the Second World War, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Portugal and a number of other countries took the path of fascism. In the post-war period, a noticeable tendency toward fascisation appeared in the United States, the Fed-eral Republic of Germany, France and other countries.

The sharpening of capitalist contradictions in the epoch of imperialism leads to po-litical reaction, which, in turn, still further sharpens these contradictions. The monopo-lies seek to deprive the workers of their democratic gains, and this brings stubborn resis-tance from the masses. Hence, the growth of democratic sentiments among the masses is characteristic of the epoch of imperialism. In the political arena, the working people of capitalist countries struggle for political democracy against the forces of reaction and the policies of the monopolies.

The “Labour Aristocracy”

The systematic bribing of certain sections of workers by the monopolistic bourgeoi-sie is a typical sign of the decay of capitalism. The imperialists have an interest in creat-ing a privileged stratum of workers, which is split off from the broad proletarian masses. This phenomenon is, in itself, not new. Bribery of individual representatives and groups of the proletariat, as a method of struggle against workers’ movements, has taken place ever since capitalism came into existence.

Under certain conditions, however, an economic basis develops for the establish-ment of an entire privileged stratum—a “labour aristocracy”—in the working class. This first arose in Britain during the period of pre-monopoly capitalism. Britain, in contrast to other countries, possessed two features of imperialism as far back as the middle of the nineteenth century: colonial monopoly and the exploitation of other countries by virtue of a dominant position on the world market. This yielded the British bourgeoisie super-profits, part of which was used to bribe a small upper section of the working class. This privileged group constituted a special social stratum—the labour aristocracy”—which the bourgeoisie strove to counterpose to the broad mass of workers and to use as a po-litical lever within the working class.

Monopoly domination, export of capital to underdeveloped countries and colonial-ism led to the formation of a “labour aristocracy” in all imperialist countries. Bribery

assumed various forms: increased wages for individual sections of the working class, lucrative government posts for venal leaders of the working-class movement, direct sub-sidising of reformist organisations, etc.

The “labour aristocracy” is the social basis of opportunism in the working-class movement. Opportunism means the adaptation of the working-class movement to the interests of the bourgeoisie—a policy of collaboration with the bourgeoisie and of split-ting the working-class movement. The opportunists attempt to divert the workers from the class struggle by preaching the identity of class interests of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and the possibility of “improving” capitalism by reforms. Thus, the oppor-tunists are agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement.

Opportunism in the working-class movement, however, cannot hold back forever the growing class-consciousness of the proletariat and the class struggle, “for the trusts, the financial oligarchy, high prices, etc.,” wrote Lenin, “while permitting the bribery of handfuls of the top strata, are increasingly oppressing, crushing, ruining and torturing the mass of the proletariat and the semi-proletariat.”135

3. Imperialism Is Moribund Capitalism

Monopoly and parasitic capitalism is at the same time moribund capitalism.

Lenin wrote: “It is clear why imperialism is moribund capitalism, capitalism in tran-sition to socialism: monopoly, which grows out of capitalism, is already capitalism dy-ing out, the beginning of its transition to socialism.”136

In addition to creating the material prerequisites for socialism, imperialism, Lenin noted, also creates the political prerequisites' for socialism, driving all the contradictions of capitalism to extreme limits. This is a characteristic feature of imperialism as a dying capitalism. He thus emphasises that the opportunists’ hope of the “evolution” of capital-ism into socialism, or of the “automatic collapse” of capitalism, is groundless. Imperial-ism is doomed by the weight of its own crimes. It is swept away by the working masses rising in struggle for the victory of the socialist revolution. Lenin established scientifi-cally that imperialism is the eve of the socialist revolution.

Creating the Material Prerequisites of Socialism

Under imperialism the material prerequisites develop for the transition to a higher social and economic system of society, i.e., to socialism. “When a big enterprise as-sumes gigantic proportions,” Lenin wrote, “and, on the basis of an exact computation of mass data, organises according to plan the supply of primary raw materials to the extent of two-thirds, or three-fourths, of all that is necessary for tens of millions of people; when the raw materials are transported in a systematic and organised manner to the most suitable place of production, sometimes hundreds or thousands of miles; when a single centre directs all the consecutive stages of work right up to the manufacture of numerous varieties of finished articles; when these products are distributed according to a single plan among tens and hundreds of millions of consumers (the distribution of oil in Amer-ica and Germany by the American ‘oil trust’)—then it becomes evident that we have

socialisation of production, and not mere ‘interlocking’; that private economic and pri-vate property relations constitute a shell which no longer fits its contents, a shell which must inevitably decay if its removal be delayed by artificial means; a shell which may continue in a state of decay for a fairly long period... but which will inevitably be re-moved.”137

Thus, large-scale socialisation of production in the period of imperialism creates the material prerequisites for socialism.

However, we must not confuse the material prerequisites for socialism with social-ism itself. Socialism arises only after the working class gains political power, eliminates private ownership of the means of production and replaces it by common ownership. The replacement of capitalism by socialism is not possible through evolutionary devel-opment. It takes place by revolution, by a revolutionary leap, which requires not only the material prerequisites, but a number of objective and subjective conditions as well.

Sharpening of the Contradictions of Capitalism

Imperialism is also moribund capitalism in that it sharpens all the contradictions of capitalism to the utmost.

Above all, the basic contradiction—the contradiction between the social character of production and the private-capitalist form becomes acute. The concentration of produc-tion and the growth of monopolies signify a further development in the social character of production. Appropriation, however, remains private. Thus, the major contradiction of capitalism is intensified with the development of monopoly capitalism.

On the basis of this, all the contradictions of capitalism grow acute. The most impor-tant are the contradiction between labour and capital, the contradiction between the op-pressed peoples of the dependent countries and the imperialist powers which exploit them, and the contradiction between the imperialist powers themselves.

The sharpening contradictions hasten the socialist revolution the downfall of capital-ism.

Law of Uneven Economic and Political Development

Under capitalism it is impossible for individual enterprises, industries and countries to develop evenly. Private ownership of the means of production, anarchy of production and competition make the uneven development of capitalist economy inevitable. Some capitalist enterprises, industries, and countries lag behind, while others shoot ahead. In the epoch of free competition, when there were no monopolies, capitalism developed relatively smoothly. A long period of time was required for certain countries to outstrip others. Since vast free territories were still open to colonisation, the growth of economic power was accompanied by the seizure of lands not held by other capitalist powers. This took place without large-scale military clashes. In this period of relatively peaceful capi-talist development, the operation of the law of uneven development inherent in capital-ism did not lead to world war.

It took Britain many decades to achieve industrial supremacy, to oust her competi-

tors—Holland and later France—and to establish herself as the dominant power in the world. In the middle of the nineteenth century she became the “workshop of the world”, supplying manufactured goods to all countries, in return for raw materials and food-stuffs. In 1850, the U.S. share in world industrial production was 15 per cent, while Brit-ain’s was 39 per cent. As for Germany, until the 1870s her industrial strength was far less than Britain’s.

A radical change took place with the transition to imperialism. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Great Britain’s monopoly was broken. This was due to the more rapid development of such capitalist countries as the U.S.A., Germany, and later Japan. In the early seventies, development in Britain and France slowed down. From 1870 to 1913, the total world industrial output increased almost fourfold, with U.S. output in-creasing nine times, Germany’s almost six times, France’s three times, and Britain’s only 2.25 times. On the eve of the First World War, Germany outstripped Britain and France with respect to volume of industrial production. The share of the United States in world industrial production exceeded the combined output of Britain and Germany.

Thus, at the turn of the century, it became possible for some countries to outstrip others as a result of unprecedented advances in technique, the concentration of produc-tion and capital, and the development of monopolies. Countries undertaking capitalist development later than others greatly benefit by the technical progress already made and develop new branches of industry more rapidly. At the same time, the tendency to decay and slowing-down of the development of the productive forces sets in earlier in the “old” capitalist countries. As a result, some countries develop by leaps and bounds, while others slow down. The old distribution of colonies and spheres of influence no longer corresponds to the new relation of forces. Countries which forge ahead resort to armed struggle for the redivision of the already divided world, for seizure of colonies. The contradictions between the imperialist countries increase enormously, the imperial-ist front is shaken and weak links begin to appear in the chain of world imperialism.

Uneven economic development in the epoch of imperialism is related to uneven po-litical development, i.e., to the fact that the political prerequisites for the victory of the socialist revolution do not mature simultaneously in all countries. Lenin stated that “the proletarian revolution develops unevenly in the various countries since the conditions of political life are different in each country—in one country the proletariat is far too weak and in another it is stronger, Whereas in one country the top section of the proletariat is weak, in others the bourgeoisie succeeds in splitting the workers temporarily, as in Brit-ain and France. That is why the proletarian revolution develops unevenly….”138

Analysing the changes due to the operation of the law of uneven development of capitalist countries in the epoch of imperialism, Lenin came to the conclusion that the victory of the revolution in all countries simultaneously was impossible and that, on the contrary, the victory of the revolution was quite possible at first in several countries, or even a single country. This was a new theory of socialist revolution, Marx and Engels, in studying pre-monopoly capitalism, had concluded that the revolution could triumph only simultaneously in all, or in the major, capitalist countries. However, the situation

changed with the transition to imperialism. The growth of imperialist contradictions and the uneven maturing of the revolution in the various countries made it possible to break the chain of imperialism initially at its weakest link.

Experience has completely borne out the correctness of the Leninist theory of social-ist revolution.

4. The Beginning of the General Crisis of Capitalism

When capitalism reaches the stage of imperialism, it inevitably enters the period of its general crisis.

Capitalism experiences periodic economic crises (see Chapter 8), a defect organi-cally inherent in this system. However, the general crisis differs from these in that it is an all-embracing crisis of capitalism as a social system. It is a permanent state and is characterised by the progressive disintegration of capitalism, the weakening of all its inner strength—economic, political, and ideological. The general crisis is not accidental, a quirk of history, or the result of mistakes by bourgeois leaders, but the inevitable and normal state of capitalism in the epoch of its decline and disintegration. Under condi-tions of the general crisis of capitalism, this system is no longer able to keep peoples in subjugation, and one after another they throw off the yoke of capital and take the path leading to socialism. That is why the period of the general crisis of capitalism is the pe-riod of its downfall and replacement by socialism, the period when socialist revolutions and national-liberation movements against imperialism develop.

Ideologists of imperialism believe that if the victory of socialist revolutions could be prevented and the communist movement suppressed, capitalism would be able to remain firm and stable and prove itself the only possible form of society. They see the source of capitalism’s troubles solely in the action of forces outside the capitalist system. Even those of them who recognise the general crisis of capitalism as a fact seek to attribute this crisis to the existence of the socialist system and to communist plots to overthrow capitalism. The communist movement, which inevitably develops from the class strug-gle, is regarded by them as a movement inspired from without and organised by “foreign agents”. Actually, the general crisis of capitalism is the product of the internal contra-dictions of imperialism. It becomes sharper and deeper primarily through the action of capitalist society’s own antagonisms. External conditions—the existence and growth of the socialist system—promote the more rapid maturing of these antagonisms, but are by no means their initial cause.

The general crisis of capitalism could no longer be held back once the imperialist countries had started a world war with its catastrophic consequences that proved fatal for capitalism. The First World War gave a mighty impetus to all the internal processes which were driving capitalism to a general crisis. It facilitated the transformation of mo-nopoly capitalism into state-monopoly capitalism* and the coming to a head of the so-cialist revolution. With the victory of the first socialist revolution—the Great October

• See Chapter 10.

Revolution in Russia—this crisis developed with seven-league strides.

Capitalism ceased to be a single, all-embracing social and economic world system. The transition to socialism began to take place on one-sixth of the globe and the struggle between capitalism and socialism became the main content of world development.

Imperialism continued, but under markedly changed conditions. In the first place, imperialism encountered new and grave economic difficulties. The falling-away from the capitalist system of such a huge country as Russia, the national-liberation struggle in a number of colonies, and the intensified oppression by monopolies with its concomitant worsening of the living conditions of working people in the imperialist countries re-sulted in a further sharpening of the rivalry for markets.

Owing to the limited market compared with the growth of productive potential, the period between the two world wars was marked by a situation in which enterprises were chronically working below capacity and chronic mass unemployment prevailed. The rate of growth of the productive forces decreased sharply. The decadence and parasitism of capitalism became ever more glaring in the most diverse fields.

With the beginning of the general crisis, imperialism was also considerably weak-ened politically. This was particularly apparent in the stormy upsurge of the revolution-ary struggle of the working class in the capitalist countries. In the wake of the October Revolution in Russia, a wave of revolutionary actions of the workers swept many Euro-pean countries (Germany, Austria, Hungary, Finland and Bulgaria). Although these ac-tions were brutally suppressed by the bourgeoisie, they brought the labour movement to a new stage of development. The strike movement grew to enormous proportions.

The political weakening of capitalism led to a further and still more marked growth of reaction on the part of the imperialist bourgeoisie. In the period of the general crisis, capitalism began to resort more and more frequently and extensively to terroristic repri-sals against the workers. This found its expression in certain countries in the establish-ment of fascist regimes, which were more brutal and blood-thirsty than anything previ-ously known to history.

The beginning of the general crisis was marked by increased imperialist aggressive-ness and a further sharpening of the contradictions between the imperialist powers. In addition, the contradictions also sharpened between the handful of predatory monopoly powers, on the one hand, and the rest of the world, on the other. Imperialism had hardly emerged from the war that had plunged it into general crisis than it rushed headlong into new adventures—intervention against Soviet Russia, sanguinary campaigns against co-lonial peoples, and civil war at home. The development of imperialist countries became still more uneven, leading to a still fiercer struggle for sources raw materials and mar-kets. The economic difficulties of the imperialist bourgeoisie also provided a fertile field for the growth of militarism. In such countries as Germany and Japan, a way out of the crisis was sought in the militarisation of the economy. Preparation for new wars became the major occupation of the big monopolists and the bourgeois politicians who served them.

Economic and political changes that were linked with the onset of the general crisis

of capitalism led to a further drop in the prestige this social system in the eyes of the broad masses. This naturally resulted in an ideological weakening of capitalism, which was also promoted by changes in the world outlook of the bourgeoisie itself. Decadent and pessimistic views, which reflected the position of a dying class in the historical arena, became more and more widespread. The ideology of imperialism was marked by a turn to extreme reaction, misanthropy, and medieval obscurantism. This was particu-larly characteristic of the “ideological” arsenal of fascism and, in turn, led to a further weakening of the attractive force of bourgeois ideas among the masses.

Thus, the general crisis of capitalism developed in all fields.

The most aggressive groups of the monopolistic bourgeoisie sought a way out of the crisis in the use of brute force—particularly, in the unleashing of a new world war.

CHAPTER 10

PRESENT-DAY IMPERIALISM

The Second World War ended differently for different imperialist countries. Some were among the victors, others among the vanquished; some emerged from the war strengthened, others weakened. However, the war struck a major blow at the imperialist system as a whole. The total effect of the war was to make imperialism still weaker in-ternally and to weaken its world positions.

1. Further Development of the General Crisis of Capitalism

During the Second World War and the socialist revolutions that occurred in a num-ber of European and Asian countries the general crisis of capitalism reached a second stage of development.

The most important features of this stage are as follows:

Firstly, the falling-away of a number of European and Asian countries from capital-ism and the transformation of socialism into a world system.

Secondly, far-reaching disintegration of the colonial system of imperialism and sharpening of the contradictions between the imperialist powers, on the one hand, and the colonial, semi-colonial and former colonial countries, on the other.

Thirdly, the development of new contradictions within the imperialist camp, primar-ily between the United States and other developed capitalist countries as a result of the intensified expansion of U.S. imperialism and its drive for world domination.

Fourthly, a further extension and deepening of class antagonisms in the developed capitalist countries, especially in connection with development of monopoly capitalism into state-monopoly capitalism.

In the period between the two world wars, socialist society existed in only one coun-try. About eight per cent of the world’s population lived here, as in a besieged fortress, encircled by hostile capitalist states.

As a result of victorious peoples’ democratic revolutions after the Second World War, a number of European and Asian countries, including such a vast country as China, took the path leading to socialism. Today, the socialist camp embraces 35 per cent of the world’s population, i.e., over one thousand million people.

The socialist countries have organised themselves into a mighty camp, which pos-sesses everything needed for their defence against the aggressive intrigues of imperialist reaction. They also possess the means to assist the rapid economic, social and cultural development of other nations which have thrown off the shackles of imperialist oppres-sion.

As a result of the disintegration of the colonial system, the majority of the Asian countries have freed themselves from direct subjection to the imperialists.

The sphere of imperialist expansion has shrunk considerably since the Second World War. The imperialist camp, which until recently held sway over five-sixths of the world, now embraces countries with less than a quarter of the world’s population. Thus,

it is clearer than ever today that the general crisis of capitalism is primarily a crisis of the imperialist system. More and more countries and peoples are liberating themselves from its yoke.

The imperialists did not reconcile themselves to these historic changes. Shortly after the close of the war, they started a feverish arms race in preparation for a new world war. They launched their “cold war” against the socialist countries. The second stage in the general crisis of capitalism became a period of intensified imperialist aggressiveness, of increased war danger for the world.

With the deepening of the general crisis, the uneven development of capitalism took on new and still sharper forms. As a result of the Second World War, the former balance of forces between the capitalist powers was radically upset. The position of the defeated countries (Germany, Japan and Italy) was undermined, and some of the victor capitalist powers (Britain and France) also emerged from the war seriously weakened. The United States, on the other hand, reinforced its position, thus becoming the dominant power in the capitalist world. U.S. monopolies began to expand economically and politically wherever they met without serious opposition. The U.S.A. has also striven to dominate old capitalist countries, including its imperialist allies.

After the Second World War the instability of capitalist economy increased. It was more and more frequently shaken by economic crises and falls in production. In their turn, the growing economic difficulties of the imperialist system, as well as a number of political factors to be discussed below, resulted in a new aggravation of class antago-nisms in the countries dominated by monopolies. The social basis for the rule of the mo-nopolist bourgeoisie narrowed; the class struggle of the working people against imperi-alism became still broader, as well as more resolute and organised.

Thus, there was no stabilisation of the capitalist system after the Second World War. On the contrary, its state of general crisis continued to grow.

The Moscow Conference of Representatives of Communist and Workers’ Parties (November 1960) analysed the changes that had taken place since the Second World War and came to the conclusion that the general crisis of capitalism had entered a new, third stage of development. A distinctive feature of this stage was that it had not arisen in connection with world war.

At this third stage the same processes that characterised the preceding stage continue to develop, but some new phenomena of fundamental importance are seen as well. This refers particularly to the decisive shift in the relationship of forces on the world arena. At this moment in its historic competition with capitalism, socialism reveals its indisput-able superiority as regards rates of economic growth, scientific and technological pro-gress in a number of important fields, and reinforcement of its defence potential. Fur-thermore the new stage of the general crisis of capitalism is marked by the virtual col-lapse of the colonial system—one of the most important mainstays of imperialism. At the same time the struggle of the imperialists continues for redivision of the remaining colonies and dependent countries and for preserving their domination in these countries in the form of a collective colonialism under the auspices of the United States. The im-

perialists also increase their attempts to exploit the liberated countries by the methods of “neo-colonialism”. Finally, the unequal development of capitalism has meant that the U.S.A. has been unable to maintain the share in capitalist world economy reached by it immediately after the war. The imperialist states that had been defeated in the Second World War re-established their economic positions, and this contributed to the rebirth of the old hot-beds of imperialist rivalry and conflict and the appearance of new ones.

The second and third stages of the general crisis of capitalism have revealed with particular clarity the main features and laws of this process. In summing them up the Programme of the C.P.S.U. points out: “The break-away from capitalism of more and more countries; the weakening of imperialist positions in the economic competition with socialism; the break-up of the imperialist colonial system; intensification of imperialist contradictions with the development state-monopoly capitalism and the growth of mili-tarism; the mounting internal instability and decay of capitalist economy evidenced by the increasing inability of capitalism to make full use of productive forces (low rates of production growth, periodic crises, continuous under-capacity operation of production plant, and chronic unemployment); the mounting struggle between labour and capital; an acute intensification of contradictions within the world capitalist economy; an unprece-dented growth of political reaction in all spheres, rejection of bourgeois freedoms and establishment of fascist and despotic regimes in a number of countries; and the profound crisis of bourgeois policy and ideology—all these are manifestations of the general cri-sis of capitalism.”139

In the final analysis, underlying all these phenomena is the deepening of the main contradiction of capitalism—that between the social character of production and the pri-vate form of appropriation. The contraction of the sphere of imperialist exploitation has further hampered the development of the productive forces under the conditions of pri-vate ownership and anarchy of production. The growth of the productive forces calls with increasing insistence for liberation from the fetters of capitalist ownership. In the new circumstances of the marked deepening and sharpening of the contradictions—a characteristic of the present stage of the general crisis of capitalism—the monopolies are no longer able to ensure their rule by the former means, A sharp transition to a new form of capitalist domination thus takes place, namely, the domination of state-monopoly capitalism.

2. State-Monopoly Capitalism

Transformation of Monopoly Capitalism into State-Monopoly Capitalism

The nature of the transformation of monopoly capitalism into state-monopoly capi-talism is clearly described in the Programme of the C.P.S.U. adopted by the Twenty-Second Party Congress: “State- monopoly capitalism combines the strength of the mo-nopolies and that of the state into a single mechanism whose purpose is to enrich the monopolies, suppress the working-class movement and the national liberation struggle, save the capitalist system, and launch aggressive wars.”140

Since the period of the Second World War, state-monopoly capitalism has estab-

lished itself in the major imperialist countries and, in varying degrees, has taken root in all developed capitalist countries.

State-monopoly capitalism cannot, of course, in any country embrace and transform all branches of the economy. Alongside it, just as alongside monopoly capitalism in general, non-monopolistic enterprises—medium-sized and small—continue to exist. And, to a greater or lesser extent, the urban and rural petty bourgeoisie, and at times even survivals of pre-capitalistic forms of exploitation, remain side by side with state-monopoly capitalism. The growth of state-monopoly capitalism, however, is a new and most important element in modern capitalism, and deserves special attention.

The development of state-monopoly capitalism is a complex and many-sided proc-ess having both economic and political aspects.

One of the very first moves of the monopolies, which had already become the pre-dominant economic force by the turn of the century, was to enrich themselves by means of government contracts and to seek to adapt tariff legislation, government credits, sub-sidies, tax privileges, etc., to their selfish interests. Prior to the general crisis of capital-ism, however, capitalist extended reproduction was realised by the monopolies largely without the intervention and direct participation of the state. The capitalist system as a whole still possessed sufficient stability to do without state support.

With the onset of the general crisis, the situation changed. Such shattering blows to the capitalist system as world wars, economic and political crises showed the dominant monopolies that it was necessary for them to supplement the old forms of their manage-ment and rule by new ones. To ensure the functioning of their machinery of production, finance and trade it became necessary for the capitalist corporations to buttress their strength with the powerful support of the state. World wars and economic crises, milita-rism and political upheavals hastened the transformation of monopoly capitalism into state-monopoly capitalism based on a gigantic concentration of production and centrali-sation of capital.

The first wave of state-monopoly capitalism occurred during the First World War (1914-18). Lenin wrote that this was caused by the pressure of circumstances arising out of the war. It developed furthest in Germany at that time. Lenin, however, did not con-sider the state-monopoly measures of the war period as accidental or transient phenom-ena. He viewed them as part of a historically objective and inevitable process which the war only served to accelerate. Already in 1917, Lenin developed his definition of impe-rialism, stressing that imperialism was not only the epoch of giant monopolies, but “the era of the development of monopoly capitalism into state-monopoly capitalism...”.141

An important factor in the development of state-monopoly capitalism was the world economic crisis of 1929-33, which severely shook world capitalist economy. The crisis developed at a time when the Soviet Union was successfully carrying out its First Five-Year Plan, which demonstrated the striking advantages of socialist planned economy. To protect the big monopolies from the consequences of the crisis, government measures were undertaken. These were depicted as successful attempts to “control” the capitalist economy and to introduce principles of “planning”. From that time on, state-monopoly

anti-crisis measures have formed an integral part of the activity of the state machinery of imperialism. The function of safeguarding the big capitalists from the consequences of economic crises was vested in the government by appropriate legislation.

Under the cloak of fighting crises and “planning” the economy, monopoly capital has found new means of enriching itself at public expense. Under a system of “public works”, the state builds roads to reduce the monopolies’ transportation costs, and con-structs electric power stations to reduce their power costs. Under the pretext of disposing of “surplus” production, the state buys non-marketable goods from the monopolies, stock-piles them in warehouses or simply destroys them. The state also grants credits and subsidies to the monopolies for marketing such commodities abroad at artificially low prices, a process known as dumping. Such measures serve merely to accentuate the parasitism of monopoly capital.

In fascist Germany, the merging of the powers of the financial oligarchy with those of the state was carried to the utmost limits. Each big capitalist was empowered to act on behalf of the state at his enterprise. State bodies included representatives of Big Business and controlled entire branches of the economy. They placed orders with concerns, estab-lished prices and allocated raw materials. The state became an instrument for the further centralisation of capital. Laws were adopted dissolving all small joint-stock companies and incorporating them into the big concerns. The fascist state brutally crushed the resis-tance of the proletariat, dissolving its trade unions and political parties. State-monopoly capitalism here revealed to the full its ugly predatory character.

The Second World War accelerated the transition from monopoly capitalism to state-monopoly capitalism. The close interlocking of the all-powerful monopolies with the state, which developed under wartime conditions, was not terminated at the end of the war. Instead, it became a basic feature of the new state-monopoly structure. The ap-paratus for the military mobilisation of the economy became an integral part of the state machine in peacetime as well. As a result of two world wars, the key economic positions in the imperialist states were occupied by military concerns, which had a special interest in state-monopoly measures.

To utilise state power more effectively, the tycoons of finance capital had them-selves appointed as ministers, heads of important departments, ambassadors and promi-nent officials. The state machinery and the monopolies are so closely interlocked that it is often difficult to determine the boundary between them. The state is turned into a committee for managing the affairs of the monopolist bourgeoisie. All economic life is strongly bureaucratised.

Monopolies do not eliminate competition, Lenin pointed out, but merely change the forms of competitive struggle. New forms of rivalry arise. The use of economic, political and at times physical force to strangle and suppress competitors by all possible means becomes a main weapon in the intensified competitive struggle. State- monopoly capital-ism still further narrows the area of free competition. It becomes the arena of a new form of rivalry—the struggle between the big monopolies for the privilege of plundering the public coffers and for control over various departments of the state apparatus. It is little

wonder that Lenin called state-monopoly capitalism “legalised embezzlement of public funds".

Mechanism of Modern State-Monopoly Capitalism

The essence of state-monopoly capitalism, as already indicated, is the direct union of the power of the capitalist monopolies with the enormous power of the state. In this union the state occupies not an independent, but a subordinate position.

In the interests of the monopolies, the state carries out various regulating measures and makes use of state nationalisation of individual branches of the economy. It swells the government budget in order to create a special kind of privileged, guaranteed market for the corporations. This is utilised as a buffer to absorb the shocks caused by economic crises and the narrowed sphere of imperialist exploitation.

The monopolies use the state to an unprecedented extent as an instrument of capital-ist accumulation. To concentrate the monetary resources of the population in the very large private banks and insurance companies that finance the monopolists, the state in effect acts as a guarantor of deposits. It saves the trusts and concerns from bankruptcy and maintains and supports the high level of their profits by means of heavy tax burdens imposed on the working people. The military and police functions of the state become monstrously enlarged and are employed by the monopolies to oppress the working peo-ple.

A particularly important feature of modern state-monopoly capitalism is the creation of a substantial state market in the form of government orders, allocations for the pur-chase of surpluses, etc. This market, which belongs almost exclusively to the big corpo-rations, enormously increases the role of state fiscal policy in the economy. An ever in-creasing part of the national revenue in the form of direct and indirect taxes is concen-trated in the hands of the state and redistributed in favour of the monopolies. Taxes in the United States and Britain at the beginning of this century constituted only a few per cent of the national income, but in 1960 they represented about a quarter of the national income.

These enormous exactions from the population are utilised primarily for large gov-ernment purchases of armaments that are produced by the concerns on government con-tract. Since the contracts, as a rule, are long-term (4-5 years), the monopolies are en-sured to a certain extent against market fluctuations of demand.

The state provides a more or less guaranteed market primarily for the big corpora-tions. In addition, it grants them huge subsidies, given primarily to concerns producing commodities important from the military point of view—strategic raw materials, fuel, certain kinds of chemicals and electric power. Government credits for modernising fac-tories also serve as a source of enrichment for the monopolies. Furthermore, the banks derive huge profits from the floating of government loans.

In the transition to state-monopoly capitalism, state ownership also increases to some extent. This is furthered in particular by the rapid progress of modern technology (automation, electronics and atomic energy). In setting up new branches of industry de-

manding exceptionally large initial investment of capital, the monopolies seek to shift the burden upon the state. They assume the role of contractors in constructing and equipping the enterprises, so that they are guaranteed high profits without any risk. An increase in state property also results from the construction of new armament factories and related branches of industry. Here, too, private companies seek to transfer the costs of new construction to the state. These factories are then placed at the disposal of the monopolies on government lease.

Moreover, ownership is transferred to the state in several important, but not very profitable, branches of industry. In Britain, for example, this has applied to coal mining, electric power and railways. The nationalisation of these branches has proved highly advantageous for the companies involved. Thanks to the “generosity” of the government the capitalist owners were paid a higher price than they would have received from a pri-vate purchaser. In effect, they were given the opportunity to withdraw their capital from less profitable enterprises and to invest it in more profitable ones. This transfer of own-ership to the state has been a great windfall to the capitalist corporations inasmuch as they derive great advantage from low freight and electricity rates, and low prices of coal, iron and steel. Essentially all the key posts in the nationalised industries have been put in the hands of financial magnates and their representatives.

Various forms of mixed state and private ownership of the means of production are also to be found. In Italy and West Germany, for example, the state owns large blocks of shares of numerous companies in various branches of the economy.

A characteristic feature of state-monopoly capitalism is the active intervention of the state in conflicts between workers and employers, and its tendency to suppress the dis-content of the masses by the use of force. It imposes compulsory arbitration more and more often during strikes, applying pressure on the strikers in the interests of the mo-nopolies. State laws and decrees, e.g., the Taft-Hartley Act in the United States, make it very difficult for trade unions to conduct strikes and other activities. The government policy of “freezing” wages, i.e., maintaining them at a constant level while the cost of living rises, enables the monopolies to intensify their exploitation of the working people.

State-monopoly measures in the international field have become a feature of the post-war period. The monopolies compel the state to finance commodity exports and to underwrite private export credits. The imperialist state undertakes export of capital to branches of industry and countries where private corporations do not want to take the risk.

The policy of capitalist “integration” is the clearest expression of state-monopoly tendencies in the international field. This policy has given rise to gigantic state-monopoly associations such as the European Coal and Steel Community and the Euro-pean Atomic Energy Association as well as the European Economic Community (the “Common Market”) embracing West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Holland and Luxemburg, and the European Free Trade Association (the “Seven”) with a number of other West European countries headed by Britain.

In contrast to the usual international cartels of the private monopolies, “integration”

is the result of an agreement between governments. Here too, however, the governments support the interests and aims of the most powerful monopolies. Both economic and po-litical calculations of the financial oligarchy of Western Europe are closely interwoven in the policy of “integration”. By uniting national markets into a “common market” and abolishing or weakening customs barriers, the giant monopolies are seeking to extend the bounds of their domination, to widen markets and spheres for capital investment, to enlarge the zone of monopolistic exploitation, and to offer joint resistance to the de-mands of the working class. The “Common Market” is “Europe of the Trusts”, the con-temporary form of division of markets between the biggest monopolies.

A determining role, however, is played by the political aims of the imperialists. The international state-monopoly associations are the economic basis of aggressive blocs aimed at the socialist countries, an imperialist alliance to suppress the working-class and democratic movement and to carry out the policy of “neo-colonialism”. The instigator of capitalist “integration” is American imperialism, which regards it as a means of consoli-dating all the reactionary forces of the West. At the same time, however, the organisa-tions arising under the banner of “united” capitalist Europe themselves become hotbeds of acute friction and conflict. The U.S.A., fearing the weakening of its own positions, persistently tries to keep “united” Europe in the grip of American aggressive policy and thus preserve its leading position in the capitalist world.

Militarisation of the Economy

Militarisation of the economy in the imperialist states is inseparably linked with the development of state-monopoly tendencies.

Militarisation of the economy in its developed form is typical of capitalism only in the period of the general crisis of capitalism, which is marked by world wars. It becomes possible because the government apparatus is utilised by the monopolies to redistribute the national income (by means of direct and indirect taxes, government loans, control over strategic raw materials, etc.) in order to create a powerful war economy. The reason for such truly “total” militarisation, exemplified by Germany in 1933-39 and the United States after the Second World War, is to be found in the sharpening basic contradictions of present-day monopoly capitalism. The big corporations persistently seek to solve the problem of markets by obtaining government war contracts. Moreover, their interest in the arms race is deep-rooted, for it is the source of super-profits running into thousands of millions.

The enormous sums expended by the imperialist states for military purposes serve to alleviate for a time the acute problem of markets.

However, militarisation of the economy cannot be attributed solely to economic causes, for it is inseparably linked with the general course of imperialist domestic and foreign policy. It is well known that as a result of the 1929-33 world economic crisis many monopolies both in the United States and Germany became very much interested in war contracts. At that time, Hitler Germany undertook the forced militarisation of the economy, and subordinated its domestic and foreign policy to preparations for a war

aimed at world domination. After the Second World War, the United States became the main exponent of a militarised economy.

It need scarcely be emphasised that from the moral viewpoint a society which uses the production of weapons of mass destruction as an economic “stimulus” is pronounc-ing its own death sentence.

However, the question is not simply one of morals. This policy is not only criminal, but in the final analysis also futile, for it does not solve the basic contradictions of pre-sent-day capitalism.

An increase in state military orders sometimes acts as a lever for increasing overall production, including goods for civilian use. It can also temporarily promote a certain increase in wages, particularly of those employed in war industry. This takes place, as a rule, when war production expands, and idle capacity and capital is put to use. The un-employed who obtain work in war industry increase the demand for goods. To satisfy this demand, it becomes necessary to increase production in other branches of the econ-omy. Capitalist demand also grows, especially when old enterprises are expanded and new ones constructed in anticipation of increased war contracts, with the consequent need for building materials, machinery and other equipment.

This was the situation in the United States during the Second World War, when in-active production capacity was brought into operation. From 1940 to 1943, the volume of industrial production increased by 90 per cent and the number of workers engaged in manufacturing rose by 70 per cent. The outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 also served as a stimulus to industrial production. The example of the United States, however, also reveals the contradictions and limitations of a militarised economy. Even during the Second World War, the period of simultaneous growth of U.S. military and civilian pro-duction was short-lived. The level of civilian production soon began to fall. Long before the end of the war, a situation had arisen in which civilian production could no longer be increased and had to be cut back. Beginning with 1944, a general decrease in industrial production could already be observed, for the increase in the output of war materials no longer covered the cut in production for civilian purposes. The same thing happened during the Korean War.

The short-lived stimulating effect of militarisation for the general growth of produc-tion can also be explained by the methods used to finance it. In the early period, the government increases the military budget not only by levying taxes, but also by issuing government loan bonds, which are readily taken up by the bourgeoisie, who have the available financial means. Later on, however, more and more of the budget is met by increasing taxes on factory workers and office employees. The increase in government demand under such conditions is inevitably accompanied by a curtailment of the popula-tion’s purchasing power, which leads to a shrinking market for civilian production.

From 1944 to 1961, U.S. industrial production increased by only 22 per cent, which shows that the stimulus of the arms race in the post-war militarisation of the U. S. econ-omy was not very considerable. As a matter of fact, this rather small increase is by no means attributable to militarisation alone. The role played by the mass renewal and ex-

pansion of fixed capital in industry and other branches of the economy was not less sig-nificant.

Whereas the overall volume of production in the United States grew as a result of war and militarisation, the economic consequences were different in those countries whose territory was the scene of war operations. Huge military expenditure did not ac-celerate, but on the contrary retarded for a number of years the post-war economic re-covery of France and Britain. Although the proportion of national income appropriated for military purposes in these countries is smaller than in the United States, it imposes a much heavier burden on their economy weakened by war. It is not by chance that neither Britain nor France has been able to regain its former position in world industrial produc-tion. War expenditure swallows up the resources that could be utilised for the moderni-sation and expansion of industry. Thus, militarisation has decreased the ability of Britain and France to compete on the world market.

Marx wrote that war “in the direct economic sense, is the same as if a nation were to throw a portion of its capital into the sea”.142 When Marx wrote this, however, even in time of war such vast quantities of material values were not thrown into the bottomless ocean of war expenditure as are at present squandered in most capitalist countries in time of peace. Thus, since the Second World War, the war budgets of the most highly militarised imperialist states annually devour, on an average, 10-15 per cent of the na-tional income.

Militarisation of the economy is accompanied by a curtailment of production for peaceful purposes. It undermines the basis for extended reproduction and in the final analysis inevitably leads to a reduction in overall volume of production. Simultaneously, the rapid progress of military technology and the resulting swift “moral depreciation” of modern weapons continually promote the large-scale production of armaments that be-come out of date in a few years and are converted into heaps of scrap-iron.

No matter how rich an imperialist country may be, militarisation can only lead to a gradual exhaustion of the national economy. It inevitably retards the rate of growth of civilian branches of production and of the economy as a whole. To convince oneself of this, it is sufficient to compare the rate of growth of production after the Second World War in Britain and France, where the economy sagged under the excessive burden of militarisation, with that of West Germany, where armament expenditure was incompa-rably smaller over a number of years. In West Germany, industrial production increased considerably more rapidly. Moreover, this country very effectively exploited the short-age of fixed capital prevailing in most capitalist countries. From 1950, she began to ex-port increasingly large quantities of machinery, machine tools and equipment, which the British and French factories, occupied with the production of armaments, could not manufacture. The same causes are responsible for the relatively rapid growth of indus-trial production in post-war Japan.

The government obtains a certain portion of the means required for the army by state loans. The bonds of these loans are purchased primarily by capitalists who derive an important part of their incomes from the annual interest paid by the government. To

pay interest to the capitalists and to redeem the bonds, however, the government must impose new taxes. Thus, the money supplied to the government by the bourgeoisie through the acquisition of state bonds is returned to them in full out of the pockets of the working people, and, moreover, with the addition of high interest.

An inevitable accompaniment of a militarised economy and one of its very impor-tant methods of operation is the depreciation of money, or inflation. The state is unable to completely cover its military expenditure by taxes and loans alone. The government’s budget deficit is covered in part by issuing more paper money than is required for circu-lation. Furthermore, state bonds are used as a means of payment, as security on loans granted by banks to the capitalists, and this leads to an increase in the amount of money in circulation. The result is inflation—the usual consequence of wars and militarisation of the economy. In 1961, the purchasing power of the U. S. dollar, according to official data, was almost down to two-fifths of its pre-war level, the British pound sterling—two-sevenths, and the Italian lira—only a few per cent of its pre-war level. Under infla-tionary conditions, price rises exceed wage increases. This means that capitalist profits grow at the expense of a decreasing workers’ share in the national income. Inflation is a means of redistributing the national income in favour of the monopolies, thereby rob-bing the working people.

Thus, in the final analysis the full brunt of military expenditure, no matter how fi-nanced, is borne by the broad mass of the people. On the other hand, this expenditure serves to enrich the big capitalists.

Militarisation of the economy leads to the expenditure of capitalist governments for social and cultural needs (schools, higher educational institutions, hospitals, etc.) being reduced to a minimum. It results in a degradation of culture, the spread of chauvinism, an increase in the power of brass-hats and bureaucrats, and the trampling underfoot of all the achievements of bourgeois democracy, which were won by the working masses in stubborn struggle.

A militarised economy is clear evidence of the parasitic degeneration of present-day capitalism.

Capitalist Nationalisation and State Capitalism

State-monopoly capitalism is an extremely anti-national and reactionary system, as is monopoly capitalism in general. It should not be confused, however, with non-monopolistic state capitalism. The latter may be of a reactionary or progressive nature, depending on the social forces behind it. For example, in certain underdeveloped coun-tries which have thrown off the yoke of colonialism, state capitalism, and particularly state ownership, play a progressive role at present.*

• See Chapter 16.

State ownership in imperialist countries is now, in the main, part of the reactionary system of state-monopoly capitalism. Does this mean that the working class and other progressive forces should oppose state ownership and support the return of nationalised

enterprises to the capitalists? Of course not, for this would be a step backward. It is not the progressive forces but rather the capitalist monopolies that want denationalisation.

During the Second World War, the monopoly bourgeoisie in the European capitalist countries which were occupied by the Hitler invaders discredited themselves by collabo-rating with the enemy. For that reason the people demanded nationalisation after the war. They were determined to put an end to monopoly domination, to extirpate fascism, to punish the war criminals, and to safeguard peace, independence and genuine democ-racy. In nationalisation the working people saw a means of throwing off the yoke of the most reactionary groups of monopoly capital.

However, the bourgeois state and the Right-wing Social-Democrats supporting it, who carried out partial capitalist nationalisation under pressure from the masses, did so in such a way as to best serve the interests of the monopolies and with least considera-tion for the demands of the workers. Moreover, as soon as the situation changed the capitalist monopolies began to take over the state enterprises. In Britain the iron and steel industry was returned to private ownership. A partial transfer of the nationalised enterprises to the monopolies took place in France, Italy and Austria.

Despite this, the working masses in Britain and several other countries are insis-tently demanding the further nationalisation of basic industries, having before them the splendid example of the socialist countries, which clearly demonstrates the advantages of a socialist industry owned by the nation.

The monopolists, however, strongly oppose any extension even of capitalist nation-alisation, for each instance of nationalisation once again strikingly demonstrates to the working people that society can get along very well without capitalists. Thus, nationali-sation, by undermining the “sacred principle” of private ownership, helps to destroy the illusions which the bourgeoisie are very interested in maintaining. Moreover, as long as enterprises are in private hands, the monopolists know that they can dominate them completely. After nationalisation, however, even though the monopolists can in general make the state bodies do their bidding, they have no insurance against undesirable out-side interference in their affairs since other monopolists who are competing with them also try to make use of the state. The state, furthermore, has to act at times in the interest of the ruling class as a whole, and this does not necessarily coincide in every respect with the aims and desires of individual trusts and concerns. For this reason, monopolists invariably prefer the private form of ownership, and permit state ownership only in spe-cial circumstances and to a limited extent, looking upon it merely as an instrument for reinforcing their private monopolist ownership.

The Communist Parties of many countries in which state-monopoly capitalism ex-ists support the demand for a step-by-step nationalisation of basic industries, and in the first place of those branches in which the oppression of the monopolists has become so unbearable for the workers that the latter are prepared to undertake a mass political struggle to achieve immediate nationalisation. Communists insist on nationalisation be-ing carried out in a way that really curtails the power of the monopoly capitalists and improves the lot of the working people.

Not only nationalisation, but many other reforms demanded by the working people of bourgeois countries to protect their interests involve state-capitalist measures. This is due to the increased role of the capitalist state in contemporary economic life. The work-ing people are by no means against all intervention of the state in the economy; they support such intervention as would curb the arbitrary and unlimited power of the preda-tory monopolies.

The workers justifiably reason that if the state can “freeze” wages in the interests of the capitalists, it should be able to establish a guaranteed minimum wage and, at least occasionally, use its arbitration powers to settle labour disputes in the interests of the workers. It should be possible for it to adopt effective measures against unrestricted rent increases and inflated prices of consumer goods.

Experience shows that, as a result of struggle, the working people do in fact wring certain minor concessions from the capitalist state. Pressure from the workers has led here and there to public works being organised for the unemployed. Apparently, even when finance capital holds complete sway, the ruling circles cannot afford to disregard the mounting dissatisfaction of the broad masses if these masses are backed by militant organisation.

A progressive American economist, Hyman Lumer, notes that a relatively effective control of prices was established in the United States during the latter part of the Second World War thanks to the struggle of the people against the monopolies. Wholesale and retail prices, as well as rents, rose by only 2-4 per cent in this period. After the war, when government price controls were lifted, the monopolies were free to push up prices, which as a result have been continually increasing. Lumer writes: “…Controls did sub-stantially reduce the burden borne by the workers. By the same token, the absence of anything remotely resembling genuine price controls in the present war economy has greatly added to their burden.”143

Hence, the popular masses, who have to shoulder the burden of state-monopoly capitalism, have every reason to continue the struggle for government measures directed against the arbitrary rule of the monopolies. It is quite clear, however, that reactionary state-monopoly capitalism cannot of itself be transformed into a progressive system, let alone socialism. From state-monopoly capitalism there is only one way forward—to so-cialism. Only the struggle for power of the working class and of all working people un-der its leadership, only decisive victory in this struggle, can open up the path from capi-talism to socialism,

Myths of Revisionists and Reformists About Present-Day Capitalism

Propagandists on behalf of the bourgeoisie, reformists and revisionists depict state-monopoly capitalism as a new social system that is basically different from the old capi-talism. For this purpose, they deliberately equate this form of monopoly domination with those state-capitalist measures which the working people by their class struggle have succeeded in wringing from the capitalist class. They also claim that the capitalist state is now able to control economic development and to rid it of crises, and that the present-

day bourgeois state stands above classes. The old exploiting capitalism, according to them, has now given way to a “universal welfare state” and predatory imperialism has become “people’s capitalism”.

The theories of the British bourgeois economist John Maynard Keynes, which he developed as far back as the thirties, provide the “theoretical basis” for such views. In contrast to other bourgeois economists, he recognised that capitalism was seriously ail-ing and had lost the capacity for economic self-regulation. Keynes, however, would not, and could not, agree that the illness was incurable. Moreover, he took upon himself the role of “healer” of capitalism, advancing a whole series of measures for its “rehabilita-tion” by means of government controls and the development of state-monopoly capital-ism. Keynes and his followers attach particular importance to special measures for main-taining capital investment in production at a proper level, government control over credit (regulating the rate of interest) and money circulation (“controlled” depreciation of money in order to decrease the real wages of workers). The teachings of Keynes are, in essence, an apologetic based on the illusion that it is possible to perpetuate the capitalist system by eliminating a number of its shortcomings and some of its disastrous effects on the working people.

At present, not only most bourgeois economists, but considerable numbers of Right-wing Social-Democrats, base themselves on Keynes’s theories. One of the first to at-tempt to provide arguments for rejecting Marxism in favour of Keynesianism was the British labour leader John Strachey in his book entitled Contemporary Capitalism. He asserted that Keynes, although an open defender of capitalism and enemy of socialism, proposed, without himself being aware of it, methods for achieving a gradual evolution from state-monopoly capitalism to socialism. Keynes called upon the state to encourage the investment of capital in production in every way possible and to establish a control over those possessing money that would make them spend it instead of hoarding it and thus maintain effective demand at a high level. Strachey asserts that this compels the bourgeois state to equalise incomes by increasing taxes on profits. According to him, the British government, adopting Keynes’s advice, is in fact already carrying through a re-distribution of the national income and is “planning” the economy, with the aim of maintaining a high level of effective demand and “full employment”.

Strachey considers that the nationalisation of several industries and the establish-ment of a national system of social insurance and health service by the Labour Govern-ment, has already made Britain socialist. However, he admits that “oligopoly”, i.e., cliques of big monopolists, dominates the economy of Britain. Not in the least embar-rassed by this, he assures us that Britain has “passed over the class conflict”, that rela-tions between workers and employers have entered a “peaceful phase”, etc.

The Right-wing socialists have officially repudiated Marx’s economic theory. That the growth of state-monopoly capitalism denotes the gradual conversion of bourgeois society into a socialist one, is the underlying idea of the programmes drawn up by the Right-wing leaders of the Socialist Parties, including the Declaration of the Socialist International in 1962.

What are the fallacies in such views of present-day capitalism? Firstly, the Right-wing Social-Democrats lump together state-monopoly capitalism and all other forms of state capitalism, without making any distinction between them. Thus they substitute one term or the other, concealing the nature of present-day capitalism. In other words, they embellish present-day capitalism by completely effacing its essential features—the op-pression of predatory monopolies, militarism, parasitism, crises and unemployment. In reality, however, precisely these features are the basic reality of present-day state-monopoly capitalism, which does not change the nature of capitalism.

Secondly, the Right-wing Social-Democrats distort reality by claiming that the mo-nopolies are subordinate to the state, which is supposed to stand “above classes”. In ac-tual fact, the state is controlled by the capitalist monopolies. Under state-monopoly capi-talism, the decisive power in society is concentrated in the hands of the very big corpo-rations, with the top few hundred richest families exercising a direct or indirect dictator-ship. Under these conditions not only is there no change in the position of the principal classes in the system of social production, but the gulf between labour and capital, be-tween the majority of the people and the monopolies, becomes deeper.

Thirdly, the Right-wing Social-Democrats attempt to slur over the class character of ordinary state capitalism, depicting state-capitalist measures as steps in building social-ism. As long as power remains in the hands of the bourgeoisie the nationalisation of in-dividual enterprises and other state-capitalist measures do not eliminate the capitalist relations of exploitation even in those countries where such measures at present have a progressive character, e.g., India and Indonesia. Socialist production relations cannot arise in the midst of capitalism; only the material pre-conditions for socialism can be created there. To begin the building of socialism on basis of these pre-conditions, how-ever, is impossible as long as the state remains in the hands of the capitalists, i.e., as long as power is not transferred to the working people.

In scientific socialism, as well as in the minds of many generations of participants in the working-class movement, the concept of socialism has always been closely associ-ated with social ownership. Present-day Right-wing Social-Democrats, however, are now contesting also this scientific view. For example, the Frankfurt declaration of the Socialist International (1951) states: “Socialist planning does not presuppose the estab-lishment of social ownership over all the means of production. It is compatible with the existence of private ownership in the basic branches of the economy.” Guided by this view, the Right-wing top leadership of the British Labour Party, in order to please the monopolist top section of the bourgeoisie, has declared against further nationalisation measures, i.e., even against capitalist nationalisation.

A careful examination of the programmes of present-day Right-wing Social-Democrats cannot fail to disclose that their portrayal of “socialism” is in essence merely a copy of existing state-monopoly capitalism. Apparently their vision of the future does not go further than this social “ideal”, i.e., the ideal of the Morgans and Rockefellers.

Some revisionists in Yugoslavia have also followed in the footsteps of the Right-wing Social-Democrats in their embellishment of present-day capitalism. In discussing

the programme of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, for example, they have asserted that in capitalism today there appear more and more “new elements in the econ-omy which are socialist in their objective tendency”, and “exert pressure on the capital-ist mode of production”; “the rights of private capital are being restricted” and more and more of its economic functions are being turned over to the state. Thus, they say, “a process of development to socialism” is taking place in the capitalist world.

This revisionist idea coincides, in essence, with the claims of Right-wing Social-Democrats that capitalism is growing over into socialism. The likelihood of such a “mi-raculous transformation” is deduced by merely substituting one concept for another. In-stead of calling present-day capitalism by its real name—“state-monopoly capitalism”—they call it “state capitalism”, explaining that the term “state-monopoly capitalism” merely expresses the “origin of state capitalism”. In this way the revisionists transform reactionary state- monopoly capitalism into an embryonic form of the less offensive state capitalism. In this state capitalism they then perceive “socialist elements” which finally purge present-day capitalism of its foulness....

Such revisionist arguments, of course, are not remarkable for their logic and cannot convince anyone.

In opposition to the reformist and revisionist programme of state-monopoly capital-ism “growing over” into socialism, the Marxist-Leninist parties advance a programme of resolute struggle against the capitalist monopolies, against their domination, and for the overthrow of the dictatorship exercised by a handful of families comprising the monopo-list aristocracy.

Marxist-Leninists strive to utilise in the interests of the working people all possible reforms under capitalism, including reforms of a state-capitalist nature. At the same time, they hold that the replacement of the capitalist by the socialist mode of production can take place only as a result of a socialist revolution.

3. Is Capitalism Getting Rid of Economic Crises?

After the 1929-33 world economic crisis, and particularly after the Second World War, monopoly capital with government assistance established a whole system of anti-crisis measures. These are a characteristic feature of the machinery of state-monopoly capitalism,

Anti-Crisis Measures Are Merely a Palliative  Against Capitalism’s Incurable Illness

The major anti-crisis measure consists in huge government orders for and purchase of armaments and strategic materials, which provide many big monopolies with a con-siderable and steady demand. Of great importance, too, is government control in the sphere of credit and banking, where previously the stormy development of crises gener-ally began. In order to prevent the panicky withdrawal of deposits, which led in the past to the failure of large banks, the imperialist states have in effect taken upon themselves the role of guarantor of these deposits. Moreover, government regulation of stock ex-

changes and issuance of securities has been introduced almost universally in one form or another. To prevent crises, the state also undertakes various measures to restrict or cur-tail production, e. g., by raising the interest on bank credits and granting premiums for reducing the area under cultivation. Simultaneously, the state seeks to influence the eco-nomic situation by regulating consumer credit (the sale of cars, television and radio sets, furniture, etc., on credit or hire-purchase).

Supporters of state-monopoly capitalism widely advertise such measures, alleging that their adoption has succeeded (or almost succeeded) in curing capitalism of its crises and that they ensure the steady growth of production. The road is now said to be open to perpetual “prosperity” and deliverance from unemployment.  

But how do matters really stand? By way of example, let us take the United States, where the big capitalist monopolies have achieved the greatest freedom of action, the strongest influence over state, and where the ravages of war have least affected eco-nomic development.

Despite the highly favourable post-war conditions for the United States in domestic and foreign markets, anti-crisis measures have not had the desired effect. Instead of a steady growth of U.S. industrial production, four slumps in production occurred in the post-war period. The first took place in 1948-49, when the drop in production, according to official data, amounted to 10.5 per cent. The second developed four years later (1953-54), the decrease amounting to 10.2 per cent. The third occurred three years after that (1957-58), with production falling 14.3 per cent, and, finally, after less than two years (1960-61) there was a fourth, with production reduced by 8 per cent. Moreover, it should be borne in mind that the published official figures on the volume of production include data on the production of armaments and strategic materials, for which government or-ders during times of slump do not diminish, but rather increase. If war production were excluded, the contraction of civilian output would undoubtedly be much greater than that shown by available American statistics.

The crisis character of these production slumps is indicated by the fact that mass un-employment in the United Sates not only has not disappeared, but has actually increased. With each succeeding production slump, the number of those registered as fully unem-ployed grew sharply. Thus, in 1949, unemployment rose by 1.3 million over the 1948 level; from 1953 to 1954, it rose by 1.6 million; and in mid-1958, unemployment was 2.4 million higher than the 1957 average. At the beginning of 1961, about 5.5 million fully unemployed were officially registered.

These are indisputable facts regarding the recent period. It would be incorrect, how-ever, to conclude that state-monopoly capitalism can in no way influence the nature and form of economic crises by means of anti-crisis measures. As a matter of fact, they have been able to achieve something in this respect.

State-monopoly capitalism can undoubtedly influence the form, sequence and nature of a particular crisis. The big monopolies are in a position to utilise the enormous finan-cial power of the state as a shock-absorber, which in many instances weakens the spon-taneous explosive force of a crisis at its outbreak. Moreover, there are now more possi-

bilities than hitherto for big capitalists to avert bankruptcy by stabilising their position at the cost of the bankruptcy of medium and small capitalists. Furthermore, during a crisis the big corporations can often prevent spontaneous decreases in commodity prices from taking place and, at times, even raise certain prices. They can also take advantage of huge war orders from the state, so as to ensure themselves high profits even during peri-ods of economic crises.

This, however, is only one aspect of the matter. The other aspect is that the anti-crisis measures used for the enrichment of monopolies inevitably sap the economic strength of a country and worsen the material conditions of the overwhelming majority of the population. Insofar as the bourgeois state, by increasing taxation and depreciating the currency, plunders the people in order to finance a frantic arms race, effective de-mand inevitably decreases. Thus, the stage is set for new acute outbreaks of the incur-able ailment of capitalism—economic crises. The more the monopolies succeed in pre-venting price decreases—previously an accompaniment of crises—the greater .become the obstacles to the disposal of commodity surpluses. In the final analysis, this makes it more difficult to emerge from the crisis and to create the conditions for a new economic upsurge. Furthermore, to the extent that the capitalist state succeeds through its interven-tion in saving the big corporations from bankruptcy and in absorbing other shocks pro-duced by the crisis, it interferes with the redistribution of capital among the various branches of production by means of which the necessary proportions between them are established.

Thus, state-monopoly capitalism, although exerting a certain influence on the course of a crisis, does not eliminate its causes, but, on the contrary, only makes the illness more deep-seated, thereby creating the basis for new crises. Attempts at state regulation of capitalist economy cannot do away with competition and anarchy of production, can-not ensure planned development of the whole economy of society, for capitalist owner-ship and exploitation of wage labour continues to be the basis of production.

To conceal the crisis nature of the frequent post-war production slumps in the United States, bourgeois economists euphemistically refer to them as “recessions”. Changing the label, however, does not change the contents. The crisis nature of such production slumps stems from the nature of their causes, which are basically the same as those of all other capitalist crises of over-production. In other words, the anarchy of pro-duction prevailing under capitalism and the capitalists’ incessant pursuit of profits peri-odically bring about a sharp discrepancy between the growth of production and the lag in effective demand. The expansion of markets cannot keep pace with the rise in produc-tion. It is precisely the objective function of economic crises to temporarily overcome this discrepancy.

Changes seen in the character of recent crises, particularly in the United States, do not of course provide sufficient basis for the claim that all economic crises under state-monopoly capitalism will henceforth have these features. The future will undoubtedly reveal diverse forms of economic crises in capitalist countries and, in particular, in due course much more violent economic shocks may occur in the countries of state-

monopoly capitalism. One thing is quite clear; as long as the contradiction exists be-tween the social character of production and the capitalist (private) form of appropria-tion, i. e., as long as capitalism exists, economic crises will inevitably recur. Anti-crisis measures and all attempts at economic regulation by present-day state-monopoly capital-ism do not stabilise capitalist economy, but rather increase its instability.

“The continuous alternation of critical slumps and feverish up-trends,” said N. S. Khrushchov, “speaks of the instability of the capitalist economy. Neither the arms race, nor any other measure, can ever rid the economy of the United States and the other capi-talist countries of over-production crises. Whatever the capitalist states do, they will never be able to eliminate the cause of crises. Capitalism will never succeed in breaking the death grip of its own contradictions. They keep growing in size and scope, threaten-ing new economic upheavals.”144

Bankruptcy of the Theory of “Crisis-Free Development” of Capitalism

Despite the facts, bourgeois theoreticians and revisionists seek to show that it is nonetheless possible to eliminate crises and preserve capitalism. As evidence, they gen-erally point to the post-war favourable economic situation in the major European capital-ist countries.

Up to 1957-58, it is true, there were no clear indications of production crises in these countries (disregarding crises in some industries—coal, textile, etc.). However, only those who wish to deceive themselves or others can, on this basis, proclaim the advent of an era of “crisis-free capitalism”.

The favourable economic situation in Western Europe, even more so than in the United States, resulted from certain transient, historically determined causes bound up with the aftermath of war. These countries suffered considerable destruction and devas-tation during the war. This applies especially to Germany, Italy and France and also to Japan (the sole Asian country of monopoly capitalism). Obviously, there could be no over-production in these countries as long as the destruction due to war had not been made good. This took, however, more than just a year or two.

No sooner was this achieved in the main than grave signs of crisis began to appear. Thus, beginning with 1958, production was cut down and a sharp drop in the growth of industrial output took place in Canada, Britain, Belgium, Finland, Holland, Sweden, Norway, Japan, West Germany, France and Italy. In 1958, the volume of industrial pro-duction and foreign trade of the capitalist world as a whole declined for the first time since the end of the war.

Thus, history has once again discredited the pseudo-theoreticians who specialise in whitewashing capitalism. Confronted by undeniable facts, they seek to excuse them-selves by trying to prove that Marxists, too, have erred in regard to crises; that the entire post-war course of the cycle and of crises did not resemble the pattern previously de-scribed by Marxists. As a matter of fact, Marxists have never believed that one cycle must parallel another, and that the established periodicity and features of crises are not subject to change. In 1908, for example, in answering the revisionists who challenged

Marx’s theory of crises, Lenin wrote in an article entitled “Marxism and Revisionism”: “Facts very soon made it clear to the revisionists that crises were not a thing of the past: prosperity was followed by a crisis. The forms, the sequence, the picture of the particu-lar crisis changed, but crises remained an inevitable component of the capitalist sys-tem.”145

Communists, of course, do not gloat over the fact that capitalism has not succeeded in eliminating crises. Despite the assertions of bourgeois propagandists and reformists, the communist movement does not pin its hopes for the victory of the socialist revolu-tion on the outbreak of economic crises. A destructive economic crisis, to be sure, in-creases the wrath of the working people against capitalism. But as history has shown, it simultaneously promotes reaction and fascism and increases the danger of war.

Moreover, Communists cannot welcome economic crises, for they are fully aware of the great misfortunes involved for the broad masses of the working people. And that is why Communists have always exposed the unfounded illusions of a crisis-free develop-ment of capitalism. Indeed, as soon as the working people—on to whose shoulders the monopolies seek to shift the entire burden of crises—free themselves from these illu-sions, they will be able to fight properly for their vital interests.

The best way to abolish crises is to replace capitalism by socialism. It would be a most serious mistake, however, to consider that under capitalist conditions all struggle against the onerous consequences of crises is futile. Communists believe that such a struggle is indispensable and can yield important results for the masses of people.

The Communist Parties, therefore, organise the working people to fight for such government measures as would in any way alleviate the conditions of the masses. These measures include higher wages, the extension of mutually advantageous trade relations with the socialist countries, which have eliminated crises forever, the organisation of large-scale public works, the construction of housing, schools and hospitals, improved unemployment insurance, lower taxes and controlled rents.

4. Aggravation and Extension of Class Antagonisms

Changes in the capitalist economic structure, due to increased difficulties and con-tradictions and to the transition of the monopolies to new, state-monopoly forms of rule, deeply affect the various classes and social strata of bourgeois society.

Working Class and Capital

With the development of the general crisis of capitalism, the exploitation of the working class is inevitably intensified and its position worsened. This is reflected pri-marily in the unprecedented intensity of labour and the accompanying increase in indus-trial accident and sickness rates resulting from over-exertion. Intensified labour acceler-ates the wear and tear of the worker’s organism and shortens his working life. Such is the price of creating the enormous wealth which flows into the pockets of the exploiters. However, the workers’ share in the national income does not grow larger but smaller.

True, a considerable rise in nominal wages has occurred almost everywhere over the

past few decades. But this has been largely nullified by currency depreciation and tax increases. As a result, real wages in most capitalist countries have not risen at all or only insignificantly. Thus, the average annual real wages of workers in U.S. manufacturing industries, after deducting taxes, were lower during the 6-year period 1947-52 than they were in 1939. In the following years some rise in real wages took place. In 1960 real wages were 7 per cent above the 1939 level, but output per hour had increased by 77 per cent. According to the French Communist Party the average real wages of most catego-ries of French workers in 1954 were still below the 1938 level. In Britain, the pre-war level of real wages was not exceeded until 1956.

Bare wage statistics, however, do not give a full picture of the material conditions of the working class. One must take into account the value of labour-power, which is de-termined above all by the expenditure necessary for its maintenance and reproduction. In the past few decades, the value of this labour-power has risen sharply.

Firstly, owing to increased intensity of labour. Clearly, the greater the exertion re-quired of the worker, the greater the expenditure needed for the recuperation of his en-ergy.

Secondly, owing to changes in the historically conditioned requirements of the worker and his family.

Urban centres, for example, have mushroomed during the past few decades and an increasing number of workers live at some distance from their place of work. As a re-sult, a growing portion of the worker’s budget is eaten up by heavy transport costs. An-other characteristic of this period has been the absorption into production of more and more women, who were previously occupied solely with household matters. Although this adds somewhat to the family income, new expenditure becomes necessary—household appliances and equipment to lighten the work in the home, more expensive items in the budget, such as prepared foods, etc. The cost of medical treatment for the working-class family has also gone up. Furthermore, the demands of modern industry for more highly trained workers have placed an additional load on parents in regard to the education of their children.

Owing to these factors, the value of labour-power, as a rule, has risen considerably higher than the level of real wages. Some idea of this disparity may be gained from a comparison of real wages with the minimum subsistence wage reflecting to a certain extent the needs of the worker and his family. In the United States, for example, it was estimated (by Professor Heller’s Committee, whose figures are regarded as authoritative by official bourgeois science) that average wages in manufacturing in 1944 were 19 per cent less than the subsistence minimum for a family of four, and in 1961—29 per cent less. In West Germany, the subsistence minimum for a family of four in 1955 was 445 marks monthly; nevertheless, 70 per cent of the workers received less than this mini-mum.

Present-day capitalism is almost inseparably linked with chronic unemployment. In a country like the United States, even during the years of greatest business activity there were 3,000,000 fully unemployed and a still larger number of partially unemployed. In

Italy, the army of unemployed and semi-unemployed has exceeded 2,500,000 in the post-war period.

Capitalism, today as never before, has accentuated the precarious state of the worker and his uncertainty of the future. This stems not only from the general fear of crises and mass unemployment, but from the constant fear of losing the capacity to work as a result of overwork, illness or accident. The nightmare of want as a consequence of premature old age continually haunts the worker.

Life is made even more precarious for the working class as a result of the expansion of consumer credit by the hire-purchase system. In the United States, for example, con-sumer indebtedness arising from hire-purchase increased from $5.6 to $56 thousand mil-lion between 1945 and December 1960. Credit buying can temporarily alleviate the workers’ living conditions, for without credit they could never acquire many consumer goods. But it becomes a very dangerous threat in the event of even temporary unem-ployment; indeed, an overdue instalment may mean the loss not only of the purchased articles, but also of the amounts already paid on them.

Even in the wealthiest capitalist countries, absence of security, chronic under-nourishment and poverty continue to be the lot of more or less considerable sections of the working people. Thus, according to the testimony of L. Kaiserling, under whose leadership a report was drawn up in 1962 with the characteristic title “Growing Compla-cency towards Poverty and Privation”, almost a quarter of the population of the U.S.A. live in a state of “wretched poverty”.

Thus, the tendency toward a worsening of the conditions of the working class, which is characteristic of capitalism, continues to operate with full force up to the present day.

True, in several capitalist countries the working class, or part of it, has achieved some improvement in living conditions during past 10-15 years. However, this does not mean that the above-mentioned tendency no longer holds good. The main reason for such gains is to be found in the more favourable post-war conditions for the workers’ economic struggle (stimulated primarily by the successes of the socialist countries) and their greater resistance to the monopolies.

Fear of revolution, the successes of the socialist countries, and the pressure of the working-class movement, as pointed out in the Programme of the C.P.S.U., compel the bourgeoisie to make partial concessions in regard to wages, labour conditions, and social security. But rising prices and inflation frequently reduce these concessions to nought. Even the relatively high standard of living in the small group of capitalistically devel-oped countries rests upon plundering the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America, upon non-equivalent exchange, discrimination against women’s labour, brutal oppres-sion of Negroes and immigrant workers, as well as upon intensified exploitation of the working people in these countries. In spite of some successes in the economic struggle, the condition of the working class in the capitalist world is, on the whole, deteriorating.

Even in those instances, therefore, where the working class (or a part of it) lives somewhat better than formerly, the sharpness of the antagonism between labour and capital has not diminished. On the contrary, the changes undergone by capitalism during

the past decades have, in fact, provided additional causes of class conflict, by accentuat-ing the political contradictions between the working class and the capitalists. The threat to peace, democracy and national independence resulting from monopoly rule is fraught with grave consequences, particularly for the working class, and thus makes the latter an even more implacable enemy of the monopoly bourgeoisie.

However, this does not always lead to an actual upsurge of class struggle. Experi-ence shows that under capitalism today, as formerly, the working-class movement de-velops unevenly. And in some countries, at times, it lags behind the urgent class tasks facing it.

The main cause of this is the harsher political oppression of the monopolies, which increasingly use the state machine to suppress the workers’ movement. Whereas for-merly the workers had to deal with individual employers, today they more and more fre-quently come into conflict with the concentrated might of the imperialist state. With its help, the monopolies have established a powerful apparatus for suppressing the proletar-iat. They have introduced controls over trade-union activities, and compulsory arbitra-tion in labour conflicts. Reprisals against workers, such as the black list and organised factory police, are more extensively applied. At times, even in those capitalist countries where democracy has not been abandoned—officially at least—great selflessness and heroism is demanded of workers engaging in the most elementary forms of class strug-gle, such as ordinary strikes.

But the monopolists can abolish neither the basic reason for the class struggle—the antagonism between labour and capital—nor the struggle itself.

In the past few decades, the working class in many countries has also grown stronger; it has become better organised, more class-conscious and militant. The changes that have taken place in the world—the shattering of the bastion of international reac-tion, viz., German and Italian fascism, the successes of world socialism, and the upsurge in the liberation movement of the colonial peoples—have created more favourable world conditions for the workers’ struggle in the capitalist countries. Notwithstanding the sav-age dictatorship of monopoly capital in the United States and a number of other coun-tries, the working class has not laid down its arms but continues to carry on its fight eve-rywhere, not always frontally along the entire line, but at times seeking roundabout methods which are more suitable in the situation.

Thus, the actual state of things today clearly refutes the myth, widely disseminated by Right-wing socialists and revisionists, concerning “class peace”, which is alleged to have replaced the period of class struggle.

On the contrary, as will be shown below, the changes which capitalism has under-gone not only deepen the old class contradictions, but create new ones. Alongside the major class conflict—between labour and capital—an antagonism between the clique of monopolists and the entire nation arises and grows increasingly acute.

On this basis, the class struggle of the working people draws ever wider sections of the population into its orbit. It penetrates to the most remote and “peaceful” cells of the social organism, and becomes increasingly acute and intense.

Other Classes of Present-Day Bourgeois Society

Alongside the working class and capitalists in bourgeois society are other classes and strata: peasants, urban petty bourgeoisie (artisans, handicraftsmen, retail traders), intellectuals, and office employees. These “middle (or intermediate) strata” are of con-siderable importance from the standpoint of both numbers and influence.

Reactionary bourgeois ideologists claim that these “middle strata” are gradually ex-panding at the expense of all other classes. The social structure is gradually coming to consist of a single “middle stratum”, whose living conditions are constantly improving. In this way, declare these reactionary theorists, capitalism is getting rid of its class an-tagonisms and evolving into a society of “social harmony”.

Facts, however, plainly refute this propaganda. They show, in particular, that with the development of state-monopoly capitalism considerable numbers of the “middle strata” are confronted with complete ruin.

This applies above all to the small independent producers, the so-called old “middle strata”, i.e., those that are, in a sense, survivals of the pre-capitalist mode of production and its corresponding forms of exchange, for example, peasants, artisans and handi-craftsmen.

Under state-monopoly capitalism, the mass ruin of small independent producers is not only due to competition with big capital. The process is deliberately accelerated by the monopolies through a whole series of government measures (the regulation of prices, credit, etc.). The aim of this policy is to eliminate or completely subordinate the small producer. More and more small producers and tradesmen remain “independent” in name only; their means of production actually belong to creditors, banks and large companies. The ruin of small and medium enterprises is especially hastened by the process of capi-talist “integration”.

Whereas the stratum of small producers as a whole is steadily being ruined and swept away, an opposite trend is characteristic of the so-called new “middle strata”, which is connected with newly- developed branches of production and servicing (filling stations, electrical repair shops, etc.). The stratum of intellectuals and office workers expands as well, because the growth of technology together with the swollen apparatus of management (both in the economy as well as in the government) leads to a rapid in-crease in the numbers and relative importance of white-collar workers, scientific and technical personnel, book-keepers and accountants, trade and advertising experts, and, finally, persons engaged in information media, education and art. As a result of the more rapid growth in the number of office employees compared with workers, in the U.S.A. in 1961, according to official data, office workers of all categories constituted almost half of all those gainfully employed.

The conditions of these growing social strata, however, also change for the worse, primarily because the labour of the large majority of office workers depreciates in value with their increase in numbers, and they lose their former privileged status. In 1890, the average salary of an office employee in the U.S.A. was almost 100 per cent more than that of a worker. In 1920, the gap had narrowed to 65 per cent, and in 1952, the average

salary of an office worker amounted to only 96 per cent of the average worker’s wage. The class-room teacher receives poor remuneration for his labour. This also holds true for many categories of scientific personnel and specialists in other fields.

Changes in the material situation of those engaged in intellectual occupations, how-ever, do not give the complete picture.

A loss of independence is characteristic even of those in the so-called liberal profes-sions (law, medicine, science, art, etc.). Increasing numbers of persons in intellectual pursuits pass into the employ of others, i.e., they swell the numbers of those directly ex-ploited by capitalist corporations. This results not only in restricting the professional freedom of the intelligentsia, whose members are compelled to serve the most sordid interests of monopoly capital, but also in the growth of a suffocating political control. The typical policy of the monopolies along these lines includes repressive measures and humiliating “loyalty” tests, the full force of which is directed not only against the van-guard of the working class, but also against the intellectuals. How severely their position is affected by these attacks can be seen from the following remark of Albert Einstein, the world-famous scientist, who was destined to be an eyewitness to reaction first in his na-tive Germany, and then in the United States, where he had emigrated to escape fascist persecution:

“If I would be a young man again and had to decide how to make my living, I would not try to become a scientist or scholar, or teacher. I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in the hope to find that modest degree of independence still avail-able under present circumstances.”

A melancholy commentary, indeed, on the position of the scientist in bourgeois so-ciety today, when even the greatest of them dream of the pitiful appearance of independ-ence still enjoyed by plumbers and peddlers.

The “middle strata” also include those social categories which today faithfully serve the reactionary bourgeoisie, e.g., top officials, highly paid corporation managers and privileged members of the intelligentsia.

These groups, however, form only an insignificant percentage of the “middle strata” and their position is by no means comparable to that of all the intermediate classes and strata. Looking at the “middle strata” as a whole, we find that the contradictions between them and the small ruling clique of monopolists grow deeper, more acute and irreconcil-able with the continued development of state-monopoly capital.

Thus, the political position of the “middle strata”, their place in the class relations of bourgeois society today, is undergoing a basic change.

At one time, a large proportion of the “middle strata”—the prosperous farmers in the developed capitalist countries, the small entrepreneurs and merchants, etc.— helped to maintain the power of the ruling bourgeoisie.

Today, for the most part, both the old and the new “middle strata” weaken the rule of the monopoly clique instead of strengthening it. Owing to their position and interests, these strata, despite the assertions of bourgeois and reformist ideologists, are being in-creasingly transformed into an enemy of the monopolies and a natural ally of the work-

ing class.

In an effort to distort the true picture of class relationships, reactionary writers de-liberately confuse also the question of the ruling class. They assert that the power and influence of capitalists in present-day bourgeois society is on the wane, that the bour-geoisie has lost, or at any rate is losing, its dominant position. The capitalist class, they claim, will leave the social arena without revolution, by “peaceful means”.

What indications of the decline of capitalist domination are found by these theoreti-cians—who range from open apologists of monopoly to revisionists? In the first place, they claim that capitalist ownership is disappearing and is being replaced by the owner-ship of numerous shareholders, who belong to various classes of society, and that thereby an “income revolution”, which equalises the living conditions of the people, is taking place.

Essentially, however, what is being advertised under the new label of “people's capi-talism” is the very old theory of the “democratisation” of capital through the issue of small shares—a theory which long ago was annihilatingly criticised by Lenin. Instead of an “income revolution”, a further polarisation of wealth is actually taking place, the cleavage between a handful of multi-millionaires and the mass of the dispossessed is growing wider and deeper.

In 1956, according to official U.S. data, about 5,500,000 American families, num-bering 17,000,000-20,000,000 persons, had a total income which was less than the net profits of the 17 largest corporations.

To demonstrate that the capitalist class is “disappearing”, reactionary theorists make much of the high surtaxes levied on excess profits and inheritance. Presumably this should lead to a “peaceful” transition from private to public ownership. Formally, these taxes are quite heavy, amounting to 50 per cent and more of gross profits. But, in the first place, corporations have discovered scores of methods of tax-evasion. Secondly, the sums collected from them by the government are returned with interest through highly profitable government contracts and all kinds of exemptions and allowances; in brief, through the entire mechanism of state intervention in the economy, which has been de-scribed above. It is not surprising that even the most zealous champions of monopoly cannot cite a single case of a monopolist having been ruined and his property transferred to public ownership owing to taxation.

The theory of a “managerial revolution”, too, has become widely current in bour-geois propaganda of recent decades. According to this theory real economic, and hence political, power in the capitalist countries is passing out of the hands of those who “for-mally” possess it to those who are the actual managers, e.g., directors, corporation ex-ecutives, managers and high-level technical personnel. These persons, it is argued, con-stitute a new ruling class acting in the interests of society as a whole.

In fact, the role of the capitalists in production actually is changing—the owners of property are losing the last vestiges of their useful functions, which are being transferred to employed personnel. This is an additional argument in favour of expropriating capital and going over to socialism. But this in no way alters the essence of capitalist exploitation.

Real control of production remains in the hands of the owners and not in the hands of their representatives who manage the technological process, supervise accounting and supply, organise the sale of products, etc. The engineers and personnel employed by the monopolies cannot remove their owners, nor compel them to renounce a portion of their profits in favour of the workers. The owners, for their part, can engage or dismiss engi-neers and employees and dictate their will, much as they did a hundred years ago.

Among the highly placed employees of trusts, of course, are some who actually pos-sess considerable power—presidents of large corporations, chairmen of boards of direc-tors, etc. But these are in fact capitalists who are merely receiving a portion of the profits in the guise of salary.

Thus, the changes in the position of the capitalist class that are so much talked about by bourgeois theoreticians, reformists and revisionists, simply do not exist. However, this by no means implies that the position of the bourgeoisie has not altered in the past few decades.

Changes undoubtedly have taken place, the chief one being the further stratification of this class. Even previously, of course, the bourgeoisie was not a monolithic whole. But in our day its stratification is assuming basically new forms.

A handful of monopolies with power over the state machine increasingly dominates all of society, including the capitalist class itself. To “break into” the group in power, i.e., the owners of very large concerns and trusts, has become almost impossible not only for the ordinary citizen, but even for middle capitalists however adroit and resourceful. Instead of one group of capitalists alternating with another at the helm of society, there is now an unchanging and, indeed, irresponsible monopoly clique, which is directly linked with and supported by a small circle of top corporation executives, bureaucrats and military leaders.

As a result, increasing numbers of small and middle businessmen go down in ruin. The “mortality” rate of their enterprises has become so high that some bourgeois economists compare it with infant mortality in the colonies. Such businessmen are faced with the ever more urgent problem of their very existence as a privileged class.

Small and middle businessmen find themselves in a paradoxical situation. On the one hand, today, like half a century ago, they are exploiters deriving profits from the labour of wage-workers. On the other hand, they themselves are oppressed and plun-dered by the all-powerful trusts and corporations.

State-monopoly capitalism thus accentuates the stratification within the bourgeoisie to the point of splitting its ranks. On the side appears a small clique of all-powerful mo-nopolists and on the other, the mass of small and middle capitalists forming the majority of this class. The social base of capitalist monopoly rule is thus becoming still narrower.

5. The Final Rung in the Historical Ladder of Capitalism

Every new stage in the general crisis of capitalism is not only a result of change that has taken place in the past, but also the precondition for new changes, the threshold of the future. Once the general crisis of capitalism has started, it develops with gathering

momentum to the complete collapse of capitalism. An analysis of present-day capitalism and of the fundamental laws of its development shows that all measures undertaken by the monopolist bourgeoisie to save capitalism do not bring deliverance from the contra-dictions undermining it but, in the final analysis, lead to the further aggravation of its disorders.

“The new phenomena in imperialist development,” states the Programme of the C.P.S.U., “corroborate the accuracy of Lenin’s conclusions on the principal objective laws of capitalism in its final stage and on its increasing decay. Yet this decay does not signify complete stagnation, a palsy of its productive forces, and does not rule out growth of capitalist economy at particular times and in particular countries.”146

The imperialist camp is unable to stop further changes in the balance of forces in fa-vour of the socialist camp.

The imperialists make use of all methods of struggle against the socialist coun-tries—from open warfare (as in Korea) and counter-revolutionary uprisings (as in Hun-gary) to all kinds of subversive activities. But the answer of the socialist countries to these embittered imperialist attacks is to rally still closer round the banner of socialism.

True, the uninterrupted arms drive and war preparations of the imperialist states compel the socialist countries, too, to divert a considerable portion of their efforts and resources from peaceful construction to defence purposes. But the advantages of the so-cialist mode of production are so great that, even under such conditions, the countries of the socialist camp are achieving ever greater successes in economic competition with the world system of capitalism and are more and more clearly outstripping it. The victories gained in this world-historic competition inspire the peoples of the socialist countries to new feats of labour, accelerating further their rate of peaceful construction. This, at the same time, heightens the attractive power of socialism for the working people in capital-ist countries.

The imperialists have tried without success to restore their crumbling colonial em-pires, or at least to check further disintegration of the colonial system. In an effort to strengthen and restore colonialism by brute force, the monopoly bourgeoisie has helped to aggravate the contradictions between the imperialist powers and the peoples of the colonies, semi-colonies, and those countries which have thrown off the colonial yoke. But attempts at economic enslavement of the former colonial peoples push them to even closer co-operation with the socialist camp.

The efforts of the monopoly bourgeoisie to suppress the class struggle of the work-ing people in the metropolitan countries are, in the last analysis, equally futile. History reveals, it is true, that brutal terror and unrestrained demagogy can for a time almost put an end to open action by the working class and other sections of the working people, as under the fascist regimes in Germany and Italy. Nowadays, however, with the growth in organisation and strength of the liberation movement of all opponents of the monopoly bourgeoisie, it becomes more and more difficult to carry out such a policy in practice. Moreover, should the ruling oligarchy achieve any measure of success in its attempts, this by no means eliminates class conflicts but only drives them underground, while in-

creasing the class hatred of the working people.

The more use the reactionaries make of the state in their own interests, the more as-siduously they take cover behind it for protection against the blows prepared for them by history, the more convinced become the broad masses that it will be impossible for them to defend and realise their interests without a struggle for state power.

Despite all efforts of the reactionary bourgeoisie of the chief capitalist countries, the contradictions within the imperialist camp continue to grow. Facts show that the interna-tional state-monopoly associations arising under the banner of “integration” and of re-lieving the problem of markets become an arena of embittered competitive struggle, hot-beds of new friction and conflicts. Acute competition takes place between the imperial-ists for markets, spheres of capital investment, and sources of raw materials. This strug-gle is the fiercer because of the marked reduction in the size of the territory over which capitalism rules. To realise their ambitious plans for world domination and to crush the liberation movements of the peoples, U.S. imperialists seek to ensure themselves a lead-ing position in the capitalist world and establish a network of alliances with all major capitalist countries. Unquestionably they have some achievements in this respect. It should not be forgotten however, that imperialism can acquire allies solely by the method of subordination. This, in turn, has led to constant clashes with the ruling circles of those states which are tied to the chariot of U.S. imperialism, especially because, as a result of the uneven development of capitalism, the existing division of spheres of influ-ence ceases to correspond to the actual correlation of forces in the capitalist camp. Thus, the creation of the “common market” in Western Europe considerably alters the align-ment of economic forces in the imperialist camp.

U.S. imperialism in its pursuit of world domination has assumed the role of “sav-iour” of capitalism. But such claims are quite unwarranted. The Programme of the C.P.S.U. confirms this by pointing to the major facts of post-war history and draws the wholly justified conclusion that even the strongest capitalist power—the United States—is past its zenith and has entered the stage of decline.

The conclusion to be drawn from all this is that the greatest difficulties of present-day monopoly capitalism still lie ahead. With increasing insistence, the social character of production demands the abolition of private ownership of the means of production, the replacement of capitalism by socialism. In an attempt to avert socialised production under a socialist system, finance capital has tried to outwit history by giving its rule new, state-monopoly forms. But such attempts are doomed to failure. As the Programme of the C.P.S.U. notes: “The dialectics of state-monopoly capitalism is such that instead of shoring up the capitalist system, as the bourgeoisie expects, it aggravates the contra-dictions of capitalism and undermines its foundations.”147

The development of monopoly capitalism into state-monopoly capitalism offers no salvation to an obsolete system. It represents merely the completion of the material groundwork for a new, socialist system of society.

“State-monopoly capitalism,” wrote Lenin, “is a complete material preparation for socialism, the threshold of socialism, a rung in the ladder of history between which and

the rung called socialism there are no intermediate rungs.”148

Thus, in the womb of capitalism, important economic processes are being completed which will materially facilitate the socialist transformation of society after the seizure of power by the working people. In the advanced capitalist countries, the socialisation of property belonging to the monopolies would mean the conversion of about 60-70 per cent or even more of social production into public property.

“In a revolutionary situation, at the time of revolution,” emphasised Lenin, “state-monopoly capitalism passes over directly into socialism.”149

The political prerequisites for the socialist revolution, as foreseen by Lenin in his analysis of imperialism, also continue to grow.

State-monopoly capitalism does not lead to the dying-down of class contradictions, but rather to intensified class struggle on the part of the proletariat, a deepening of the antagonism between a reactionary monopoly oligarchy and all other classes and strata of present-day bourgeois society. Furthermore, it leads to the growth of new democratic movements more closely linked to the emancipatory struggle of the working class and to the establishment of a very broad anti-monopoly and anti-imperialist front.

“Mankind has learned the true face of capitalism,” states the programme of the C.P.S.U. “Hundreds of millions of people see that capitalism is a system of economic anarchy and periodical crises, chronic unemployment, poverty of the masses, and indis-criminate waste of productive forces, a system constantly fraught with the danger of war. Mankind does not want to, and will not, tolerate the historically outdated capitalist system.”150

All these processes taking place in present-day capitalism will be examined in detail in the following chapters. All in all, they signify that this obsolete social system has en-tered the period of its final downfall.

PART FOUR

THEORY AND TACTICS OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMU-NIST MOVEMENT

CHAPTER 11

THE HISTORIC MISSION OF THE WORKING CLASS

A deep analysis of the economic structure of capitalism led Marx and Engels to the conclusion that this social system contained the seeds of its own collapse and that a new social system—socialism—would replace it. But the founders of Marxism not only dis-closed the laws governing further historical development; they also discovered that the proletariat, the working class, was the leading social force destined to bring about the great social transformation, i.e., to abolish capitalism and build socialism.

Marx and Engels formulated this discovery and fully substantiated it in the Commu-nist Manifesto published in Germany in 1848. It states: “Not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons—the modern working class—the proletarians" “The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.”151

1. The Working Class Is the Liberator of the Working People

On what did Marx and Engels base their forecast of the historic role of the working class?

In the first place, being the most exploited class in bourgeois society, the working class—owing to the very conditions of its life—becomes the most consistent and irrec-oncilable opponent of the capitalist order. The vital class interests of the workers impel them to an implacable struggle against capitalism. Marx and Engels emphasised that “of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class”.152

Secondly, Marx and Engels based their conception on the fact that the workers by their very position in production are connected not with its past but with its future and, consequently, with the future of the whole of society.

What does this mean?

It means, in the first place, that the development of the material basis of capital-ism—large-scale industry—does not threaten the existence of the proletariat as a class, does not undermine its position in society, but, on the contrary, leads to an increase in the numbers of workers and enhances their role in the life of society.

It means, furthermore, that the interests and aspirations of the working class coin-cide with the main trend in the development of the productive forces. The level of de-

velopment of these forces attained under capitalism requires the abolition of private ownership of the means of production. And it is the working class that is destined to carry out this task. As Marx and Engels put it, the proletariat executes the sentence which private ownership passes on itself by engendering the proletariat. As a matter of fact, the working class is the only class that has no part in the ownership of the means of production and therefore does not need to attach any value to it. Moreover, since private ownership of the means of production forms the basis for exploitation of the worker by the capitalist, its abolition and replacement by social ownership, i.e., by socialism, is the only way to liberate the working class. Lastly, in concluding that it was the working class that was destined to destroy capitalism and build socialism, Marx and Engels also based themselves on the fact that it was the only class possessing the fighting qualities needed to accomplish so great an historical objective.

First of all, the working class has the advantage of mass. It is one of the most nu-merous and rapidly growing classes in capitalist society.

But this is not the only thing. By virtue of the very conditions of its life and labour the working class is capable of the highest degree of organisation. The work at a large enterprise daily instils in the workers such qualities as the spirit of collectivism, capacity or strict discipline, united action, and mutual aid and support. These qualities are invalu-able not only in labour but also in struggle. By gathering thousands of workers under the roofs of plants and factories which are, as a rule, located in large cities, the capitalists themselves help the workers to overcome the disunion and isolation that was the curse of the other mass movements of the working people, especially the peasant movement. That is why the workers lend themselves to organisation and union more readily than any other class.

Of all the oppressed classes the working class is also the most capable of realising its special position in society and its class interests, and of adopting an advanced, scien-tific world outlook. Large- scale industry requires more highly educated workers than do the other forms of economy, while the conditions of the class struggle in the capitalist epoch require much higher political consciousness, which is acquired not only and not so much from books as from experience in labour and in struggle. In addition, the best minds of the intelligentsia come over to the side of the working class and help it to evolve a scientific, revolutionary world outlook which, by becoming the property of mil-lions of workers, grows into a prodigious force.

Its high degree of class consciousness, as well as its more highly developed organi-sation, make the working class the most militant and revolutionary class of society.

That is why the working class is capable of fulfilling the mission of abolishing capi-talism and replacing it by socialism.

It is no mere chance that this mission of the working class is called an historic mis-sion.

In the course of history various classes—slave-owners, feudal lords, capitalists—found themselves at the head of society. By reshaping society according to their own needs and interests, each of these classes helped to establish a more advanced mode of

production. But social injustice and inequality were invariably retained. Each time soci-ety was headed by a handful of oppressors and each new step along the path of progress was made at the price of incredible suffering of the working masses, who always consti-tuted the vast majority of society.

When the working class comes to head society, it puts an end to this greatest injus-tice forever. By liberating itself it simultaneously liberates all of humanity. By reshaping society according to its own needs and interests it creates a new society in which all people will find true happiness. It is the mission of the working class once and for all to abolish the prime basis of social injustice, the private ownership of the means of produc-tion which caused the division of society into rich and poor, exploiters and exploited, oppressors and oppressed. Fulfilment of this task is the only way to free society from poverty and from a situation in which the masses are deprived of their rights, and to put an end to political and national oppression, militarism and wars.

In the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels wrote: “All previous historical movements were movements of minorities or in the interest of minorities. The proletar-ian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.”153

The doctrine of the historic mission of the working class constitutes a highly impor-tant part of the Marxist world outlook. It was the first to show a feasible way of liberat-ing the oppressed and exploited masses. Many outstanding people and social movements landed in an impasse only because they did not see the social force that could give the peoples freedom, well-being and happiness. Some appealed to the wisdom of monarchs, others hoped society would be saved by the creative genius of scientists and engineers, still others expected a feat from “critically thinking personalities”, and others again set their hopes on a revival of the patriarchal peasant ways of life and the order of things that had prevailed in the medieval handicraft guilds. But all these hopes and expectations only entailed a useless waste of effort and not infrequently the loss of human lives. So-cialism, humanity’s splendid age-old dream, ceased to be an insubstantial utopia only from the moment that the social force capable of carrying this dream into life appeared and was scientifically established, that the historic mission of the working class became manifest to the workers themselves and to the progressive representatives of the other oppressed classes in capitalist society.

This is why, in appraising the historical services rendered by the founders of Marx-ism, Lenin wrote: “The main thing in the doctrine of Marx is that it brings out the his-toric role of the proletariat as the builder of a socialist society.”154

2. Growth of the Importance of the Working Class  and of Its Social and Political Role

When Marx and Engels discovered the historic mission of the working class this class constituted a rather small section of the population even in the well-developed countries, while in most of the other countries the working class was few in numbers.

Besides, it was a class which was only beginning to become aware of its interests. It

had as yet to develop into a conscious and organised force. The ideas of scientific social-ism and communism were the property of only a small group of class-conscious workers and progressive intellectuals who took the side of the working class. The first Marxist party—the Communist League—created by Marx and Engels in 1847 united only a few hundred people in different countries. The trade-union movement was also just coming into being.

However, it required less than a century for what had been perceived only by two brilliant minds to become patent to many millions of people.

The working class has grown into the main social and political force of the present day and in a number of countries has already demonstrated its ability to fulfil its historic mission—to abolish capitalism and build socialism. But even in the countries where the workers are still an oppressed class its powers and capacity struggle have enormously increased.

Increase in the Numbers of the Working Class

In the middle of the nineteenth century there were about one million workers in the U.S.A., i.e., approximately 5-6 per cent of population. In 1960, the United States had over 24 million industrial workers, who together with their families form almost half the population.

In Britain the working class now constitutes the overwhelming majority of the popu-lation.

In the middle of the present century the total number of workers and office workers in the entire non-socialist world was about 300 million—almost half the actively en-gaged population. The industrial proletariat numbered over 110 million, three-quarters of whom were concentrated in the more developed countries. But the working- class ranks are rapidly growing also in the part of the non-socialist world that is weakly de-veloped economically, for it is comparatively recently that large-scale industry began to develop in these densely-populated areas. Hence the number and relative importance of the industrial workers in the world will continue to grow.

The ranks of the world’s working class are also supplemented by the agricultural proletariat, which already totals some ninety million people.

Thus, even from the point of view of its numbers alone the working class has be-come a big force. This is incontrovertible evidence of the correctness of Marx’s doctrine which predicted more than one hundred years ago that in the course of historical devel-opment the numbers of the working class would continually increase, while all the other classes would proportionately diminish.

The role of the working class in the economic life of society has grown to an even greater extent. In more or less developed countries this class now produces the greater part of the national wealth. Its labour is the main source of the material values which go to meet the vital needs of humanity.

The Most Organised and Politically Conscious Class

Marx and Engels divined in the working class such capacity for organisation as no other class possesses. This prevision proved fully correct. The path of the workers to class organisation was complicated and arduous. The ruling bourgeoisie placed all manner of obstacles in their way. Injunctions and repressions, ruthless violence against the leaders of the proletariat, creation of pseudo-workers’ organisations, like the yellow trade unions that do the bidding of the employers and police, promoting national conflicts and racial ha-tred—all methods were used to perpetuate the disunion of the workers.

But the forces impelling the proletarians to organise—the necessity to defend their interests under the threat of starvation and poverty, and the solidarity developing in the class struggle—proved strong enough to overcome all obstacles and persecution.

As a rule, the working class began uniting by using such forms of organisation as benefit societies, medical insurance funds, co-operatives, etc. These were as yet essen-tially forms of mutual aid rather than struggle. Side by side with these organisations, however, trade unions started coming into existence as early as the first half of the nine-teenth century, and they enabled the workers to wage an effective struggle for their im-mediate economic interests. For a long time many separate craft unions existed at a sin-gle enterprise. Then, in most of the countries, the trade unions began to be organised more and more often on industrial lines. At the same time they merged into single na-tional unions and then into international associations. Today the trade unions unite more than 180 million working people throughout the world.

But trade-union organisation alone proved inadequate for the working class. The needs of the struggle for the great goal of the working-class movement—socialism—naturally called into existence a still higher form of organisation—the political party of the working class. In many countries this form, too, has gone through a complicated course of development—from small circles and groups to parties many millions strong and linked by ties of international solidarity. Today the political parties of the working class number more than 50 million members, of which over 40 million are members of parties of a new type, based on the principles of Marxism-Leninism, i.e., parties waging an irreconcilable struggle for the interests of the workers and really capable of success-fully defending these interests.

The modern worker is far in advance of the barely literate proletarian who was the typical representative of the working class in most bourgeois countries during the second half of the nineteenth century. The workers have attained an immeasurably higher level of occupational skills and general culture.

A new, collectivist morality was born amongst the proletariat and is now success-fully developing; in many respects it anticipates the morality of future communist soci-ety. The law of capitalism— homo homini lupus—underlies the individualistic morality and psychology of private ownership. The working class rejects these wolf morals. From the very outset of his industrial and social life, the proletarian through his own experi-ence comes to adopt the old principle of the working-class movement: “All workers are brothers.” The class-conscious worker interprets this principle in a wider sense to mean

that he is a brother not only to other workers but also to all the oppressed and exploited. Men of labour, and, above all, the workers, proved the only social milieu in which the immorality and corruption typical of increasingly larger sections of bourgeois society could not strike root. Today humanity, honesty, selflessness and magnanimity are traits characteristic primarily of ordinary people, of the workers who have given high impor-tance to the ideals of true humanism.

The cultural and moral advance of the working class has been attended by an ad-vance in its political consciousness, although the latter process developed unevenly in the different countries. In some of them, including countries with a relatively high cul-tural level, the bourgeoisie succeeded in obscuring the class, political consciousness of a considerable section of the workers and of bringing them under its ideological influence.

The workers have come to be conscious of themselves as a class, have arrived at a correct understanding of their interests and of the ways of struggling for their liberation, not through attending class-rooms and university lecture-halls, but through the fire of their day-to-day struggle and great class battles, through signal victories and bitter de-feats. This has only served to give a firmer basis to their education. During the past cen-tury the working class accumulated vast experience.

This experience was scientifically generalised by Marx, Engels and Lenin. The pro-letariat has come to possess the invaluable treasure-house of Marxist-Leninist ideas, which constitute a supreme achievement of science and culture.

3. Community of Interests of the Working Class and All Working People

The strength of the working class lies not only in its own numbers, and its class-consciousness and organisation, but also in the community of its interests with the vital interests of all the other sections of the working people.

This community of interests is deeply rooted in capitalist reality. Not only the indus-trial workers but also the broad masses of peasants, petty urban bourgeoisie, intellectuals and office workers suffer from capitalist oppression.

As capitalism develops and, especially, as the monopolies establish their all-powerful domination, the economic and political oppression of the ruling bourgeoisie affects ever broader sections of society and becomes increasingly intolerable. Common enemies and common interests form the objective basis for the union of the working class with all other classes and sections that oppose the reactionary bourgeoisie.

Irrespective of the attitude of the other strata of the working people to the principal aims of the socialist movement, there are quite a few important and concrete aims for which they can and do struggle together with the workers. These aims include, above all, protection of the immediate economic interests against encroachment by the monopo-lies, the maintenance of peace, and the struggle for national independence, democracy, etc. All these aims spring from the very conditions of life of the broad masses of the people, and the latter, therefore, most easily and rapidly become aware of them.

Both the working class and the other sections of the working people are vitally in-terested in joining forces in defence of their common interests. All of them can only

benefit from this union, since they all share in the fruits of the victories won in common. But the failures in this struggle, which are due as a rule precisely to disunity of the forces, also affect all the working people.

The unity of the working class and all the working people is not confined to their common immediate interests. The broadest masses of the people are in the long run also interested in achieving the main objective of the proletariat—the overthrow of capital-ism and the building of socialism. The thesis that by liberating itself the working class at the same time liberates the whole of society from all forms of oppression is not a mere propagandist phrase but an exact, scientifically confirmed statement of the objective processes of reality. That is why all the other sections of the working people have every reason to side with the working class in the struggle for socialism.

The main masses of the peasantry, which in many countries constitutes the largest section of the population, still suffer either from survivals of feudalism or the oppression of capitalist monopolies, or from a combination of both. Capitalism cannot solve the problems agitating the minds of the peasantry because for it capitalist development means only further ruin, dispossession of land, and proletarianisation. Only socialism solves the problems facing the working peasantry by liberating it from the oppression of both landlords and capitalists and by offering it such wide prospects as it could never even dream of before.

It is the same with the urban petty bourgeoisie. Under capitalism, especially at the present stage of its development, this numerous social section barely ekes out an exis-tence under the oppression of big capital, and is constantly on the verge of ruin. A radi-cal solution of the problems facing the urban petty bourgeoisie is likewise possible only under socialism. Co-operation offers the artisans and handicraftsmen extensive opportu-nities for a secure existence. The rapid development of the economy under socialism will give work to all who need it and will ensure them living standards worthy of human beings and freedom from fear of ruin and want.

A rather numerous and constantly growing group in capitalist society is composed of persons engaged in intellectual work—office employees, engineers, technicians, teachers, physicians, artists, actors, writers, etc. Whereas in the past many of them formed part of a privileged social group, today the overwhelming majority of them are exploited and oppressed by the ruling oligarchy. Considerable sections of workers be-longing to these categories are already virtually part of the working class, while most of the others have come close to the working class owing to position in society and their interests. They will be liberated from oppression only by socialism, which offers un-precedented scope for scientific and artistic endeavour and insures the flowering of cul-ture by liberating the intellectual workers from the demoralising influence of the money power.

The Working Class Is the Leading Force in the Struggle of the People  for Liberation from Capitalist Oppression

Thus, the present-day situation offers particularly favourable conditions for the un-

ion of the working class with the other social groups opposing the reactionary bourgeoi-sie. In this union the working class is destined to play a special role—the role of the leader, the hegemon.

This is in the interests of the allies of the working class because only under its lead-ership can they defeat the monopoly bourgeoisie. The working class is the only class which, in addition to being capable of waging a consistent struggle against the oppres-sion of capital, also has a realistic programme for reorganising society in keeping with the vital interests of all the toilers. Only the proletariat can build its political party that is armed with a scientific world outlook and is capable of bringing mankind to this cher-ished goal.

For the working class its leadership in the liberation movement of the other groups of the working people is a necessary guarantee of its own social liberation. Only by ful-filling its role as leader can the proletariat go beyond the narrow limits of the struggle for improving the terms on which it sells its labour-power to the capitalists and rise to the role of leader of the nation, leader of society.

Lenin wrote about the working class: “As the only consistent revolutionary class of contemporary society, it must be the leader, the hegemon in the struggle of the whole people for a complete democratic revolution, in the struggle of all the toilers and ex-ploited against the oppressors and exploiters. The proletariat is revolutionary only in so far as it is conscious of this idea of hegemony and acts up to it. The proletarian who has become conscious of this task is a slave who has risen against slavery. The proletarian who is not conscious of the idea that his class must be the hegemon, or who renounces this idea, is a slave who does not realise his slavish position; at best he is a slave who fights to improve his condition as a slave, but not for the overthrow of slavery.”155

The working class does not strive for any privileges at the expense of the other classes and sections of the people. On the contrary, the leadership of the masses of working people imposes upon the working class new duties, including the duty of con-sidering the special interests of the other sections of the working people, of looking after these interests and fighting for them as for its own.

4. Internationalism Is a Source of the Strength of the Working-Class Movement

International Nature of the Working-Class Movement

In the past, owing to objective conditions, neither the oppressing nor the oppressed classes could be internationalist.

The working class is the first consistently internationalist class. It appeared in the historical arena at the time when a world economy began to be formed, when economic relations assumed a really world-wide character and when, in the wake of the economic relations, cultural and other relations between countries and peoples developed to an unprecedented extent. Such was the general historical situation in which working-class internationalism came into being and developed.

However, it is not only external conditions but also its vital class interests that make the working class truly internationalist. The workers own no private property that di-

vides men and have no interests that engender hostility to the working people of the other countries and nationalities. On the contrary, the workers of all countries have the same fundamental interest—the abolition of capitalist oppression. This interest unites them against the international power of capital and makes internationalism not only a possibility but also a necessity for the workers, an essential condition for their successful struggle for socialism and communism.

The international character of the working-class movement revealed itself long ago. At first the workers of each country waged a struggle against their “own” bourgeoisie, but then they began to arrange for joint action, to help each other and set up their inter-national organisations.

Since the time when the Marxist doctrine appeared and spread throughout the world, and the proletariat organised its political parties, the working-class movement has been imbued with a profound spirit of internationalism. Marx and Engels expressed the prin-ciple of internationalism in the clear-cut immortal slogan “Workers of all countries, unite!”

Whoever has mastered the Marxist doctrine and understands the historic mission of the proletariat that Marx discovered is bound to be an internationalist, to strive con-sciously for the unity and cooperation of the working people of all nations, and to place the common interests of the international working class above partial, local and narrow national interests. That is why, as Marxism-Leninism wins in the working-class move-ment of any country, the international ties of this movement with the working people of the other countries become greater. On the other hand, any attempt to weaken these ties is always a sure sign of departure from Marxism-Leninism.

The Marxist-Leninist parties lay particular stress upon internationalism as one of the most important constituents of their ideology and policy.

Without internationalism, without the united efforts of the workers of all countries, it is impossible to defeat the world bourgeoisie and build a new society.

Proletarian internationalism is, in the first place, the scientifically confirmed ideol-ogy of the community of interests of the working classes of all countries and nations. Secondly, it is the feeling of solidarity of the working people of all countries, of the brotherhood of the working people. Thirdly, it is a definite form taken by the relations between the national detachments of the working class. These relations are based on unity and concerted action, mutual aid and support. The special characteristic of these relations is that they are built on a voluntary basis.

Proletarian internationalism in no way denies the independence of the different na-tional detachments of the working class or their right to make their own decisions. How-ever, this does not at all impair the unity of the international working class. On the con-trary, precisely because a spirit of true equality and respect for the interests of the work-ers of different nations reigns in the politically conscious international working-class movement, mutual confidence and striving for co-operation become ever more deeply rooted among the working people of all countries.

Bourgeois ideologists try to prove that the internationalism of the working class

leads to disregarding the national interests of its own country. This misrepresents the essence of proletarian internationalism, for it is precisely the liberation struggle of the working class that ensures every nation the maintenance of its freedom and independ-ence, equality with other nations, a rise in the well-being of all sections of its population and a flourishing of its national culture.

International Solidarity of the Working People

During the past one hundred years the international solidarity and unity of the prole-tariat have considerably increased. This has found its expression primarily in the organi-sation of the working-class movement. The trade unions of different countries are now united in large international organisations. The largest of these—the World Federation of Trade Unions—is a consistent defender of the international and national interests of the workers. The political parties of the working class, above all the Marxist-Leninist parties, have also developed their international relations. Other organisations of the working people (youth, women’s, co-operative) and progressive democratic movements in which the working class plays a leading role (the national peace movements, etc.) have likewise developed various forms of international co-operation.

But the development of proletarian internationalism is not confined to organisational forms alone. Great changes have occurred in the consciousness of the workers and, un-der their influence, in the consciousness of all the working people. Working people are becoming increasingly conscious of their community with the working people of other countries and nationalities; they are gaining an ever deeper insight into the meaning of unity, concerted action and class solidarity.

These changes in consciousness are deeply rooted in historical reality. The trans-formation of monopoly capital into an international reactionary force and the formation on this basis of an imperialist camp ready to perpetrate any crime, any outrage, in order to plunder and oppress all the peoples of the world, help the working people of the dif-ferent countries to become aware of the community of their fundamental interests. Life itself teaches the workers that they cannot remain indifferent to the fate of other coun-tries and other peoples. The grim lessons of history show them that colonial wars, for example, even if waged by imperialists in remote parts of the world, inevitably bring the working people increased economic difficulties and political reaction, and, most impor-tant of all, increase the threat of a new world carnage. Similarly, a defeat of the working class of any country at the hands of the imperialist bourgeoisie may, as the lesson of fas-cism in Germany has shown, worsen the conditions for the working-class movement in the other capitalist countries and make it easier for the imperialists to unleash a world war.

Union of the forces of the international working class is especially necessary be-cause the imperialists set up reactionary associations, link themselves together by mutual agreements, and establish war blocs and bases aimed not only against the socialist coun-tries but also against the revolutionary working-class and national-liberation movements. We know that the treaty of the aggressive North Atlantic organisation contains a special

clause on joint suppression of “internal disorder” in the NATO countries, while the agreement on the “common market” envisages a joint offensive of the monopolies against the vital interests of the working people.

The internationalism of the working class and its international solidarity have proved an effective force. When the reactionary bourgeoisie of the other countries pounced upon the young Soviet Republic in 1918-20, the international working-class movement opposed the imperialist intervention. International solidarity of the working people played an important part in the struggle against fascism. Thousands of workers of different countries fought against the fascists in the fields of Spain and later in the ranks of the Resistance movement in France, Belgium, Greece, Norway, Italy and other coun-tries occupied by the Nazis. The workers of all countries supported the heroic war of liberation that the Soviet people waged against the fascist invaders.

Since the end of the Second World War, international solidarity has found vivid ex-pression in the struggle against the new aggressive schemes of the imperialists and in support of the action of the Soviet Union and the entire socialist camp against imperialist aggression. This played an important part in restricting and stopping the wars unleashed by the imperialists against Indonesia, Indo-China, Korea, Egypt and other countries.

Concerted international action of the working people, their unity ’and solidarity, constitute today an immense force in the struggle against the encroachments of the im-perialist camp on the independence, freedom and happiness of the nations. That is why the Communist Parties insist so strongly on the need to strengthen international solidar-ity in the struggle for peace, democracy and socialism.

5. Obstacles and Difficulties Hindering the Development  of the Working-Class Movement

The working class has won its outstanding historic victories and successes in the course of a bitter struggle. Numerous obstacles had to be overcome. Every class-conscious worker, every Marxist, must be aware of these obstacles in order to gain a better understanding of the further tasks of the international working-class movement.

The difficulties confronting the working-class movement are of various kinds, the chief of them being placed in its way by the ruling bourgeoisie. The proletariat has to contend with these difficulties all the time. It is not easy to surmount the obstacles put by the ruling bourgeoisie in the way of the liberation struggle of the working people, for the workers have to fight a class that has extensive political experience and a powerful apparatus for exercising economic pressure, as well as for physical and moral coercion. The working-class organisations are still far from having learned successfully to fight these difficulties everywhere, and this is one of the main reasons that the socialist movement is lagging behind in a number of bourgeois countries.

During more than a hundred years of its history the working-class movement has se-riously suffered from the terrorism used by the bourgeoisie, as a result of which many thousands of the foremost proletarian fighters were brutally murdered, and scores and even hundreds of thousands jailed. The working-class organisations were repeatedly

driven underground and their activities were seriously hampered.

Today the ruling circles in the capitalist countries increasingly resort to police re-pressions, blackmail and intimidation against the most active and class-conscious work-ers. The more precarious the position of the bourgeoisie, the more frequently it resorts to violence. Anti-communist and anti-labour legislation, proscription of the Communist Parties, mass dismissals of Communists and other progressive workers, “loyalty” tests of office employees, repressive police measures against the democratic press, suppression of strikes by armed force—all these have become methods of action regularly used by governments of the imperialist bourgeoisie in the endeavour to preserve its dictatorship.

But in its struggle against the working-class movement the ruling bourgeoisie does not confine itself to physical violence alone. In the countries with chronic unemploy-ment it is no less of a curse for the workers to have to live under the constant threat of dismissal and of being black-listed by the employers’ organisations. The capitalists of the United States today make powerful use of this inhuman method to counteract the development of an independent working-class movement.

Furthermore, the ruling bourgeoisie extensively resorts to deception, social dema-gogy and other more subtle and cunning, and therefore more dangerous, methods of dis-organising the working class in an endeavour to bring the workers under its corrupting influence.

The fact that the working class is not homogeneous aggravates the situation. The ranks of the working class are continuously increased by members of the ruined petty bourgeoisie who not infrequently bring with them the handicap of bourgeois ideology, psychology and morality, with which they infect the other workers. In addition, observ-ing the old rule of all oppressors—“divide and rule”—the big capitalists bribe the top section of the trade union, co-operative and other organisations, enlarge the labour bu-reaucracy, offering it lucrative posts in nationalised industry, local government bodies and the state apparatus. Side by side with the other privileged group—the “labour aris-tocracy”—the labour bureaucracy serves as their support and as the vehicle of bourgeois influence within the working-class movement.

All this makes a certain section of the workers susceptible to the social demagogy of the bourgeoisie and its agents. The bourgeoisie is devoting increasing attention to this form of activity. In addition to the usual media for exerting ideological influence on the masses (press, films, radio, etc.) even special “sciences” (“social relations”, “human re-lations”, “industrial sociology and psychology”, etc.) have been developed in recent decades to promote this activity in the U.S.A. and other bourgeois countries. Hundreds and even thousands of “specialists” in these “sciences” are already working in industrial enterprises and government and administrative bodies. They are responsible for elabo-rating various measures for disorganising the working-class movement, frustrating strikes, instilling into the workers contentment with their fate, creating an appearance of “class harmony” and establishing “class peace” in industry.

The Split in the Working-Class Movement

Bourgeois influence on the working-class movement manifests itself in various forms. The most dangerous of these is the spread of opportunism, of reformism. The es-sence of opportunism consists in striving to “reconcile” the working-class movement to the capitalist system. The present-day Right-wing Social-Democrats continue to be the most important ideological and political support of the bourgeoisie within the working-class movement. They eclectically combine old opportunist ideas with “recent” bour-geois theories.

The Right-wing Social-Democrats try to perpetuate the deep split in the working-class movement, a split which has long existed in the capitalist countries; this is the main harm done to the modern working-class movement by opportunism.

This split weakens the ranks of the proletariat, hampers its struggle against the bour-geoisie and makes it easier for the capitalists to pursue a reactionary, anti-labour policy. The lack of unity enables the bourgeoisie to counterpose one section of the working class to another and even to use certain groups of workers under its influence for a struggle not against the enemies of the proletariat but against their class brothers, against the revolutionary working-class movement. It is clear that the split in the working-class movement benefits only the capitalist class, which exploits the workers. Overcoming the split is an important condition for the fulfilment by the working class of its historic mis-sion.

The spread of bourgeois ideas of nationalism and chauvinism among the proletariat also does serious harm to the working-class movement. Imperialist reaction makes wide use of these ideas for kindling national and racial conflicts, and persecution of whole nationalities and races (above all for exciting anti-Semitism and for racial discrimination against Negroes and peoples of the under-developed countries). The danger of national-ism lies primarily in the fact that it diverts the workers from the struggle against their class enemy. Time and again the reactionary bourgeoisie has managed temporarily to paralyse the class struggle of the proletariat by kindling nationalistic moods. Moreover, the spread of nationalistic and chauvinistic ideas leads to disunity of the working-class movement and severs the ties of international solidarity. If not combated, nationalism and chauvinism inevitably undermine the working-class movement and drive in into channels of co-operation with the imperialist bourgeoisie.

The influence of the Church also contributes to splitting the working-class move-ment. Reactionary clerics make every attempt to isolate religious-minded workers from their class brothers by drawing them into separate organisations of a clerical character (Christian-Democratic parties, Catholic trade unions, etc.) and thus diverting them from the struggle against capitalism. It is not by chance that the clerical parties receive gener-ous financial support from powerful capitalist groups.

However, the reactionary policies of the Church leaders are meeting with increasing resistance from the believers themselves and a certain section of the clergy. There are many cases of honest priests who, because they value their good reputation, join the struggle for peace and oppose reaction. But these activities are at variance with the offi-

cial position of the Church leaders, who subordinate the Church to the aims of the impe-rialist reaction.

Thus, the ruling bourgeoisie still has powerful means of counteracting the liberation struggle of the working class. It would be wrong to under-estimate the ensuing difficul-ties. We must not forget that, as the working-class movement grows stronger, the class enemies of the proletariat multiply their efforts to weaken it from within. Hence the achievements of the working-class movement should not be allowed to dull the vigilance of the working class or cause it to relax its efforts and lessen its determination in fighting the obstacles which still hinder it from accomplishing its historic mission.

6. A Class of Fighters, a Class of Builders

In the course of more than one hundred years which separate us from the first inde-pendent revolutionary action of the workers (in 1848 in France) the proletariat had to fight many thousands of class battles, big and small, unsuccessful and victorious. In these battles the working class demonstrated such heroism as had never been shown by any other class in history.

The high fighting qualities inherent in the working class were particularly clearly seen during the October Revolution in Russia in 1917, in the revolutionary actions of the workers of a number of European countries after the First World War, and in the peo-ple’s democratic revolution in China and other countries.

In a number of countries, populated by more than one-third of mankind, the working class has won complete victory in the liberation struggle, shattering the system of capi-talist slavery and taking power into its own hands. The world socialist system is the main achievement of the international revolutionary movement of the working class.

But the struggle of the proletariat has made it an important social and political force also in the countries still ruled by capital. Class battles have continually shaken the capi-talist countries, where the working class and the mass of the working people have more than once created a threat to the class rule of the bourgeoisie.

The Struggle of the Working Class for Its Immediate Economic Interests

One of the main trends of the workers’ struggle in capitalist countries today is the fight for their immediate economic interests, i. e., for demands connected with improv-ing the living and working conditions of the proletariat.

The working class has developed this struggle on a large scale despite the desperate resistance of the ruling bourgeoisie and has achieved important successes. In many highly developed capitalist countries it has won concessions which restrict capitalist tyr-anny and safeguard the working people against some of the gravest forms of exploita-tion. In particular, the working class has succeeded in having the working day reduced from 12-16 hours to 8 hours, and even less for certain occupations in some countries. In a number of countries the workers have forced the bourgeoisie to adopt social security measures (introduction of pensions, unemployment relief, paid holidays, etc.) which, although inadequately, somewhat alleviate their conditions. In some places it has been

possible to limit to some extent the pernicious effects of the monstrous intensification of labour, to gain some improvement of the system of labour protection and certain benefits in the field of public health. In a number of countries the workers have succeeded in forcing bourgeoisie to make wage concessions, thus somewhat diminishing the effects of the continual currency depreciation that has afflicted the working people in all capitalist countries.

At the present stage the working class wages this struggle on an ever wider scale. The greater organisation and class-consciousness of the proletariat enables it to bring forward also demands of a more general character, for example, restriction of the eco-nomic power of the monopolies, taxation changes in favour of the working people, in-troduction of unemployment insurance, etc.

The economic gains of the working class have considerably checked the marked tendency towards a worsening of the position of the workers under the conditions of contemporary capitalism. They have also lightened the conditions of existence of other sections of the working people. Moreover, influenced by the successes of the working-class movement, these sections have also embarked on the path of struggle for their spe-cific interests, not infrequently adopting forms of resistance to the exploiters that have been developed by the working class, viz., organisation of trade unions, strikes, etc. Nowadays these forms of struggle are used also by office employees (including civil servants), medical workers, teachers, etc.

In a number of capitalist countries the leaders of the reformist movement have has-tened to take the credit for these conquests of the working class and are trying to prove that there is no need to wage a political struggle, especially one for the overthrow of the bourgeois system. These assertions are nothing but demagogy. The proletariat of the capitalist countries owes its gains not to the conciliators and opportunists but primarily to the struggle of the most active and class-conscious workers. In most cases it is under the pressure of the Left wing of the working-class movement and out of fear of all work-ers becoming “more Left” that the capitalists grant concessions.

It must furthermore be taken into account that many successes of the workers were possible only because the victory of the working class in the U.S.S.R. and the People’s Democracies forced the bourgeoisie to make concessions which it would not even have thought of making several decades ago. It must also be remembered that the working-class movement owes a good deal of its gains in the defence of its immediate interests not to its economic, but to its political struggle. It is much easier for the working class to speak to the bourgeoisie about wages, pensions, shorter hours, etc., when it is headed by strong and militant political parties which exert constant political pressure on the ruling classes.

In their attempts to distort the essence of the differences between the opportunists and the Marxist-Leninists, the leaders of reformism depict the situation as though Com-munists were against the struggle of the workers for their immediate interests and as though they were in fact even interested in the life of the working class becoming worse, in the belief that it would then struggle more actively against capital. Nothing is farther

from the truth than this slander. Communists consistently defend all the interests and demands of the working class, both immediate and ultimate.

Only narrow-minded sectarians can fear that improvements in the living conditions of the working people, achieved through struggle, will lower the spirit of the workers and undermine their willingness to fight for their ultimate aims. Facts prove the oppo-site: by winning victories in the struggle for their immediate economic interests, the working people not only become better organised but they awake to active political life. The economic struggle of the masses is the bridge to their political struggle. It is not by chance that in many capitalist countries the Communist Parties enjoy greatest influence among those sections of the workers that have won especially substantial concessions in regard to living and working conditions, and who won them because they fought persis-tently for their interests.

Lenin wrote: “By striving to improve its conditions of life the working class at the same time rises morally, intellectually and politically, and becomes more capable of at-taining its great emancipatory aims.”156

While attaching great significance to the economic struggle, Communists—unlike opportunists—clearly understand that this struggle can yield only limited results because it leaves the capitalist system of wage slavery intact. In a broad sense the workers’ inter-est lies not merely in improving the conditions of wage slavery but in complete emanci-pation from it. For this purpose the working class must wage not only an economic but also a political struggle. These two forms of struggle supplement each other and they help to achieve success both in defending the immediate interests of the workers and in hastening the socialist revolution.

Leading Force in All Democratic Movements

The immediate interests of the working class were never limited to a mere im-provement of its economic conditions. The working class includes in the programme of its struggle a wide range of social and political interests. These interests impelled it to fight against feudal and absolutist reaction even as early as in the period of bourgeois revolutions. The proletariat of many countries took an active part in the struggle for na-tional independence, against predatory wars, etc.

In the course of history the range of the economic, political and cultural interests of the working class continuously expanded and defence of them assumed increasingly greater importance in its struggle. For example, such questions as educational reform, budget appropriations for science and art, and new rules of parliamentary procedure could be of very little interest to the working-class movement in the beginning of the nineteenth century, whereas today they not infrequently become important issues in the struggle between the working class and the reactionary bourgeoisie.

The changes which capitalism undergoes also play their part. The transition to impe-rialism followed by the attempts of the monopolies to introduce a fascist system has made the question of safeguarding civil rights and liberties one of vital importance for the working people. The increasing aggressiveness of the reactionary bourgeoisie and

the development of the means of mass annihilation have made the problem of disarma-ment and safeguarding peace more urgent than ever before.

Historical development itself has thus made the working class the defender of the in-terests of all sections of the people, because the struggle for democratic rights, peace and national sovereignty is a struggle for the interests of the whole nation.

The fact that the proletariat has built a militant, highly-organised Marxist-Leninist Party equipped with a scientific theory is of enormous importance in extending the range of interests for which the workers are waging a struggle and in enhancing their political role in society. This Party has helped the working class to become conscious of its role in the life of society, has put it in the front ranks of the fighters for the interests of the nation and has shown how to rally all the working people against reaction.

The Working Class Is the Hope of Progressive Humanity

Its outstanding fighting qualities make the working class the vanguard of all pro-gressive humanity.

After acting as the main shock force that overthrows the old rulers and smashes the old system, this class, unlike the oppressed classes of the past—slaves and peasant serfs—does not leave the historical scene. It has still the task of building a new society. To accomplish this task requires not only fighting qualities but also the capacity for creative, constructive activity in all spheres of social life—economic, cultural, political and military.

The creative ability of the working class has to be greater than that of any other class in history, since no other class has ever had such a great historical mission. In depth and scope of social reorganisation the transition from capitalism to socialism surpasses all other social revolutions.

History has shown that the working class possesses every ability required for crea-tive, constructive activity in building a new society. This is attested by the experience of the workers of Russia and China, Poland and Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Rumania and other countries which are successfully building a society based on socialist and commu-nist principles.

It is but natural that in the course of such a transformation of society the working class should also undergo a change. Without this it would be impossible to build social-ism and then communism.

The working class can accomplish the great mission of emancipating all toilers only if it is imbued with revolutionary consciousness and Marxist-Leninist ideology. This requires that the working class should get rid of the influence of bourgeois ideas. Marx pointed out that the working class needs the proletarian revolution not only to win politi-cal power but also, in the course of the revolution, to purge itself of the foulness of the old society. This purging requires no little time and effort.

After winning political power the working class sets itself the aim of mastering all the learning accumulated by mankind. To accomplish the great task of building a new society, the working class enlists the ablest scientists, technologists and intellectuals

educated in the old society, and at the same time develops its own, new people’s intelli-gentsia, which arises from amongst the working class and toiling peasantry. What is more, in the course of building socialism and moving towards a communist society there arises an imperative need to make the workers themselves really educated people, i.e., to provide them with education, a high culture and specialised knowledge.

On the way to accomplish its historic mission the working class, leading the pro-gressive forces, has already won high prestige and the appreciation of all the working people and all decent persons. The victories of the working class have greatly reduced the sufferings and misfortunes of mankind, and for many countries have already paved the way to prosperity and happiness.

The international revolutionary movement of the working class has acquired vast experience of struggle against imperialism and its abettors. It has become more mature ideologically, it possesses great organised might and is imbued with militancy and de-termination to advance. The situation is becoming more and more favourable for the working-class movement throughout the world. The successes of the U.S.S.R. and the world socialist system, the deepening of the crisis of world capitalism, the growing in-fluence of the Communist Parties among the masses, the ideological bankruptcy of re-formism—all this has substantially altered the conditions of the class struggle in favour of the working people. Even in those countries Where reformism still has a stronghold, a considerable shift towards the left is taking place in the working-class movement.

But the struggle between the forces of reaction and the forces of progress is far from finished. On the contrary, it has entered a decisive phase. The threat of monstrous anni-hilation in a nuclear war hangs over mankind. Scores of millions are still languishing under the yoke of colonial oppression. The working people of many capitalist countries are again facing a real and growing danger of reaction and fascism. Imperialism men-aces world culture and civilisation. And there are still so many dispossessed people, so much poverty, suffering and injustice in the world!

Can humanity forever rid itself of all these misfortunes? It can. Today the Marxist-Leninists confidently answer this question, no longer on the basis of theory alone but also on that of extensive practical experience.

History fully warrants such optimism. However difficult the path to emancipation may be, it leads inevitably to victory. The growing power of the working-class move-ment is a guarantee of the successful struggle of the nations for peace, freedom and na-tional independence, for culture and civilisation, for the building of a life in which there will be no place for poverty, oppression and suffering.

That is why all the hopes of progressive humanity are bound up with the liberation struggle of the working class.

CHAPTER 12

THE GREAT OCTOBER SOCIALIST REVOLUTION— A TURNING-POINT IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND

The uneven development of capitalism affects not only the economy but also the working-class movement. Because of this the role of the working class of various coun-tries in the international struggle of the proletariat also differs at different historical peri-ods.

In the words of Lenin, during the past century France “exhausted the strength of the proletariat, as it were, in two heroic working-class risings against the bourgeoisie, very considerable contributions to world-historical development, that took place in 1848 and 1871”.157 After that the hegemony in the international working-class movement passed to Germany. The process did not stop there. Marx himself noted the possibility of the “revolution beginning... in the East, hitherto the unbroken bulwark and reserve army of counter-revolution”.158

In the beginning of the twentieth century the centre of the world revolutionary movement did actually shift from West to East. Russia was changing into a country des-tined to exert a decisive influence on the course of world history. It was precisely Russia that became the cradle of the proletarian revolution, the course of historical development advancing her working class to the forefront of the world socialist movement. Here the working class succeeded for the first time in putting an end to capitalism and thus in lay-ing the basis for accomplishing the historic mission of the proletariat.

1. The Vanguard Role of the Russian Working Class

In Russia, capitalism developed under conditions of the political domination of serf-owning landlords. Towards the 1860s the contradictions between the material needs of developing society and the production relations of serfdom, which impeded this devel-opment, sharpened the class struggle and led to the growth of revolutionary moods in the country. Lenin pointed out that there was a revolutionary situation in Russia as early as 1859-61, although things did not go as far as a revolution; although the objective pre-requisites for the collapse of the existing system were there, the subjective factor was lacking, i.e., there was lacking “the ability of the revolutionary class to carry out revolu-tionary mass actions strong enough to break (or dislocate) the old government, which never, not even in a period of crisis, ‘falls’, if it is not ‘thrown’.”159

Numerous forms of non-economic compulsion characteristic of the pre-capitalist epoch persisted in Russia right up to the beginning of the present century. Advanced forms of capitalist production appeared side by side with the numerous survivals of the past. As a result, the contradictions caused by the growth of large-scale industry were more acute in Russia than in any other country.

The coexistence of elements of developed capitalism with medieval survivals en-gendered forms of oppression particularly painful for the working people. In no Euro-pean country was there such barbarous exploitation as in Russia. Lenin wrote that no-

where did the working people suffer so much “not only from the development of capital-ist production, but also from the incompleteness of that development”.160

Another feature of the industrial development of Russia was that it was accompa-nied by extensive penetration of foreign capital, which gradually assumed an important place in the country’s economic and political life. Lenin showed that in Russia the “American, English and German capitalists make profits with the aid of the Russian capitalists, who also get a very good share of them”.161

But, while falling into ever greater servitude to foreign capitalists, tsarist Russia at the same time acted as an imperialist colonial power with respect to many countries. The possibility of oppressing and plundering foreign peoples frequently leads to the strengthening of economically backward forms of economy “because”, Lenin pointed out, “often, the source of income is not the development of productive forces, but the semi-feudal exploitation of ‘aliens’”.162 That was precisely the case in Russia.

Thus the economic and political conditions in Russia brought about a rapid revolu-tionisation of the Russian working class, which began its struggle against the capitalists as early as the 1870s. Despite the crushing of the first workers’ organisations, the prole-tarian movement continued to grow, assuming an increasingly mass character and form-ing ever closer ties with the other democratic movements of the working people.

The peasantry in Russia was a tremendous revolutionary force. Crushed by landlord exploitation, deprived of rights and poverty-ridden, but ready to fight for land and free-dom, the peasantry turned spontaneously to the working class, feeling that it was the only class that could help it.

Tsarist Russia was a prison of the peoples; this also intensified the contradictions that tore the country asunder and paved the way for a swift development of a national-liberation movement, and for alliance between the numerous oppressed nationalities and the working class which championed the cause of national liberation.

Reality itself thus steeled and advanced the working class as the main revolutionary force. As far back as the end of the nineteenth century the proletariat was, as Lenin put it, “the sole and natural representative of Russia’s entire working and exploited popula-tion”.163

But to become conscious of its historic role the Russian working class had to arm it-self with the ideas of scientific socialism, which provide the basis for the aims and ob-jectives of the proletariat and serve as a reliable weapon in its struggle for liberation.

The existence of a considerable number of workers with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and a profound interest in social problems was characteristic of the Russia of that time. In all parts of Russia, wherever the proletariat was awakening to an active struggle, there were advanced workers diligently searching for answers to the vital prob-lems of social life and eagerly reaching out for the ideas of socialism. The Russian revo-lutionary-democratic intelligentsia aided in spreading these ideas among the working people. The glorious traditions of the ideological struggle waged by Herzen, Belinsky, Dobrolyubov, Chernyshevsky and other revolutionaries were taken up by the Marxist intellectuals, who went among the masses of workers in order to build a revolutionary

party of a new type.

The rapid increase in the numbers of class-conscious workers testified to the enor-mous spiritual forces of the Russian working class which, owing to the whole objective course of development, was getting ready to accomplish its historic mission.

The role of guardian of the ideological and political integrity of revolutionary Marx-ism passed to the working-class movement in Russia, which was becoming a focus of the most acute contradictions of the new epoch—the epoch of imperialism.

Lenin later said that it had indeed been the result of a great deal of suffering that Russia had adopted Marxism as the only correct revolutionary theory; it had adopted it as a result of half-a-century of unprecedented torments and sacrifices, unparalleled revo-lutionary heroism, incredible energy and selfless seeking and striving, learning, testing in practice, disappointments, checking and comparison with the experience of Europe. Not a single country could equal Russia as regards the wealth and instructiveness of revolutionary experience, the swiftness of the changes in the movement and the variety of its forms—legal and illegal, peaceful and non-peaceful, underground and open, circle and mass, parliamentary and terroristic.

Russia became the birthplace of Leninism, which enriched Marxism with new propositions and conclusions in keeping with the new historical situation. Leninism, which came into being on Russian soil, has struck deep roots in the whole international working-class movement. Having joined the struggle later than the proletariat of the West-European countries, the Russian working class could guide itself by their experi-ence, adopt their best revolutionary traditions and at the same time avoid their mistakes and be on the look-out for the dangers with which the spread of opportunism threatened them. Russia became the birthplace of the first new party of the Leninist type, which was destined to play a world-historic role.

One of Lenin’s greatest contributions to the development of the revolutionary doc-trine of Marxism was his theory of the possibility of socialism triumphing at first in one country alone. Lenin drew this conclusion from a deep analysis of the new, imperialist stage of capitalism. Lenin’s theory opened up a clear view of the future before the prole-tarians of different countries and gave full play to their revolutionary initiative. It freed them from the antiquated thesis that a revolution had to occur simultaneously in all or the overwhelming majority of countries after they had reached a high level of economic, technical and cultural development and had thus become “ripe” for socialism. It is well known that the theoreticians from the Second International made a great fuss about this thesis, which under the new conditions began to hold back the emancipatory movement of the working class.

The Russian workers could not have roused the broad masses of the people to action against the autocracy and the oppression of capitalists and landlords if they had not, to-gether with Lenin and the Bolshevik Party, become convinced that they could fight for socialism and win by their own strength without waiting for other detachments of the international proletariat.

2. The World's First Socialist Revolution

Transition from the Bourgeois-Democratic to the Socialist Revolution

The immediate task of the Russian working class was, in alliance with the peasantry, to overthrow tsarism. The 1905-07 Revolution, crushed by the autocracy, was unable to carry out this task. Nevertheless, it was of tremendous historical importance because it was not only the first Russian revolution but also the first bourgeois- democratic revolu-tion occurring under the leadership of the working class instead of under the leadership of the bourgeoisie, which had ceased to be a revolutionary force.

The problem of overthrowing tsarism was solved by the bourgeois-democratic revo-lution in February 1917. Unlike the bourgeois revolutions in the West, which were fol-lowed by a long period of bourgeois rule, the February Revolution in Russia began to develop rapidly into a socialist revolution.

This development took a particularly stormy course because the deep contradictions that had torn the country asunder and had been repressed after the defeat of the 1905 Revolution were extremely aggravated during the First World War. The bourgeoisie, on coming to power in February 1917, not only failed to carry out the most important tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution but continued to lead the country along the disas-trous path of the imperialist war. By its anti-national policies it brought the people and the country to the verge of catastrophe. This set in motion the broadest masses of the working people, who had learned from their own experience that salvation lay only in a socialist revolution.

Lenin wrote that the war had brought about so vast a crisis, had strained the material and moral resources of the people to such an extent and had dealt such blows to the whole contemporary social organisation that Russia was faced with the alternative of “either perishing or entrusting her fate to the most revolutionary class for the swiftest and most radical transition to a superior mode of production”164—to socialism.

As a result of the armed uprising on October 25 (November 7), 1917, the Russian working class led by the Bolshevik Party and in alliance with the poor peasantry over-threw the rule of the capitalists and landlords and took the political power into its own hands. The participation of the broad masses of the people, including the soldiers and sailors, in the October Revolution paralysed the resistance of the bourgeoisie, with the result that this revolution was almost bloodless. Despite the subsequent fantasies of im-perialist propaganda, the acts of history prove that the socialist revolution carried out under the leadership of the Communists was imbued with the spirit of proletarian hu-manism. This is attested by numerous reports of impartial observers, including foreign-ers. For example, the well-known American writer, Albert Rhys Williams, who was in revolutionary Petrograd in 1917 and later travelled extensively through Russia, wrote as follows:

“As the ruling class the workers were in a position to take vengeance on their former exploiters and executioners….

“I knew that thousands of workmen now in authority had been sent with clanking

chains across the snows of Siberia. I had seen them pallid and tottering from long years in those coffins for the living— the stone sacks of Schlüsselburg. I had seen the deep scars cut in their backs by the Cossacks’ nagaika and I recalled the words of Lincoln: ‘If for every drop of blood drawn by the lash another shall be drawn the sword, the judge-ments of the Lord are pure and righteous altogether.’

“But there was no dreadful bloodbath. On the contrary, their idea of reprisals seemed to have no hold on the minds of the workers. On November 30, the Soviet passed the decree declaring the Abolition of Capital Punishment. This was not merely a humanitarian gesture. The workers turned to their enemies not only to guarantee their lives, but in many cases to grant them freedom.

“…The verdict of history,” Albert Rhys Williams continued, “will be that the Rus-sian Revolution—vastly more fundamental than the great upheaval in France in 1789—was no saturnalia of revenge. It was to all intents a ‘bloodless revolution’.”

As though anticipating the attacks of the enemies of the revolution, Rhys Williams wrote: “‘But the Red Terror!’ someone interjects. That was to come later when the Al-lied armies were to come to Russia, and under their protecting wing the Czarists and Black Hundreds were to loose upon peasants and workers the White Terror of the Counter-revolution—a hideous orgy of butchery and lust in which helpless women and children were to be massacred in droves.

“Then in defence the workers, goaded to desperation, were to strike back with the Red Terror of the Revolution. Then capital punishment was to be restored and the White conspirators were to feel the swift chastising hand of the Revolution.”165

There had been popular uprisings in the past, too. But the October Revolution differs in that as a result the masses, the working people, came to power and class oppression and the exploitation of man by man were abolished. It brought the country on to the path to socialism and ushered in a new era in the history of mankind.

The October Revolution wrested from capitalist slavery the population of a vast country which covers one-sixth of the earth’s surface. It rescued Russia from the bloody imperialist war and saved it from the danger of dismemberment and colonial enslave-ment. The Revolution undermined the economic basis of the system of exploitation and social injustice, nationalised industry, railways, banks and the land, abolished landlord-ism, and gave land to all landless and land-poor peasants. The October Revolution shat-tered the chains of national oppression, proclaimed and ensured the right of the nations to self-determination, including the right of secession. It completely wiped out the estate and class privileges of the exploiters. For the first time in history it emancipated women and gave them equal rights with men.

The Revolution not only halted Russia's growing economic backwardness compared with the foremost countries of the West, but opened up the possibility of overtaking them in a short space of time.

The socialist revolution in Russia shook the whole capitalist world. The world after it became split into two opposed systems. For the first time a state appeared in the inter-national arena that put forward the great slogan of peace and began to give effect to new,

democratic and humane principles in the relations between peoples and countries. Man-kind acquired a reliable bulwark in its struggle against predatory wars and for peace and the security of peoples.

How the Russian Proletariat Shattered the Old Dogmas  Concerning the Impossibility of a Socialist Revolution

The exploiting classes and their learned lackeys have asserted for centuries that without the landlords and capitalists it is impossible to carry on social production and that the masses of working people cannot live without the master class.

The Russian working class has demonstrated in practice that society can very well do without landlords and capitalists.

Reality itself has disproved also the opportunist dogma that socialist revolution could begin only in those countries where the productive forces have reached the highest level and the working class constitutes the majority of the population. The opportunists declared that a revolution which did not meet these requirements was impossible and illegitimate. Such a know-all as Kautsky, for example, asserted that even if the Russian working class succeeded in seizing power the peasant masses would inevitably trans-form the proletarian revolution into a chaos of peasant revolts, i.e., into one of the epi-sodes of a bourgeois revolution.

Life has shattered the opportunist dogmas.

The enemies of socialism also asserted that even if the working class managed to take power into its hands it would not be able to hold it because it had neither the neces-sary specialists nor the administrative skills. Shortly before the October Revolution, the bourgeois newspaper Novoye Vremya (New Times) wrote: “Let us assume for a brief moment that the Bolsheviks will win. Who will rule us then? Perhaps the cooks who know so much about chops and steaks? Or perhaps firemen, stablemen or stokers? Or maybe nursemaids will run to the session of the State Council in between washing nap-pies? Who indeed? Who are these statesmen? Maybe fitters will look after theatres, plumbers will take care of diplomacy and joiners will run the postal service? Will this happen? No! Is it possible? History will give the Bolsheviks a powerful answer to this insane question.”  

History really did answer this question that appeared insane to the Russian reaction-aries. History made a laughing-stock of them and fully confirmed the correctness of the Bolsheviks, the Communists, who firmly believed in the creative abilities of the masses. Many fitters, as is well known, developed not only into good guardians of the theatrical arts, but also into outstanding statesmen; capable joiners and stablemen made pretty good military leaders, who beat the most eminent bourgeois generals, while plumbers, stokers and other representatives of the working classes became good diplomats, capable administrators, remarkable engineers, designers, writers and scientists.

The October Revolution not only put the working class in power but also proved in practice that the working class could successfully govern the state, manage the national economy and create a new culture. And what is more, experience has shown that without

capitalists things go much better. The working class and the toiling peasantry proved to have innumerable gifted people who, thanks to the Revolution, had a chance to show their worth in all fields of state administration and economic activity.

The October Revolution once and for all put to shame all those who asserted that the people from the “lower classes” were incapable of independent creative work and that at any rate before taking power they should undergo a long schooling at the hands of the “priests” of bourgeois culture.

Lenin believed there was no need for the proletariat to wait till it reached a certain “level of culture” and that it would rise to this level much faster under the workers' and peasants’ power.

Lenin wrote: “If a definite level of culture is required for the building of socialism (although nobody can say just what that definite ‘level of culture’ is, for it differs in every West European country), why cannot we begin by first achieving the prerequisites for that definite level of culture in a revolutionary way, and then, with the aid of the workers’ and peasants’ government and the Soviet system, proceed to overtake the other nations?”166

The Communist Party at the Head of the Revolution

The October Revolution confirmed the Marxist truth that the most favourable revo-lutionary situation can end in victory only if there is a party capable of correctly apprais-ing the situation, fully resolved to carry the struggle through to the end and able to lead the masses of the working people.

To turn the possibility of revolution in Russia into reality required a great deal of po-litical and organisational work for merging the numerous heterogeneous currents of popular indignation into a single powerful stream of revolution. The Leninist Party ac-complished this task with credit. It succeeded in uniting into a single revolutionary stream the socialist movement of the working class, the general democratic movement against the war and imperialism, the revolutionary-democratic struggle of the peasantry for land and peace, and the national-liberation movement of the peoples of Russia. When not only the workers but the broad masses of the people had come over to the side of the Communist Party, the Party rallied all the working people to struggle for power, for a socialist revolution.

The working-class parties had written about socialism in their programmes for many decades, but when their words had to be translated into action, it turned out that for many of them socialism was only a propagandist slogan and not a concrete task that had to be accomplished by means of struggle. The Leninist Party was the first actually to bring the working class into action aimed at accomplishing its historic mission by trans-lating socialism from theory into practice.

For a detailed account of the October Revolution one must consult the textbooks on the history of the C.P.S.U. Mention will be made here only of its main features, which made it the greatest turning-point in human history and still serve as an example for the worldwide working-class movement.

The policies of the Communists during the October Revolution are a model of the truly Marxist, scientifically based tactics of a revolutionary working-class party at turn-ing-points in history; the line pursued by the Party did not aim at “seizing” power but at organising the mass struggle of the people for the power; it patiently helped the revolu-tionary consciousness of the masses to mature and skilfully proclaimed slogans which brought the popular masses through their own experience to the point of revolutionary struggle against capitalism. The Party displayed remarkable flexibility and the ability to find a common language with the various political and social forces and extend the front of the allies of the working class.

The Great October Socialist Revolution triumphed precisely because the working class was led by the Communist Party, which had mastered the art of applying the Marx-ist-Leninist teaching to the special conditions of Russian life. Closely connected with the masses and expressing their aspirations, resolute and daring, principled and flexible, the Party was, as Lenin said on the eve of the Revolution, the “mind, honour and conscience of our epoch”.

The leadership of the Bolshevik Party became a classical model for the Marxist-Leninist parties of the other countries.

First Socialist State in History

The Great October Socialist Revolution not only brought victory to the working class, but also for the first time in history created a new type of state—the Soviet social-ist state, and a new type of democracy—democracy for the working people. Immediately and with revolutionary energy the Soviet government began to carry out measures for consolidating the revolutionary order, and for satisfying the urgent needs of the masses and improving their conditions. A great deal of attention and effort had to be devoted to defending the revolution from the encroachments of its class enemies.

Many popular movements in the past perished because the parties and classes that led them did not dare to use force to suppress the exploiter classes and could not strike back in defending the gains of the revolution from its enemies.

The October Revolution avoided these mistakes. Lenin, the Communists and the Russian workers did not fail to use drastic measures against the active enemies of the revolution, while at the same time ensuring broad proletarian democracy for the working people. Strong working-class rule under the conditions of hostile capitalist encirclement was the country’s only salvation.

The opportunists, who called themselves socialists, rejected the idea of dictatorship of the proletariat and denounced Lenin and the Leninists for their resolute struggle against counter-revolutionary elements. The opportunists would not accept the fact that violence was initiated by the exploiting classes overthrown by the people and that any leniency to the counter-revolution led to a hundred times as much bloodshed as was re-quired to bring the enemies of the revolution to their senses.

The experience of the October Revolution vividly demonstrated that some form of the dictatorship of the proletariat was essential for the successful transition from

capitalism to socialism. By being able to apply the doctrine of revolutionary Marxism to the concrete Russian conditions and to demonstrate its correctness and vitality the Russian Communists, led by Lenin, made a great contribution to the world working-class movement.

A revolution, Lenin pointed out, is worthless unless it can defend itself. Many revo-lutions suffered defeat merely because they could not organise their own defence. The October Revolution escaped also this weakness. It demonstrated its ability to defend it-self by creating in the shortest possible time a new revolutionary army of workers and peasants to take the place of the demoralised and virtually disintegrated tsarist army.

The Russian Revolution was opposed by a broad coalition of the internal reactionary forces and the international big bourgeoisie. The whole of the Soviet Republic was inter-sected by the fighting fronts of the Civil War and the foreign intervention. Nevertheless, the young Red Army, frequently ragged and hungry, its arms much inferior to those of its enemies, triumphed in the hard-fought battles. The creation of such an army is the best proof of the power of the proletarian dictatorship and the great support rendered to it by the people. If the Soviet power had not had the devoted support of the popular masses and if the masses had not understood that the Communists were fighting for the people’s power, the Party could never have succeeded in creating a mass army imbued with revolutionary enthusiasm and an inflexible will to victory.

The Red Army had the difficult but honourable task of frustrating the plans of inter-national imperialism and internal counter-revolution which envisaged a dismemberment of Russia into several semi-dependent states. The army of the revolutionary people hon-ourably accomplished its historic task by driving out of the Soviet Republic the partici-pants in the “crusade of 14 powers” and along with them the Russian whiteguards, and the Ukrainian, Georgian and other separatists who dreamt of dismembering the Soviet Union.

The victorious struggle of the Soviet people against the interventionists and whiteguards vividly confirmed Lenin’s prophetic words: “You will never vanquish a people whose majority of workers and peasants have come to learn, feel and see that they are defending their own Soviet power—the power of the working people, that they are defending a cause the victory of which will ensure for them and or their children the possibility of profiting by all the blessings of culture, all the results of human labour.”167

3. Powerful Impulse to the Revolutionary Working-Class Movement  in Other Countries

The October Revolution served as an inspiring example for the working people of the world in their liberation struggle. It shook the faith of the broad masses of the people of the bourgeois countries in the stability and eternity of capitalism and shattered the dogmas of the pseudo-socialists about the need to submit to the omnipotence of imperi-alism and to be content with partial concessions made by the ruling classes.

The fact that the working class of one of the most important countries in the world rose to the position of the ruling class as a result of the October Revolution immeasura-

bly enhanced the socialist consciousness of the international proletariat, raised its revo-lutionary spirit and strengthened its faith in its power and its victory. The ideas of social-ism and communism became still more popular among the masses of the working peo-ple, and the working class grew politically more mature and militant.

Under the influence of the October Revolution, a wave of revolutionary activity spread through many countries of Europe and Asia.

Actions demanding immediate cessation of the imperialist war began in Germany, and Councils of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies began to appear there. By the autumn of 1918 the revolutionary crisis became extremely acute. The uprising embraced almost the whole country and the monarchy collapsed.

The revolutionary wave also swept away the Hapsburg monarchy, and the “tattered” Austro-Hungarian Empire fell to pieces. Independent national states—Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Austria—were reborn. A working-class revolution broke out in Finland in January 1918. Soviets were established in Hungary, Bavaria and Slovakia in 1919, and, although they were crushed by the counter-revolution, they left an indeli-ble impression on the minds of the working people. A broad movement for setting up factory councils began in Italy. The workers took over the factories and the peasants seized the lands of the big landlords. A revolutionary struggle developed in France, Brit-ain, Belgium and Poland. In 1920-21 general strikes spread over Bulgaria, Rumania and Czechoslovakia and a mass strike movement swept the U.S.A. and South American countries.

By giving a gigantic impulse to the working-class movement throughout the world, the October Revolution itself gained the powerful support of the international proletariat. A movement of solidarity under the slogan of “Hands Off Soviet Russia” developed in Britain. National and local committees leading a struggle for stopping intervention were set up in many countries. Dockers refused to load armaments for the whiteguards and interventionists. In Italy this movement put forward the slogans: “Not one rifle, not one cartridge, not one soldier against the motherland of the toilers!” “Act like Russia!” As Lenin put it, the nations learned “by the march of events to look upon Russia as the cen-tre of attraction”168

The October Revolution ushered in a new, Leninist stage in the international work-ing-class movement, characterised by the appearance of Communist Parties in many countries and the creation of the Communist International, the militant organ of world proletarian solidarity. The working-class movement emerged from the state of disorder and impotence in which it had found itself through the fault of the opportunists of the Second International during the 1914-18 imperialist war. The October Revolution made the working people conscious of their power, gave them a clear purpose and confidence in the future.

4. Influence of the October Revolution on the National-Liberation Movement

The October Socialist Revolution not only ushered in the era of proletarian revolu-tions, it also initiated a crisis in the colonial system of imperialism, a new period in the

history of the national- liberation movement of the oppressed peoples of the East.

By putting an end to the national oppression in Russia the Socialist Revolution gave an object-lesson to the whole world. It made the peoples formerly oppressed by tsarism really free and equal. Soviet power not only gave these nations political liberties, politi-cal equality and their own statehood but also ensured them the possibility of overcoming their economic and cultural backwardness. As the more advanced and stronger nation, the Russian people rendered them invaluable aid.

No wonder the October Revolution has served as a mighty source of inspiration for the colonial and dependent peoples in their struggle for liberation from imperialist en-slavement. The Russian Revolution showed them the way to win their freedom and na-tional independence. Moreover, the example of the Soviet Union, which routed the ar-mies of the interventionists and defended its socialist gains, showed these peoples that, however apparently stable the rule of the imperialist states over them, their liberation from colonial oppression was actually possible.

Before the October Revolution the Marxist-Leninist teaching was unknown to the peoples of the East.

‘The gun volleys of the October Revolution,” said Mao Tse-tung, “brought us Marx-ism-Leninism. The October Revolution helped the progressive elements in China and the rest of the world to apply the proletarian world outlook in determining the fate of the country and re-examining their own problems. The conclusion was to follow in the foot-steps of the Russians.”169

The Chinese Communist Party came into being in 1921. It followed the advice given by Lenin to the Communists of the East in November 1919 to guide themselves by the general communist theory and practice and “by adapting themselves to peculiar condi-tions which do not exist in the European countries to be able to apply that theory and practice to conditions in which the bulk of the population are peasants, and in which the task is to wage a struggle not against capitalism, but against medieval survivals”.170

The first powerful response of the Chinese people to the October Revolution was the “Movement of May 4”, which began in 1919 with a protest against the transfer of the former German concessions in China to Japan and which impelled the Chinese Govern-ment to refuse to sign the Versailles Peace Treaty and to remove a number of ministers hated by the people. In this broad national movement, directed primarily against Japa-nese imperialism and the feudal-militarist government, the Chinese working class acted for the first time as an independent political force. The Chinese Revolution changed from a bourgeois-democratic revolution of the old type led by the bourgeoisie into a de-mocratic revolution developing under the hegemony of the working class.

In 1919 more than two million Korean people took part in mass actions directed against Japanese rule.

Revolutionary events, in many places assuming the form of armed uprisings, began in India. Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister of India, writes: “…I had no doubt that the Soviet revolution had advanced human society by a great leap and had lit a bright flame which could not be smothered, and that it had laid the foundations for that ‘new

civilisation’ toward which the world would advance.”171 The mass national-liberation movement continued to grow until three decades later it was consummated by the libera-tion of the country from the British yoke.

The enormous influence of the October Revolution made itself felt in distant Indo-nesia. As Dr. Sukarno, the President of the Indonesian Republic, notes, “after the victory of the October Revolution in Russia the struggle of the peoples of Asia for their national independence and against the oppression of the usurpers flared up anew. This struggle became more organised and its aim clear and irreconcilable, namely, immediate inde-pendence”.172

The development of the national-liberation struggle showed how profoundly the Oc-tober Revolution had influenced the oppressed nations of the world, and marked the be-ginning of the collapse of the colonial system of imperialism.

5. The Vanguard and Bulwark of the World Socialist Movement

The international importance of the Great October Socialist Revolution is a vast and many-sided subject, greatly exceeding the scope of this chapter.* This chapter deals only with the historic victory won by the Russian proletariat under the leadership of the Communist Party in October 1917 and with the direct influence this great victory then exerted on the revolutionary movement of the other peoples. Even in this sense alone the October Revolution ushered in a new era in the history of mankind, an era of the fall of capitalism and the triumph of socialism.

• The historic significance of the 40 years’ experience of the October Revolution was con-sidered in detail in N. S. Khrushchov’s report to the Jubilee Session of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. (November 1957). In this book, this subject is treated in a number of chapters of Part Four and in all chapters of Part Five.

As a result of the historic victory of the October Revolution, the Soviet Union ap-peared before the whole world as the vanguard and bulwark of the international socialist movement. “We have a right to be,” said Lenin, “and are proud of the fact that to us has fallen the good fortune to begin the erection of a Soviet state, and thereby to usher in a new era in world history, the era of the rule of a new class, a class which is oppressed in every capitalist country, but which everywhere is marching forward towards a new life, towards victory over the bourgeoisie, towards the dictatorship of the proletariat—and towards the emancipation of mankind from the yoke of capital and from imperialist wars.”173

The Great October Socialist Revolution ushered in a new era not only in the history of Russia but also in world history. It was a turning-point in world history from the old, capitalist world to the new, socialist world. Capitalism ceased to be a universal system ruling the world, the chain of world capitalism was broken never to be repaired.

The October Revolution showed the workers of the other countries that there was no need to wait for a “universal” denouement and that the main path of world progress was through a gradual breaking away of ever new countries from the system of capitalism

and their transition to socialism. By demonstrating the possibility of the victory of so-cialism in one country, the October Revolution was at the same time the first step to-wards the victory of socialism all over the world.

Lenin saw the international significance of the October Revolution primarily in the influence it exerted on the whole course of world history, but he also emphasised this significance “taking it in the narrowest sense, i.e., understanding international signifi-cance to mean the international validity or the historical inevitability of a repetition on an international scale of what has taken place in our country...”.174

The victory of October immeasurably enhanced the possibilities of socialist revolu-tions. It became clear that it was no longer a narrow circle of developed countries but the whole world that could break out of the grip of capitalism. This was a decisive contribu-tion to the growth of the international emancipatory movement of the working class and to the weakening of imperialism.

In addition, the continuous growth of the forces of socialism and weakening of capi-talism initiated by the October Revolution facilitates the struggle of the working people in the capitalist countries for peace and democracy, substantially assists them to defend their immediate economic interests, and enables the peoples of the small and economi-cally weak countries to preserve their independence and to develop their national econ-omy.

There is not a single aspect of social life in any country of the world which was not directly or indirectly affected by the consequences of the Great October Revolution.

At the Jubilee Session of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R., N. S. Khrushchov said: “'The October Socialist Revolution is of the greatest importance in human history. The world was shaken to its foundations when the Russian proletariat together with the poor peasantry, under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party headed by the great Lenin, took power into its hands and announced the birth of the new social and state system. The first worker-peasant state in the world raised aloft the revolutionary red banner of socialism, the great banner of Marxism-Leninism, covered with the glory of struggle and victory.”175

The objective course of history has made the U.S.S.R. the vanguard and bulwark of the international socialist movement. But being the vanguard and bulwark does not, of course, in any way mean interfering in the internal affairs of other states and “making” revolutions there. No social revolution, in general, or proletarian revolution, in particu-lar, can be stimulated artificially, “exported”, “imported”, or made to order.

Shortly before the October Revolution, Lenin emphasised the correctness of Engels’ words that the “victorious proletariat can force no blessings of any kind upon any for-eign nation without undermining its own victory by so doing”.176

A socialist revolution finds its makers not outside, but inside the country that has matured for revolution. It finds its makers in the working class and its allies, in all the working and exploited people of that particular country. The revolution matures by vir-tue of the objective laws of historical development, and the possibility of its victory is translated into reality by the revolutionary struggle of the broad masses led by a Marxist-Leninist party.

CHAPTER 13

THE MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY AND ITS ROLE  IN THE WORKERS’ CLASS STRUGGLE

The enemies of communism allege that the creation of Marxist parties is the work of a few agitators. If this were true, the Communists would long since have been wiped out because they have been persecuted for many decades. For example, Italian fascism dealt the Communist Party brutal blows. On the eve of the Second World War, it numbered no more than 15,000 members. But in the long run fascism was smashed, the Commu-nist Party quickly grew into a mass party and now numbers nearly two million members.

In many countries the reactionary bourgeoisie subjected the Communists to all kinds of repression, imprisoning and brutally murdering them, but nowhere did it succeed in destroying the revolutionary parties of the working class. Persecution is of no avail against the Marxist parties. This shows that the Communist Parties have been called into existence by the profound objective needs of social development and primarily by the interests and needs of the working class.

1. What Party Does the Working Class Need?

In scientifically substantiating the historic role of the working class, Marx and Engels at the same time established that the proletariat needed an independent political party for the revolutionary transformation of capitalist society into socialist society.

They not only wrote about this, but also did a great deal to organise such a party. In 1847 Marx and Engels created the first communist organisation—the Communist League. The Communist League can be considered the prototype of the modern Com-munist Parties. On the basis of its experience, as also on that of the International Work-ing Men’s Association, which was founded in 1864 and is known in the history of the working-class movement as the First International, Marx and Engels drew many impor-tant conclusions on the role of the revolutionary working-class party, its organisation and policies.

Under new historical conditions, Lenin developed these conclusions of Marx and Engels into a harmonious teaching on the Party. He showed the leading role of the Party in the working-class movement, formulated its organisational principles and norms of internal life, and the fundamental principles of its policies and tactics. This teaching is one of Lenin’s most important contributions to Marxism.

Revolutionary Character of a Marxist Party

Of all the organisations created by the working class, only a political party can give proper expression to the basic interests of the working class and lead it to complete vic-tory. With the aid of trade unions, mutual aid societies and other similar organisations alone the workers will never be able to put an end to capitalism and build a socialist so-ciety. For this the workers need an organisation of a higher type, an organisation that does not confine itself to the struggle for the satisfaction of the current needs of the

working people but aims at bringing the working class to power in order to effect a revo-lutionary transformation of society. Such an organisation is the Communist Party. Lenin wrote that “... in order that the bulk of a certain class may learn to understand its inter-ests and its position, in order that it may learn to pursue its own policies, requires pre-cisely that the advanced elements of this class should be organised immediately and at all costs even if these elements at first constitute a negligible part of the class”.177

As long as the working class wages only an economic struggle, the bourgeoisie does not see in that any great danger for itself; but when the working class organises politi-cally, i.e., creates a political party which expresses its will as a class, the bourgeoisie begins seriously to fear for its rule. That is why reaction deals its main blows against the political party of the working class. At the same time, trying to undermine the party from within, capitalist propaganda endeavours to persuade the workers that they can do without their own party. One of the manifestations of bourgeois influence on the work-ing class is the anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist denial of the leading role of a political party.

Anarchists entirely reject the necessity for any political organisation. The anarcho-syndicalists preach that the working class should not engage in politics and that trade unions alone are enough. By denying politics the anarchists in actual fact subordinate the working class to bourgeois politics.

Exposing the theoretical untenability and the danger of these views, Lenin wrote: “Only a political party of the working class, i.e., a Communist Party, is capable of unit-ing, educating and organising such a vanguard of the proletariat and the whole mass of the working people, a vanguard which is alone able to resist the inevitable petty-bourgeois vacillations of this mass, the inevitable traditions and relapses of trade-unionist narrowness or trade-unionist prejudices amidst the proletariat, and to lead all the joint activities of the whole proletariat, i.e., to lead the proletariat politically and through it to lead all the masses of the working people.”178

However, not every political party claiming the leadership of the working class is capable of accomplishing this task. This is evident from the experience of the Social-Democratic Parties of the Second International. Acting through the opportunist leaders of Social-Democracy, the bourgeoisie was able to a considerable extent to bring these parties under its influence, to “tame” them and make them barely distinguishable from the usual bourgeois parliamentary opposition. As a result, the Social-Democratic Parties, which at first raised high hopes in the working class, lost their ability to organise and lead the revolutionary working-class movement. This was particularly evident when all the social contradictions engendered by the epoch of imperialism became extremely ag-gravated.

Objective reality and the interests of the proletariat made the creation of working-class parties of a new type a matter of imperative necessity.

The first such party was successfully built in Russia, where the imperialist contra-dictions were particularly sharp. At the end of the 1890s, Lenin raised the banner of struggle against opportunism in the ranks of Social-Democracy. This struggle set an ex-

ample for the revolutionary movement throughout the world. After the Great October Socialist Revolution Communist Parties began to be organised in many countries.

The national peculiarities and the conditions of the struggle have left their imprint on each Communist Party but at the same time they all have something in common that radically distinguishes them from the Social-Democratic Parties.

The main thing that characterises the parties of the new type is their irreconcilability to capitalism. The Communists are waging an active struggle for its abolition, for a revo-lutionary transformation of capitalist society, for they hold that the taking of political power by the working class and the establishment, of a dictatorship of the proletariat are essential conditions for this transformation. Hence the intolerance displayed by Com-munists for all forms of opportunism, which in practice signifies adaptation to capital-ism.

The Communist Parties do not act blindly, groping in the dark, but are guided by the revolutionary theory of Marxism-Leninism which scientifically expresses the fundamen-tal interests of the working class. The Party is a voluntary union of like-minded persons united for the purpose of applying the Marxist world outlook and carrying out the his-toric mission of the working class.

The revolutionary character of the Party determines its organisational principles, its unity, its identity of action and the flexibility of its tactics. Moreover, the main strength of the Communist Parties lies in the fact that they are not parties of isolated individuals or narrow groups of professional revolutionaries, but of the broad masses of the working people, with whom they establish the closest possible contact and whose struggle they strive to lead.

Vanguard of the Working Class and All Working People

The Communist Party is the vanguard of the working class, i.e., its advanced, class-conscious part, capable of leading the masses in the struggle for the overthrow of capi-talism and the building of socialism. Lenin wrote: “By educating the workers’ party, Marxism educates the vanguard of the proletariat which is capable of assuming power and of leading the whole people to socialism, of directing and organising the new order, of being the teacher, the guide, the leader of all the toilers and exploited in the task of building up their social life without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie.”179

The party of the proletariat—the Communist Party—while being a class party has at the same time deep roots not only among the workers but also among other sections of the people.

Communists are in no way peculiar people; they are plain workers, peasants, intel-lectuals, in a word, ordinary people. But they are distinguished by their greater class-consciousness, ideological steadfastness and, consequently, more intense revolutionary character and readiness to face any ordeal for the sake of the lofty idea which they have united to realise. Their life is bound up with the interests of the people and they are deeply concerned with everything that agitates the people’s minds.

The mass Communist Parties include representatives of all the popular forces that

have joined the struggle against capitalism and, above all, the finest members of the working class.

History shows us that before becoming real vanguards the revolutionary parties usu-ally pass through a number of stages of political and organisational development. At the outset they are, more often than not, propagandist groups and their work is conducted mainly within their own ranks. This is necessary to ensure ideological unity, educate the membership and improve the organisation. Then comes the time when the parties go to the masses and begin to lead strikes and mass actions of the working class. This period signifies the merging of the spontaneous working-class movement with the ideas of so-cialism and its transformation into a class-conscious, organised movement. In the next stage the party becomes a real political force capable of leading not only the majority of the working class but also considerable masses of the people.

In some capitalist countries the Communist Parties have not yet been able to win the broad masses of the working class and have not yet become mass parties. As the van-guard uniting the most class-conscious section of the working class in its ranks, they play no small part in the life and struggle of the working people. It is clear, however, that they will be able to play a still greater part when they unite the masses around them-selves. Then they will become a political force capable of leading the workers to social emancipation, to the building of a new society.

The speed with which a party passes from one stage to another depends on objective conditions, as well as on the correctness of its own policies and the ability of its leader-ship. The aggravation of the general crisis of capitalism and the successes of the forces of socialism, and the increase in the political maturity and experience of the party mem-bership, create in our days the prerequisites for all Communist Parties of the capitalist countries to rise to a higher level of development.

Democratic Centralism in the Structure and Life of the Party

The principles of the organisational structure of a Communist Party follow from the role it is destined to play in the working-class movement and the nature of its aims and tasks.

The interests expressed by a Communist Party are not the mere sum total of the pri-vate interests of individual workers or groups of workers; they are interests of a whole class and can manifest themselves only through the common will which unites numerous isolated actions into one common struggle. Only a centralised leadership is capable of uniting all the forces, directing them towards a single goal and imparting unity to the unco-ordinated actions of individual workers and groups of workers. “Absolute centrali-sation and the strictest discipline of the proletariat constitute one of the fundamental conditions for victory over the bourgeoisie” {Lenin).180

But the common will of the Party cannot be created otherwise than democratically, i.e., jointly, collectively, by comparing the different opinions and proposals and then adopting decisions binding for all. The common will thus elaborated has the advantage that it gives the fullest and therefore truest expression to the objective needs of the class

struggle of the proletariat.

Thus the centralism of a Communist Party is a democratic centralism, i.e., it is based on the will of the broadest membership of the Party.

In practice democratic centralism means:

all the leading Party bodies from top to bottom are elected;

regular accounts are rendered by Party bodies to their Party organisations and higher organs;

strict Party discipline and subordination of the minority to the majority;

decisions of the higher bodies are absolutely binding on all the lower bodies.

In every Communist Party, the principle of democratic centralism underlies the Rules that determine the structure and forms of its organisation, the norms of its internal life, the methods of the practical activities of the Party organisations, and the duties and rights of the Party members.

The duties of a Party member constitute the corner-stone of all Party activity. Since the Communist Party is called upon to carry out the great tasks of radically reorganising society, it cannot consider a mere agreement of its members with the Party programme sufficient. A Communist is one who actively helps to carry out the programme of the Party and necessarily works in one of its organisations under its leadership and control.

The opportunists do not make such demands of the members of their parties. It was on this question that a split occurred in 1903 between the revolutionary and opportunis-tic trends in the Russian Social-Democratic Party. Today all Communist Parties guide themselves by the Leninist principle of membership. At the same time the concrete con-ditions for admission and the duties required by a particular Communist Party from its members take into account the peculiarities of the country and the traditions of its work-ing-class movement. The parties admit new members readily but at the same time cir-cumspectly, being careful not to contaminate the Party ranks with agents-provocateurs sent in by the bourgeoisie, or with casual elements.

Party Democracy and Leadership

The internal life of the Party is organised in such a way as to allow the maximum participation of the Communists in its practical work. This is the essence of Party de-mocracy. All necessary conditions are established for giving the Party members the op-portunity to discuss all questions, to check the fulfilment of adopted decisions, to elect the leaders, and to know and check their activities.

The Communist Party does not reduce inner-Party democracy to mere participation in electing the leadership. Such a notion of democracy, which prevails in the Social-Democratic Parties, actually implies a transfer of the norms and rules of bourgeois par-liamentarism to Party life. The democracy of a Communist Party is a democracy of vig-orous common action, i.e., a democracy in which the members of the Party not only elect and discuss, but also take a practical part in guiding the work of the Party.

But the active participation of all Communists in the activities of the Party does not detract from the significance of leadership or the role of the leaders who possess the

necessary abilities, knowledge and experience.

The history of the working-class movement of different countries has shown that po-litical parties can operate successfully if they have stable groups of experienced, authori-tative and influential leaders. Such people constitute the leading nucleus of a Party, its cadres, its elected leadership, which organises in practice the execution of adopted deci-sions and ensures continuity of experience and traditions.

The leading Party personnel does not stand above the Party but is under Party con-trol. Lenin said that under democratic conditions the political activities of the Party workers were open to view like a theatre stage to the spectators, “Everyone knows that a certain political figure began in such and such a way, passed through such and such an evolution, behaved in a trying moment in such and such a manner, and possesses such and such qualities; consequently, all Party members, knowing all the facts, can elect or refuse to elect this person to a particular Party office…. ‘Natural selection’ by full pub-licity, election and general control provides the assurance that, in the last analysis, every political figure will be ‘in his proper place’, do the work for which he is best fitted by his powers and abilities, feel the effects of his mistakes on himself, and prove before all the world his ability to recognise mistakes and to avoid them.”181

Thus Party democracy is a highly important condition for the proper formation, se-lection and education of the leading personnel. At the same time democracy is a guaran-tee that the leadership will rely on collective experience rather than merely reflect the personal views of some particular Party worker.

Freedom of Discussion and Unity of Action

Broad discussion of all fundamental issues and collective elaboration of all decisions form one of the most important methods of Party work. This is essential for generalising the experience gained and for disclosing shortcomings in order that everyone may be convinced of the correctness of the decisions adopted.

Each discussion involves criticism, i.e., disclosing shortcomings, ascertaining their roots and submitting proposals for their elimination.

Such business-like criticism assists progress and properly educates the membership. But the Party always distinguishes criticism which strengthens it from that which weak-ens it, which turns into criticism for criticism’s sake, into mere carping. While granting freedom of criticism and calling to account those who stifle it, the Party at the same time allows no one to use this freedom for the purpose of weakening its ranks.

But where is the line to be drawn between useful criticism and harmful criticism? The Party programme, the decisions of the Party and its rules serve to determine this line.

While granting extensive rights to its members, the Party at the same time naturally demands loyalty to its programme, aims and ideals. It does not tolerate advocacy of anti-Party views, considering it incompatible with membership in the Party. Does this not undermine Party democracy and encroach on the freedom of speech of Party members? No, it does not. Lenin wrote: “Everyone is free to write and say whatever he likes, with-

out any restrictions. But every voluntary association (including a party) is also free to expel members who use the name of the Party to advocate anti-Party views.... The Party is a voluntary association, which would inevitably break up, first ideologically and then physically, if it did not cleanse itself of people advocating anti-Party views.”182

Before a decision is adopted various views may be expressed and opposite points of view may clash in the Party, but once a decision has been adopted all Communists act as one person. This is the essence of Party discipline, which requires subordination of the minority to the majority and makes the adopted decisions absolutely obligatory. Disci-pline lends the Party the necessary organisation and purposefulness of action. But this cannot be ensured by blind discipline. The strength of Party discipline lies in the fact that it is a conscious discipline and that it is based on the ideological unity of the Com-munists and their conscious approval of Party decisions in the elaboration of which they themselves have taken an active part.

Unity of action in no way means that there can be no differences of opinion in the Party. If that were so the Party would change from a living organisation to a dead or-ganisation. Various points of view and differences on particular questions may arise in the day-to-day work. This is quite natural. Party discipline does not expect anyone to relinquish his own convictions if they are not at variance with the principles of Marx-ism-Leninism. But the Party makes it incumbent upon every member to obey the adopted decisions and conscientiously to carry them into effect even if the member does not agree with them or had proposed some other decision. Party discipline also requires that Communists should not discuss inner-Party questions outside the Party. All these standards of Party life have sprung from the experience of the working-class movement, which has convincingly demonstrated that without strict discipline the party of the work-ing class turns into an amorphous organisation incapable of leading the struggle of the working people.

The Party has strict rules as regards those who do not obey the adopted decisions. There have been cases in the history of the Communist Parties when certain individuals who disagreed with the Party line formed special groups and established their own dis-cipline in them. Such groups, opposing the majority, are called factions. In the opportun-ist parties adapted only to parliamentary activities factions are a common occurrence. But for Communist Parties—militant, active organisations—to tolerate factions is equivalent to relinquishing ideological unity and leadership of the struggle. That is why the formation of factions or the demand that a minority should be given some kind of special rights is incompatible with the requirements of Party discipline. This refers, of course, to a genuine Marxist-Leninist Party, the leadership of which carries out a Marx-ist-Leninist policy based on correct principles.

The Marxist-Leninist view of the significance of Party unity was most clearly ex-pressed in the Resolution of the Tenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bol-sheviks) drawn up by Lenin. It emphasised that all class-conscious workers must clearly understand the “harm and inadmissibility of any factionalism, which inevitably dimin-ishes the effect of concerted effort...”183 and it recommended, in cases of the appearance

of factionalism, the use of all measures, to the point of expulsion from the Party.

Thus, in the Communist Parties broad democracy is combined with centralised lead-ership and free discussion with strict discipline and unity of action. Democracy without centralised leadership turns the Party into a debating society. Centralism without democ-racy or with inadequately developed democracy results in deadening bureaucracy. On the other hand, the proper combination of democracy and centralism ensures wide de-velopment of activity and initiative in the Party and at the same time the strong leader-ship that is so necessary in the political struggle.

The concrete forms embodying the principle of democratic centralism vary with his-torical conditions. Referring to the experience of the Party organisation of Russian Communists, Lenin wrote: “This organisation, while retaining its fundamental type, was able to adapt its form to the changed conditions, was able to modify this form in accor-dance with the needs of the moment....”184 The Leninist principles of democratic central-ism and standards of Party life were further developed in the Party Rules adopted by the Twenty-Second Congress of the C.P.S.U., which consistently give effect to the idea of widening the democratic bases in the Party’s activity as a condition for drawing all Communists into active Party work.

Each Communist Party is a living organism which develops and perfects its activity. The principle of democratic centralism in the structure and life of Communist Parties is not of a stereotyped character. It enables them to plan their work flexibly, in keeping with the problems that face them and with the peculiarities of each country.

3. The Living Ties of the Party with the Broad Masses

The Communists can become a party in the true sense of the word only if they are closely linked with the masses and enjoy their support. In 1920, criticising some British Communists who did not understand the necessity of close links with the masses, Lenin said sharply: “If the minority is unable to lead the masses, to link up closely with them, then it is not a party and is of no value whatever, no matter whether it calls itself a party....”185

A party may declare itself the vanguard as much as it likes and yet fail to become one. A party cannot force the masses to follow it. Nor can it win prestige by merely claiming a leading role in its statements to the masses.

It Is Not Enough to Proclaim the Leading Role of the Party, It Has to Be Won

There is only one way for the party to become a real leader and that is by convincing the masses that it correctly expresses and defends their interests, by convincing them through its deeds, through its policies, initiative and devotion. The party must merit the confidence and recognition of the broad masses. “For it is not enough to call ourselves the ‘vanguard’, the advanced contingent,” Lenin said; “we must act in such a way that all the other contingents recognise and are obliged to admit that we are marching in the vanguard.”186

A Communist Party has a programme—a scientifically substantiated exposition of

its aims which correspond to the vital interests of the working people. To win the lead-ing position the Party must make the final aims of the struggle intelligible to the working people. At the same time the Party must have a programme of action to satisfy the im-mediate needs of the working people. The Party strives to display initiative in all spheres of the people’s life, to recognise the needs of all sections of the working population and to struggle for the satisfaction of their demands.

Communists continuously expose the capitalist system, which has outlived its use-fulness, but regard it as incorrect to advance slogans that only criticise but do not answer the question of what is to be done today and in what way. Lenin always combated at-tempts to issue slogans that would serve only to “sharpen the consciousness of the prole-tariat against imperialism”. He wrote: “A ‘negative’ slogan unconnected with a definite positive solution will not ‘sharpen’, but dull consciousness, for such a slogan is a hollow phrase, more shouting, meaningless declamation.”187

To Work Wherever There Are Masses

Communists consider it their duty to work wherever there are working people. This requires the closest, organic, day-to-day ties with the masses. “To serve the mass,” said Lenin, “and express its properly sensed interests, the advanced detachment, the organisa-tion must conduct all its activities in the mass, drawing from it all—without exception—the best forces, checking at each step, thoroughly and lively, whether the ties with the mass are maintained, whether they are alive. In such, and only in such a way, does the advanced detachment educate and enlighten the mass, expressing its interests, teaching it organisation, guiding all the activity of the mass along the path of conscious class pol-icy.”188

It is natural for Communists to attach great importance to mass organisations—trade unions, women’s and youth associations, cooperatives, etc. The Communist Parties have no desire to deprive these organisations of their independence. On the contrary, they be-lieve that mass organisations can play their role only when each of them effectively ac-complishes its own distinctive tasks. Communists respect the decisions and discipline of the mass organisations in which they work, observe their rules and make it their duty to help each such organisation better to defend the interests of the masses.

In the trade unions Communists show themselves consistent fighters for the eco-nomic interests of the workers and seek to promote unity of action of the proletariat. When it comes to strikes, they show themselves the staunchest and most energetic or-ganisers on the strike committees. The workers readily elect such Communists to re-sponsible positions.

In the youth, peasant, women’s and all other organisations, Communists strive to ex-tend the influence of the Party not by commanding but by their energy and ideological consistency, regardless of whether they are rank-and-file members or leaders of these organisations.

Through the mass organisations the Party establishes closer links with the working people.

Communists strive to find a way to the working people belonging to organisations in which the leaders and sometimes a large number of the rank-and-file members are indif-ferent or even hostile to communism. In relation to the masses, one must not take of-fence but must find a way to the minds and hearts of the working people without fearing prejudices or even taunts and insults.

Already during the First Russian Revolution, Lenin wrote on the necessity of work-ing among all sections of the working class: “...We must learn to approach the most backward, the most undeveloped members of this class, those who are least influenced by our science and the science of life, so as to be able to speak to them, to draw closer to them, raise them steadily and patiently to the level of Social-Democratic consciousness, without making a dry dogma out of our doctrine—to teach them not only from books, but through participation in the daily struggle for existence of these backward and unde-veloped strata of the proletariat.”189

The primary organisations of the Party serve as strongholds in carrying on work among the masses. They operate where they can maintain the best contact with the working people and influence them. In the Communist Party of the Soviet Union the primary organisations have always been established in the main on the basis of industry, the greatest attention being devoted to factory organisations, which are closest of all to the working class.

The territorial basis of setting up primary organisations justifies itself in cases in which it enables the Party to make wider contact with the masses and to approach such sections of the population as handicraftsmen, peasants, small traders, professional work-ers, housewives, etc. In many countries, Party organisations are based on the territorial principle, which is in keeping with the traditions of the mass movement, something that must be taken into account, A stereotyped pattern of uniformity is as harmful here as in any live work, although the industrial basis is more in line with the class nature of the Party. In many countries the Communist Parties establish primary organisations accord-ing to both the industrial and territorial principles.

To lead the masses does not mean preaching at them. Communists should take part in solving their everyday problems and by dealing with them from a Marxist standpoint try to “win the leading role by their energy and ideological influence (and not, of course, through their ranks and titles)...” (Lenin).190

Even participation in parliamentary activity is invariably linked by Communists with their work among the masses. The opportunists look on parliamentarism only as a means of making combinations among the top cliques and settling issues behind the backs of the masses. Condemning such practices, Lenin wrote that the “Communists in Western Europe and America must learn to create a new, unusual, non-opportunist, non-careerist parliamentarism....”191

The Communist Parties of a number of capitalist countries have succeeded in devel-oping this kind of parliamentary activity. It is not without reason that millions of electors cast their votes for the French and Italian Communist Parties in all the post-war elec-tions. Communists also have numerous seats in many municipal councils of these coun-

tries. As mayors, deputy mayors and municipal councillors they do their best to carry out the mandates of their electors.

Parliamentary activity inseparably linked up with the mass struggle enables the Communist Parties to achieve real results. When the masses see this, the influence of the Communists increases.

To Lead the Masses and Learn from the Masses

The only way by which it is possible to lead the masses is by taking into account their experience and the level of their class-consciousness, without losing touch with reality and without running ahead. Otherwise there is a risk of being in the position of a vanguard that has lost contact with the main forces lagging behind.

But taking the level of class-consciousness of the masses into account has nothing in common with adaptation to this level, with adopting the level of their backwardness. Such an understanding of connection with the masses is characteristic of opportunism. Revolutionary Marxists understand it differently. They do not drift with the tide.

The Communist Party, which generalises the experience of its class and of the whole people, and interprets it in the light of the lessons of history and Marxist theory is in a position to perceive the tendencies which have not yet fully manifested themselves but which claim the future. A Marxist Party does not invent anything, it proceeds from life, but marches at the head of the spontaneous movement, showing it the way because it is able to propose in good time solutions for the problems that agitate the minds of the people.

The Party can lead the masses and teach them only if it itself learns from the masses, i.e., carefully studies all that arises out of the people’s practical activity, and assimilates the wisdom of the people. To learn from the masses in order to teach the masses—this is the principle of Marxist-Leninist leadership that is observed by all Communist Parties.

Whatever the prestige enjoyed by the Party, it cannot live on previously accumu-lated political capital. This capital must be continuously increased by winning the sup-port of the masses for the policies pursued by the Party and all the measures carried out by it. At the same time the Party cannot adopt the attitude of an infallible teacher; it speaks to the masses frankly about both its successes and its failures. Communists are not afraid to speak of their weaknesses, something the other parties, which hide their mistakes from the masses, cannot afford to do.

4. Marxist-Leninist Policy as Science and Art

The fact that the Communist Parties can build their policies on a scientific basis is one of the most important sources of their strength.

This means, primarily, that in defending the interests of the working class the Com-munists, armed with the teaching of Marxism-Leninism, can base their actions on knowledge of the objective laws of social development and, especially, on knowledge of the laws of the class struggle; they take into consideration the alignment of the class forces in each concrete situation. Lenin wrote: “Only an objective consideration of the

sum total of reciprocal relations of all the classes of a given society without exception, and, consequently, a consideration of the objective stage of development of that society and of the reciprocal relations between it and other societies, can serve as a basis for cor-rect tactics of the advanced class. At the same time, all classes and all countries are re-garded not statically, but dynamically, i.e., not in a state of immobility, but in motion (the laws of which are determined by the economic conditions of existence of each class).192

Below we shall dwell on some general questions of the policies of the Communist Parties as a science and art. The practical execution of these policies and their most im-portant problems are dealt with in subsequent chapters of this book.

On Political Strategy and Tactics

The acts comprising the activities of a Marxist-Leninist Party are not improvisations of the Party leadership. They are the concrete expression of the political line elaborated by the Party on the basis of a scientific analysis of the given stage of the struggle in the given situation. In political language, the terms tactics and strategy are also used to de-note this line.

The term tactics often implies a political line for a relatively short period of time de-termined by particular concrete conditions, whereas strategy refers to the line for a whole historical stage. However, this distinction was not always made. In the old work-ing-class movement (before the October Revolution) the term Party tactics usually de-noted all its policies regardless of the period of time for which they were planned.

That is how Lenin used this term, denoting by it both the relatively rapidly changing tasks of leadership in the struggle of the working class (tactics in the narrow sense) and the tasks persisting throughout a whole historical stage. For example, in his book Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in a Democratic Revolution Lenin wrote about tactics in the sense of the general line of the Party planned for the whole period of preparing and carrying out the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia. “By the Party's tactics,” wrote Lenin, “we mean the Party’s political conduct, or the character, direction and methods of its political activity.”193 Lenin rarely used the concept of strategy borrowed from the military sphere. Only during the post-October period did he also mention Party strategy in some of his works relating to the policies of the fraternal Communist Parties, without deeming it necessary, however, to differentiate this concept from that of tactics.

Today Communists speak of strategy, or the strategic line, when it is a question of the general line of the Party directed towards accomplishing the main tasks of a given historical stage, taking the existing correlation of forces between the classes as a start-ing-point. Herein lies the distinction of strategy from tactics, which determines the cur-rent policy of the Party and is worked out for a shorter period on the basis of the Party’s general line (e.g., tactics in an election campaign, the attitude to the manoeuvres of Right-socialist leaders, the approach to Left socialists, etc.).

It is important to observe the strategic line in order, on the one hand, not to lose sight of the main task of the whole stage and, on other hand, to prevent the Leftist ten-

dency of “skipping stages”. But when speaking of the political strategy of the Party one should beware of being led astray by analogies from the field of military science, a fault from which, for example, many of Stalin’s statements on this subject suffer, for political strategy radically differs from military strategy.

In politics one has to deal not with ready-formed armies but with social classes and forces, some of which may be organised but others not, and some of which act con-sciously while others act spontaneously. A military leader has all the available forces under his command. He can freely manoeuvre with them, throwing in his reserves wher-ever he considers necessary and taking only military expediency into account. Political leaders have no such possibilities. The classes and forces taking part in the events are neither armies nor reserves. Each of them acts not on the order of a commander, but un-der the influence of its own interests, and, what is more, as it understands these interests at the given moment. There are also many other factors which greatly complicate the task of political leadership compared with military leadership. All this must be borne in mind when using the concept of political strategy.

When elaborating the strategic line of the Party under capitalist conditions it is im-portant, in the first place, to determine correctly the main aim of the working class at the given stage and the chief class enemy against whom it is necessary to concentrate at the given stage the class hatred and the shock force of all the working people in order to overcome this enemy’s resistance.

Secondly, it is necessary to determine correctly the attitude of the Party to the largest intermediate section of the population which, although it adopts an attitude of opposition to the chief enemy, nevertheless, owing to the duality of its class interests, shows dan-gerous political instability, an inclination to conciliation, and, at times,, to direct com-pact with this enemy.

Thus during the first stage of the Russian Revolution, Lenin defined the main aim of the movement as the overthrow of autocracy and set two tasks before the proletariat—“to crush by force the resistance of the autocracy” (the chief enemy) and “to paralyse the instability of the bourgeoisie”.194 The Bolsheviks recognised both these tasks, whereas the Mensheviks, who did not recognise the second task, slipped into the morass of Right-wing opportunism.

During the second stage of the Russian Revolution, Lenin defined the main aim as the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and set two tasks before the proletariat—“to crush by force the resistance of the bourgeoisie” (the chief enemy) and “to paralyse the instabil-ity of the peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie”.195 The Bolsheviks set out to accomplish both these tasks. Had they confined themselves to only one of them or had they consid-ered the second task the more important of the two, the revolution would have been seri-ously endangered.

Thus, in defining the relation to the intermediate strata and forces, Lenin set as the task to “paralyse the instability” of these, i.e., to ensure that at least they did not help the enemy. Stalin developed a different conception.196 According to him, it was just the in-termediate strata and forces, in particular the petty-bourgeois parties (the Mensheviks,

the Socialist-Revolutionaries) that had to be the object of the “main blow”. Such action, however, would mean not only definitely driving the wavering elements away from the revolution, but voluntarily throwing them into the arms of the enemy.

In 1928 Stalin went so far as to declare the Left Social-Democrats “the most danger-ous carriers of bourgeois policy in the working class” and he introduced additions in this sense into the theses of the Sixth Congress and Tenth Plenary Session of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, thereby forcing the Communist Parties of the capitalist countries on to a path of sterile sectarianism.

Thirdly, when elaborating the strategic line, it is important to determine correctly the allies of the working class at the given stage of the movement. At the same time it would be wrong to regard the allies of the working class as the “reserves” of the Party which it can “utilise” at its discretion, “manoeuvring” them as freely as a general does the re-serves on the battlefield. To reduce the strategic leadership in politics to the question of utilising reserves, as was done in the above-mentioned works of Stalin, is to divert the attention from the task which, in the capitalist countries, is the most essential in prepar-ing for decisive class battles, viz., the task of continuously strengthening the ties of the Communist Party with the masses of workers and the broadest sections of the working people, the task of establishing unity of action with the Socialist Parties, trade unions and other mass organisations. Each Communist Party also proceeds from the recognition of the independent role of the working-class movement of the neighbouring countries and the revolutionary movements of the colonies, and does not regard them as mere “re-serves” of the revolution in its own or any other country. Any other attitude to the indi-vidual detachments of the anti-imperialist liberation movement would not only be at variance with the principles of Communists and their political morality but would also create the danger of losing these allies.

The Art of Political Leadership

Lenin said that politics were not only a science but an art. This means that political leadership requires not only a correct, scientifically trustworthy analysis of the situation, and the drawing up on this basis of a correct line, but also great ability, skill and real artistry in putting this line into effect. Without such skill even the best political line will be of no avail. A correct decision as to the main aim and the chief enemy at a given stage will be useless if the Party is unable to organise the struggle for this aim and against this enemy. It is possible correctly to determine the allies of the working class but will it be of any use if the Party is unable to win them over to its side, and to organ-ise and lead their struggle?

Thus for political leadership it is important not only to know but also to be able to put this knowledge into practice. How then can the Party acquire such ability, such skill?

Theoretical studies alone are, of course, not enough. Each Party can master the art of political leadership only from its own extensive experience. For a revolutionary party, there is no school that can replace the school of practical struggle with all its trials and tribulations, victories and defeats, successes and failures.

Of course, all this does not mean that each party must itself necessarily experience absolutely everything and can learn only through its setbacks. The process of learning the art of politics can be considerably accelerated and the number of defeats, mistakes and failures greatly reduced if the experience of the other parties, the experience of the international revolutionary movement is carefully and skilfully studied and utilised. The works in which this experience has been generalised are an invaluable aid for those who would learn the art of political leadership. Especially important in this respect is Lenin’s outstanding book Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder, which has always been of enormous importance for the international communist movement.

What basic spheres of activity does the art of political leadership include?

It includes, above all, the ability to work among the masses. Only the parties and leaders whose lives are bound up with the interests of the working people, who share in their aspirations and are selflessly devoted to them, can successfully cope with this task.

One of the Leninist principles of the art of political leadership is that propaganda and agitation alone are not enough to draw the masses into an active struggle. For this, their own political experience is essential. V. I. Lenin said that “the millions of people will never heed the advice of parties if this advice does not coincide with what the ex-perience of their own lives teaches them”.197 Hence the art of political leadership con-sists in using means and methods which, by being derived from the experience of the masses and the level of their class- consciousness, can advance the masses in the strug-gle for the final aims. The Party cannot wait passively until reality itself will have taught the masses. It must be able to help them to arrive at the proper conclusions. Lenin re-ferred to this as the ability to bring the masses to the positions of a decisive struggle on the basis of their own experience.

The masses perceive surrounding reality through the facts which they encounter every day and which directly affect them. Hence the parties can bring the working peo-ple into the struggle against capitalism only by leading the struggle for the immediate economic needs and political interests of the masses, by putting forward demands in line with the urgent requirements of the different sections of the working people, and by fighting for the satisfaction of these demands.

An important part of the art of political leadership is, furthermore, the ability of the Party to unite its efforts with the efforts of all those with whom it is possible to achieve unity of action, including those with whom there are differences on fundamental ques-tions. This is an important, although difficult, matter as will be shown in greater detail in the next chapter.

The art of political leadership also includes the ability correctly to choose suitable forms of struggle for a given situation, and the ability to be ready to change these forms most swiftly and unexpectedly.

If a Party knows how to choose the forms of struggle correctly, and if it elaborates a political line in accord with the existing conditions, it can act vigorously and achieve definite results under the most complicated and difficult conditions.

A Party of the Leninist type will never stand by idly, holding aloof and waiting for

the “great hour”, the situation which will itself evoke the revolutionary enthusiasm of the working people and weaken the resistance of their enemies. It seeks and finds possi-bilities for active work among the masses, for an active political struggle, even under the most unfavourable conditions. The Party thus strengthens its positions and, what is even more important, brings very much closer the hour of the decisive battle, and prepares for this hour not only itself, but also the broadest possible sections of the working people. The supreme art of political leadership consists precisely in the ability to find, even dur-ing the periods when the revolution abates, directions and forms of struggle that will provide the basis for future victories and will bring these victories closer. A brilliant ex-ample of such art is the Leninist policy of the Russian Communists during the years of reaction which followed the defeat of the 1905-07 Revolution. During those years the Party showed how to act if a revolution has failed. At that time Lenin wrote: “The revo-lutionary parties must complete their education. They have learned to attack. Now it is time to realise that this knowledge must be supplemented with the knowledge of how to retreat properly; to realise—and the revolutionary class is taught to realise it by its own bitter experience—that victory is impossible unless they have learned both the right way to attack and the right way to retreat.”198

The Ability to Find the Main Link

The science and art of political leadership are seen also in the ability to single out the main issues on the solution of which special efforts should be concentrated.

Political events are interconnected, but they are always very tangled. Lenin said they could be compared to a chain, with difference that the sequence of the links, their shapes and couplings are not so simple as in a chain forged by a blacksmith. Besides, in an or-dinary chain all links are alike, whereas in political life there are fundamental questions and subordinate, secondary questions. “One must be able at each particular moment to find the particular link in the chain which one must grasp with all one’s might in order to hold the whole chain and to prepare firmly for the transition to the next link.”199

After the overthrow of tsarism the decisive link in Russia was the revolutionary withdrawal from the war. Immediately after the February Revolution the broad masses of the people were bent on a defensive war. They believed that the nature of the war had changed and that it had ceased to be imperialist. But Lenin showed the groundlessness of such illusions. As long as the bourgeoisie was in power the war continued to be an imperialist one. There was then no other way to achieve peace than by a socialist revolu-tion. And though the masses did not understand it at first, the Party was confident that the logic of events would lead them to the conclusion that a revolution was the only sal-vation. And the Party concentrated its efforts on helping the masses to arrive at this con-clusion.

It required but six months for the bourgeoisie completely to unmask itself as a class that was interested in continuing the war. Then came the turning-point in the conscious-ness of the masses who became convinced that the war could be brought to an end only by an armed overthrow of the bourgeoisie. “Revolutionary Russia succeeded in with-

drawing from the war,” said Lenin. “It took great effort, but the main need of the people was taken into account and this gave us victory.”200

At the present time, when the danger of an annihilating nuclear war threatens the world and when international reaction is growing active again in its attempts to impose a fascist order on the nations, the struggle for peace and democracy has become the main link in the policies of the Communist Parties in capitalist countries.

The Marxist-Leninist analysis of reality and the close ties with the masses enable each Party, proceeding from the particular situation in the country, to single out the main problem whose solution brings closer the achievement of the final aim of the working class.

5. The Need to Fight Right-Wing Opportunism and Sectarianism

The reactionary bourgeoisie has never relinquished its attempts to disrupt the com-munist movement from within. It pins great hopes on utilising for its aims inner-Party differences and on spreading opportunist views among politically unstable members of the Party. The Party keeps growing, its ranks being increased not only by advanced workers, but also by people insufficiently mature politically, including some who come from different intermediate strata and who, voluntarily or not, bring their prejudices and delusions into the Party. This is why there is always a possibility that bourgeois and petty-bourgeois influences, various opportunist views, despondent moods and disbelief in victory may penetrate into the Communist Parties. And it is for this reason that the straggle for the purity of the Marxist-Leninist world outlook is an immutable law of the existence and development of the Communist Parties.

The Danger of Revisionism

As the struggle of the working class develops, bourgeois ideology changes its col-ouring. The crude forms of ideology justifying capitalism are replaced with finer meth-ods of defending it. But this does not change the essence of bourgeois ideology. Simi-larly, whatever form it may take, opportunism always aims—frankly or in a disguised manner—at reconciling the working class to capitalism, at adapting the working-class movement to the interests of the ruling classes. This is precisely the reason for the con-stant attempts of the opportunists to revise Marxism-Leninism, the revolutionary world outlook of the working class.

Lenin pointed out that revisionism is “one of the chief, if not the chief, manifestation of bourgeois influence on the proletariat and bourgeois corruption of the workers".201

The ideologists of revisionism endeavour to “revise”, or, more exactly, to distort all the fundamental theses of Marxist-Leninist theory. These endeavours were mentioned in Chapter 10 and will be repeatedly discussed below. But the revisionists invariably choose Lenin's teaching on the Party as one of their main targets.

The theoretical and practical efforts of the revisionists are in the final analysis al-ways subordinated to their attempt to liquidate the Party or to transform it into a reform-ist organisation. Under some historical conditions this intention is not even concealed,

under others it is disguised.

After the defeat of the First Russian Revolution, the revisionists in Russia started a campaign against the Party, maintaining that it was an organisation which “should be given up as obsolete”. In place of it they proposed to create a broad non-party organisa-tion—a “labour association”. Reflecting the apathy, perplexity and loss of revolutionary perspective caused by the attacks of the reaction, the liquidators (the name by which the revisionists of that time came to be known in the history of the Russian working-class movement) wanted the Party to be replaced by something indefinite, something that might suit not only the bourgeoisie but also the autocracy. If the revolutionary Marxists had not at that time politically routed the liquidators the working class would have en-tered the period of new revolutionary upsurge, which began soon afterwards, disorgan-ised and deprived of their militant leader, the Bolshevik Party.

The most characteristic features of modern revisionism are noted in the Declaration of the Meeting of Representatives of Communist and Workers’ Parties (November 1957). The Declaration states:

“Modern revisionism seeks to smear the great teaching of Marxism-Leninism, de-clares that it is ‘outmoded’ and alleges that it has lost its significance for social progress. The revisionists try to kill the revolutionary spirit of Marxism, to undermine faith in so-cialism among the working class and the working people in general. They deny the his-torical necessity for a proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat during the period of transition from capitalism to socialism, deny the leading role of the Marx-ist-Leninist Party, reject the principles of proletarian internationalism and call for rejec-tion of the Leninist principles of Party organisation and, above all, of democratic cen-tralism, for transforming the Communist Party from a militant revolutionary organisa-tion into some kind of debating society.”202

Nowadays the revisionists do not always openly advocate the liquidation of the Party. Under the pretext of extending inner-Party democracy they seek to do away with Party discipline, to obtain for the minority the right to disregard decisions adopted by the majority and the right to organise factions. But this would mean disrupting the Party’s unity of action and transforming the Party into an arena of struggle between various fac-tions.

The revisionists usually pretend to be fighting dogmatism and doctrinarism. They cover up their actual rejection of Marxism by referring to the fact that the Marxist teach-ing itself presupposes the replacement of outdated propositions by new ones. But the replacement of obsolete theses by new Marxist propositions has nothing in common with rescinding the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism that form the very soul of this revolutionary teaching. The danger of revisionism is precisely that it rejects Marxism under the guise of developing it. It is natural that the Communist Parties regard the struggle against revisionism on all questions, including the questions of Party or-ganisation, as one of their most important and permanent duties.

Dogmatism and Sectarianism Lead to Isolation from the Masses

Communist Parties have to wage a struggle not only against revisionism but also against sectarianism. Outwardly revisionism and sectarianism are the exact opposites of each other. In reality, however, sectarianism, which makes itself out to be very “Leftist” and revolutionary, also leads to a weakening of the Party.

Sectarianism is based on a dogmatic attitude to various theoretical propositions and formulas, as though they offered a solution for all possible problems of political life. Instead of studying actual life, dogmatists proceed from a scheme, and if the facts do not fit into the scheme they ignore the facts.

Dogmatism means losing touch with reality, and, if the Party does not fight dogma-tism, it becomes a sect out of touch with life.

The attempts to cling to yesterday, to the policies and organisational forms which no longer correspond to the changed conditions, actually mean, as Lenin put it, “policies of revolutionary idleness”. The practice of all the Communist Parties has confirmed the correctness of this Leninist conclusion by numerous examples.

In Russia, sectarianism manifested itself in a reluctance to take advantage of the le-gal possibilities which the First Russian Revolution succeeded in wresting from tsarism despite its defeat. The members of the Party who considered themselves “more revolu-tionary” than the Party opposed participation in the State Duma and work in the trade unions and mutual insurance societies. Instead of hard work among the masses they pre-ferred to wait proudly aloof for a new revolutionary crisis.

In the beginning many of the Communist Parties formed in capitalist countries after the October Revolution committed errors of a sectarian nature. At that time Lenin called this “Left-wing” communism an infantile disorder. These errors manifested themselves in a refusal to work in the trade unions headed by reactionaries and opportunists, to par-ticipate in bourgeois parliaments, make compromises when necessary, and in general to employ flexible tactics.

Manifestations of sectarianism have to be combated also today. The essence of sec-tarianism consists in isolation from the masses, the failure to take advantage of the available opportunities for revolutionary work and an effort to evade the vital issues raised by life itself. Whereas revisionism seeks to reconcile the Party to capitalism, sec-tarianism deprives the Party of its ties with the masses, without which it is impossible to wage a successful struggle against capitalism. It is therefore impossible to strengthen the Party without fighting sectarianism, whatever its manifestations.

In questions of Party life the sectarians’ lack of faith in the mass working-class forces finds expression in an endeavour to discard Party democracy and collective forms of leadership, to centralise everything, to turn conscious Party discipline into a mechani-cal discipline based on intimidation and repression, and to replace persuasion by coer-cion. It is not surprising that dogmatism and sectarianism is inseparable from the per-sonality cult, which is alien to Marxism-Leninism. By distorting the Leninist doctrine of the Party, dogmatism and sectarianism cause the Party to lose its most important features as a militant, independently acting organisation closely linked with the masses.

The Meeting of Representatives of Communist and Workers’ Parties in Moscow (November 1960) once again emphasised the need for a resolute fight on two fronts—against revisionism, which remains the main danger, and against dogmatism and sectari-anism. The Meeting pointed out that dogmatism and sectarianism in theory and practice, in the absence of a consistent fight against them, can also become the main danger at a particular stage of development in one Party or another. The Meeting sounded a serious warning by its declaration that dogmatism and sectarianism doom the Party “to passive waiting on events or Leftist, adventurist actions in the revolutionary struggle.”203

6. International Character of the Communist Movement

The communist movement is international in its very essence, by its objective posi-tion as a movement having a common ideology and common aims, and fighting a com-mon enemy. But the working-class movement, which is international in its nature, de-velops on a national basis. Under certain conditions this may give rise to the danger of artificially counterposing national interests to international interests. To people who have not freed themselves from national narrow-mindedness and short-sightedness it may appear that the conditions prevailing in their country are in some way exceptional and that the struggle of the working class there is bound to be radically different from that occurring in other countries.

Such views are not only profoundly erroneous but also harmful. The laws of social development are universal and operate in all countries. That is why the working-class movements in different countries have so much in common and why the Communist Parties must not shut themselves off from one another, but, on the contrary, exchange experience, act in common accord and not make concessions to manifestations of “na-tional egoism and national exclusiveness” (Lenin).

In utilising the experience of other Communist Parties it is important to be able to apprehend it creatively and not mechanically. Any experience is always conditioned by many circumstances— place, time, situation and correlation of the class forces. If the concrete conditions are disregarded, the experience and practice which justified them-selves in one situation may produce other results in a different one. In making use of experience one must take its essence, i. e., that which is not of local or specially na-tional, but of international significance, which assumes the nature of a general law. One must know how to apply this experience correctly in accordance with the concrete con-ditions in the different countries.

The exchange of experience and the co-ordination of the activities of the Communist Parties of different countries require the establishment of close ties between them. The forms of these ties differ; they vary with the historical conditions.

At the outset the Communist Parties were still weak. Most of them were formed from the revolutionary elements of the social-democratic and anarcho-syndicalist or-ganisations. These elements brought with them survivals of opportunism and sectarian-ism. Much work had to be done to consolidate the new parties, educate them in the revo-lutionary ideas of Marxism-Leninism and train Party leaders.

It was these urgent needs of the world communist movement that led to the setting-up of the international organisation that united the Communist Parties of various coun-tries, viz., the Communist International (1919-43).

The Communist International restored and strengthened the ties between the work-ing people of different countries which had been broken by the First World War, elabo-rated many theoretical problems of the working-class movement under new historical conditions, seriously helped to spread the ideas of communism among the masses and facilitated the education of leaders of the working-class movement.

But as the communist movement developed and the parties grew stronger this form of unity outlived its usefulness. The increased political maturity of the Communist Par-ties made the existence of a world communist organisation of the previous type super-fluous. Nor could this organisation lead the whole communist movement because of the international conditions that obtained during the Second World War. In May 1943, the Executive Committee of the Comintern adopted a decision, later approved by all the Communist Parties, to dissolve the Communist International.

The history of the communist movement knows of other forms of relations between the Communist Parties. Today the most widespread of these forms are meetings of lead-ers and mutual exchange of information on a bilateral basis, exchange of delegations and also wider meetings and conferences of representatives of the Communist and Workers’ Parties for discussing urgent problems, exchanging experience, learning each other’s views and positions, and co-ordinating the joint struggle for the common aims of peace, democracy and socialism. Among such meetings particularly great importance attaches to the Moscow Meetings held in 1957 and 1960, which gave an appraisal and analysis of the present epoch and the prospects of revolutionary development under conditions of the Coexistence of the two systems in the world.

The fraternal relations of the Communist and Workers’ Parties are based on the principles of Marxism-Leninism, on the principles proletarian internationalism. The es-sence of these mutual relations lies in combining the sovereignty of each party with unity of action by the whole world communist movement. While remaining politically and organisationally independent, the Communist Parties voluntarily, by mutual agree-ment, proceeding from the unity of their views on the international problems of the working class, unite their actions, jointly elaborate, if necessary, a unified line of con-duct, and act as a unified international force safeguarding the interests of the working people of all countries, world peace and security.

“In the communist movement,” said N. S. Khrushchov at the Twenty-First Congress of the C.P.S.U., “there are no ‘superior’ and ‘subordinate’ parties. All Communist and Workers’ Parties are equal and independent, all are responsible for the fate of the Com-munist movement, for its failures and victories.”204

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union has an especially rich and many-sided experience of revolutionary struggle and building the new society; it is the first to pave the way towards the communist future. It is natural that the experience of the detach-ment marching in advance of the rest should be attentively examined by the other de-

tachments destined to follow the same path. The experience of the C.P.S.U., it was stressed by the Meetings of Communist and Workers’ Parties, is of fundamental signifi-cance for all Communists throughout the world.

The representatives of the Marxist-Leninist Parties noted the historic significance of the decisions of the Twentieth Congress of the C.P.S.U., which facilitated the re-establishment of the Leninist spirit and style of work in the life of the fraternal parties and in their mutual relations. In the Declaration of the Meeting of Representatives of Communist and Workers’ Parties in 1957 and in that of the Meeting of 1960, it is stated: “The historic decisions of the Twentieth Congress of the C.P.S.U. are not only of great importance for the C.P.S.U. and communist construction in the U.S.S.R., but have initi-ated a new stage in the world communist movement, and have promoted its further de-velopment on the basis of Marxism-Leninism.”205

This appraisal is in no small degree due to the fact that the ideological theses of the Twentieth Congress of the C.P.S.U. and its theoretical conclusions correctly reflected objective reality and expressed the developments that had taken place in actual life, which all the parties sensed in one way or another.

Confirming afresh the Declaration of 1957, the Meeting of Representatives of Com-munist and Workers’ Parties in 1960 unanimously declared that “the Communist Party of the Soviet Union has been, and remains, the universally recognised vanguard of the world Communist movement, being the most experienced and steeled contingent of the international Communist movement.”206

The Programme of the C.P.S.U. adopted by the Twenty-Second Congress was also fully endorsed by the Marxist-Leninist parties. The representatives of these parties in the socialist countries declared it to be their programme as well. The Communist Parties of the capitalist countries state in their documents that they find their inspiration in the Pro-gramme of the C.P.S.U., as also in the tremendous successes of the Soviet people, and draw from it confidence and strength for the struggle. The new Rules of the C.P.S.U. are also of great significance for the organisational work of the fraternal parties. All this tes-tifies to the fact that the experience and ideas of the C.P.S.U. are of assistance to the common struggle and are in harmony with the thoughts and aspirations of all progres-sive people.

At the present stage of development, strengthening the unity of the world Communist movement has become specially important. It is required above all by the interests of the struggle against imperialism, and of rallying all forces against the threat of war. The Moscow meetings devoted great attention to the question of unity, and to ways and means of strengthening it.

The Statement of the Meeting in 1960 states: “The interests of the Communist movement require solidarity by every Communist Party in the observance of the esti-mates and conclusions on the common tasks in the struggle against imperialism, for peace, democracy and socialism, jointly reached by the fraternal Parties at their meet-ings.”207 It states further that the condition for preserving the unity of the international Communist movement is “the prevention of any actions which may undermine that

unity”.208

Unity, of course, is not uniformity, it offers extensive opportunities for a creative approach to policy. Unity in the main, fundamental essential things does not preclude but, on the contrary, presupposes that the parties take into account the diversity of condi-tions and national peculiarities in solving concrete problems. It is important not to fall into the error of counterposing the specially national to the common, the fundamental, the international.

What happens if one Party has doubts about the activity of another Party or com-ments to make about it? The Statement of the Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Par-ties answers this question too. It says: “Whenever a Party wants to clear up questions relating to the activities of another fraternal Party, its leadership approaches the leader-ship of the Party concerned; if necessary, they hold meetings and consultations.”209

All these provisions for regulating the mutual relations of fraternal Parties are in-spired by deep concern for the unity of all contingents of the international Communist movement in their common struggle for the vital interests of the peoples, for peace, de-mocracy and socialism. They express the clear understanding that each Marxist-Leninist Party has its responsibility not only to the working class, the working people and the people of its own country but also the whole international working-class and Communist movement.

CHAPTER 14

POLICY OF UNITY OF ACTION OF THE WORKING CLASS AND ALL DEMOCRATIC FORCES OF THE PEOPLE

The working class has to wage its struggle under difficult conditions. Its oppressor, the capitalist class, is the richest and best organised class. The ruling bourgeoisie has at its disposal powerful machinery for physical coercion (the army, police, courts, prisons) and ideological influence on the masses (Church, school, press, radio, television, cin-ema, etc.). It also has on its side the force of habit, the force of tradition in an exploiting society.

Under these conditions the working class is particularly in need of unity and organi-sation in its ranks, as well as of a close union with other sections of the working people. The creation of such unity and union is of tremendous importance for its future and the future of the nation as a whole.

The unity of the workers has a firm, objective basis—the community of class inter-ests. Nevertheless, it does not come about spontaneously, without special efforts on the part of the class-conscious vanguard of the working class. The point is that in order to weaken and paralyse its class enemies the bourgeoisie takes advantage of every oppor-tunity to split the ranks of the workers and all the working people. This policy, unfortu-nately, continues to bear fruit. It is precisely this split that is the main cause of many grave defeats of the working people and is the chief obstacle hindering the working class from achieving its fundamental aims. At the Twentieth Congress of the C.P.S.U., N. S. Khrushchov correctly said that “not a few of the misfortunes harassing the world today are due to the fact that in many countries the working class has been split for many years and its different groups do not present a united front, which only plays into the hands of the reactionary forces”.210

That is why the Communist Parties and all Marxist-Leninists consider it one of their most important tasks to overcome the split in the working-class movement and to ensure the unity of its ranks and its close union with all the working people, with all progressive and democratic forces of the people.

1. Unity of the Working Class Is the Imperative Need at the Present Time

Despite the profound differences dividing the revolutionary and reformist trends, the Communist Parties from the very beginning sought to establish unity of action with the Social-Democratic organisations.

Communists have always maintained that all workers, all working people, whether Communists, Social-Democrats or members of organisations under the influence of the Church, have common interests.

What Is the Policy of Unity of Action?

In the struggle for the common interests of the working people the Communist Par-ties strive to co-operate with all working-class organisations regardless of the political

and religious views of their members. The activities of the Communist Parties aimed at securing this co-operation are known as the policy of unity of action.

There are quite a few outstanding examples of such unity in the history of the inter-national working-class movement. Thus, in the 1930s, when fascism was trying to ob-tain power in many European countries, a strong movement for working-class unity arose in France, Spain and Austria. This influenced the leaders of the Socialist Parties who formerly did their best to oppose co-operation with the Communist Parties: Agree-ments on unity of action against fascism were concluded between the Communists and socialists of these countries in 1934-36. Popular Front governments were formed in France and Spain.

During the Second World War, the working people again achieved considerable unity. Communists, many rank-and-file members and officials of Socialist Parties, and quite a few supporters of bourgeois parties—democrats, radicals and catholics—fought jointly in the ranks of the Resistance movement. It is generally recognised that the Communists formed the kernel of this movement.

After the victory over fascism there was an unprecedented urge towards unification among the masses of the people. United parties of the working class were formed in the People’s Democracies and these parties based their activities on Marxist-Leninist princi-ples. The ideological and organisational split in the working-class movement has thus been eliminated in a considerable part of Europe.

In the countries of Western Europe, agreements on unity of action between Commu-nists and socialists persisted for some time, and the trade unions included working peo-ple of all political convictions. The World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) was set up in October 1945. This Federation united for the first time the trade unions of the U.S.S.R. with those of capitalist Europe, the U.S.A., Latin America and the countries of the East. The international working-class movement had never been so close to unity as it was then.

However, the international reactionary forces spared no efforts to foil this tendency to unity. This time it was the U.S. ruling circles that undertook the role of inspirer and organiser of a split. They chose as the occasion for this the opposition of the European Communist Parties to the shackling terms of the Marshall Plan. A furious campaign of slander and attacks was launched against the Communists, and their representatives were ousted from the governments.

Taking advantage of the differences which arose in the WFTU over the Marshall Plan, the reactionary leadership of the American trade unions split the Federation. In 1949, the British trade unions, the U.S. Congress of Industrial Organisations, the trade-union federations of Belgium, Holland and a number of other countries left the WFTU. Somewhat later they set up their own parallel centre, the so-called International Federa-tion of Free Trade Unions.

Despite the genuine aspirations of the masses, the working-class movement found itself split again and the struggle between its different trends flared up anew.

What Unity of Action Would Give

The dangers that threaten working people today are much more serious than those that threatened them on the eve of, and even during, the Second World War. The menace of a nuclear war and the unconcealed striving of monopoly capital to establish its dicta-torship everywhere make the need for unity of action of the working class particularly clear. The responsibility of the working-class parties has immeasurably grown and the situation urgently requires their concerted efforts, otherwise the reactionary forces in capitalist countries will be able to steer a course towards a savage dictatorship and new military adventures.

In the present epoch, however, it is not only the need for unity that has grown; the possibilities of reaching agreement have increased to an equal extent. Agreement on questions of a general democratic nature is easier because not a single working-class party can be in favour of an aggressive war or fascism. It follows that the range of ques-tions on which co-operation between the working-class organisations can and must be achieved is now considerably wider. In addition to the traditional demands—higher wages, shorter hours, etc., there is now one more platform for unity of action, the strug-gle for general democratic demands.

The unity of working-class action could exert tremendous influence on the solution of the problems affecting the fate of all mankind. There are 88 Communist Parties num-bering more than 40 million members in the world today. In the capitalist world there are 74 Communist Parties with a membership of more than 5 million. According to offi-cial figures, the Socialist International unites 38 Socialist Parties and groups with some 10:7 million members (of which 6.5 million are members of the British Labour Party). The World Federation of Trade Unions and the International Federation of Free Trade Unions have a total of more than 180 million members. It is not hard to imagine how important for the cause of peace the unity of action and the co-operation of all these par-ties and organisations might prove to be. If, for example, the British Labour Party, the German Social-Democratic Party, the French, Belgian and Austrian Socialist Parties, and the Social-Democratic Parties of the Scandinavian countries agreed on unity of ac-tion with the Communist Parties of the Soviet Union, China, the People’s Democracies, and the Communist Parties of Italy, France, Finland, India, Indonesia, Brazil and other capitalist countries, there is no doubt that this would restrain the forces of reaction and war and that the guarantees for preserving world peace would greatly increase.

Co-operation between the working-class parties would facilitate the unification of all other peace-loving and democratic forces. Working-class unity would form the basis for unity of action of all the democratic forces.

2. Who Hampers the Establishment of Working-Class Unity of Action

In reply to the Communists’ convincing arguments for unity of action, the official leaders of the Social-Democratic Parties put forward a number of arguments which many socialists still accept.

The Excuses of the Enemies of Unity

The social-democratic leaders declare that the communist proposals for a united front are only a manoeuvre, a ruse, that the Communists are not really concerned for the interests of the working class but only for their own narrow Party interests and that they want to draw more workers into their ranks.

This is a gross distortion of the motives that prompt the Communists. In actual fact, in struggling for unity the Communists act in the interests of the working people, includ-ing those who are members or supporters of the Socialist Parties. When the workers act concertedly and unitedly they all gain by it, as a whole and each individually. This is clear even to the least class-conscious proletarian.

It is high time the Social-Democrats realised that the policy of action is proposed by the Communists with absolutely honest intentions, with all the sincerity and earnestness natural to the Party of the working class. By pursuing this policy Communists are in no way prompted by fleeting considerations. They are certain that the working people need unity today, when the working-class movement and all progressive humanity are waging a struggle for peace and democracy, and will need it even more tomorrow, when the task of building socialism arises in many countries to accomplish which requires the efforts of the whole working class. A policy planned for so long a period cannot be degraded to a petty ruse. All the practical activities of the Communist Parties convincingly demon-strate that their proposals for unity of action are not intended to gain a momentary ad-vantage, but are an expression of their permanent political line dictated by concern for the vital interests of all working people.

Not only Communists recognise that unity has become an imperative necessity. Many non-communist representatives of the working-class movement also think so. For example, Professor Camille Huysmans, former Prime Minister of Belgium and one of the oldest members of the Belgian Socialist Party, stated upon visiting the Soviet Union in 1956: “As an old Socialist and friend of Lenin and his wife Krupskaya for many years I was deeply moved by all this. I knew Lenin’s thoughts and his merits. I considered the rupture that occurred between us in 1917 a mistake. But all this is a thing of the past and I do not want to reproach anybody for it. But I do want to do all I can to restore the unity of the working class in Europe.”

Particularly valuable are the conclusions of Otto Buchwitz, a well-known veteran of the working-class movement, which he sets out in his book Fifty Years as a Functionary of the German Working-Class Movement, Otto Buchwitz, a former weaver, was a mem-ber of the German Social-Democratic Party from 1898 to 1946 and a Reichstag deputy for a number of years. In his book he writes: “Let the young generation learn a lesson from history and be conscious of the fact that in all its actions a strong working-class movement is responsible not only to its class, but more than that, to its whole people, indeed the whole of mankind. The history of the German working-class movement is proof of this. Had it been united in the struggle against fascism, Hitler could never have come to power. Without Hitler there would have been no war and millions of the world’s young people would not have had to go to their deaths for the sake of criminals

afflicted with megalomania, for the sake of imperialists and monopolists.”

Experience shows that unity of action benefits all the working class parties and not the Communists alone. For example, the co-operation of the Italian Socialist Party, numbering some 500,000 members, with the Communist Party not only failed to impair its prestige and influence, but has, on the contrary, enhanced them. At one time this was admitted even by those leaders of the Socialist party who later yielded to the pressure of the Right-wing elements and rejected co-operation with the Communists. Owing to their unity, the two parties—Communist and Socialist—achieved big successes in the elec-tions. After the war their unity enabled them to secure the adoption of a democratic con-stitution. It was the Italian working class that benefited most of all by this co-operation.

Another favourite argument of the enemies of unity is the assertion that the Social-Democrats and Communists have nothing in common. “Socialism and communism have nothing in common...” are the exact words of the decision adopted by the Bureau of the Socialist International on April 7, 1956, in answer to the appeal for co-operation made by the Twentieth Congress of the C.P.S.U.

But the falsity of this thesis is exposed by unbiased witnesses from among the so-cialists themselves. For example, Professor G.D.H. Cole, prominent theoretician of the British Labour Party, wrote; “I do not dispute that there are immense and deep differ-ences between the doctrines upheld by the Social-Democratic and Labour Parties which form the Socialist International and those upheld by the Communist Parties.... But even between these two groups, it is sheer nonsense to say that there is nothing in common.”  

And Professor Cole went on to show that the views of Communists and socialists co-incide at least in four points: 1) common to Communists and socialists is the conviction that the most important means of production should be collectively owned and used in the interests of the whole of society, i.e., that capitalism must be replaced by socialism; 2) both the Communists and socialists strive to build a society with a high level of well-being and widest opportunities for education, public health, social security, etc.; 3) both agree that nobody has any right to live by the labour of others, i.e., there must be no exploitation; 4) both are convinced that building a new society is the task of the working class.

The possibility of co-operation despite ideological differences is also recognised by some functionaries of the French Socialist Party. Albert Gazier, member of the Leading Committee of this Party, wrote in 1955: “The basic differences dividing Bolshevik so-cialism from the society to which democratic socialism aspires must in no way prevent us from fighting for a rapprochement of the peoples, for peaceful coexistence and inter-national co-operation.”

All these statements undoubtedly reflect the opinions of very many members of So-cialist Parties who are concerned for the fate of the working-class movement.

The Communist Parties, for their part, put forward a broad platform for co-operation in the well-known Statement of the Moscow Conference of 1960. It envisages joint ac-tion to secure an immediate ban on the production, testing and use of nuclear weapons, the establishment of non-nuclear zones, the achievement of general and complete disar-mament under international control, assistance to the national-liberation movement, the

strengthening of democracy and resistance to the fascist danger, and the raising of the living standards of the working people, etc.

Is there any socialist worker who is not interested in the realisation of those de-mands? It follows that Communists and Socialists have much in common and therefore grounds for co-operation.

The enemies of unity furthermore allege that the Communists will invariably de-mand a leading role in each joint action, will dictate and issue orders.

Experience, however, contradicts this. The practical realisation of the united front in Italy and other countries has shown that the Communists sincerely strive to gain an un-derstanding of the point of view of their allies and that they are partners deserving of trust. Communists in no way seek always to be the initiators and leaders of the joint ac-tions, leaving it to the socialists only to follow them. The Communist Parties are ready and willing to support any reasonable proposal of a social-democratic organisation as long as it meets the interests of the working people. During elections, Communists not infrequently even refuse, in favour of socialists, to nominate their candidates in certain districts in order that they may jointly defeat the representatives of the reactionary par-ties. And how often it has been proposed that the platform for co-operation should be elaborated jointly, that it should be submitted to the membership for approval and that the demands winning the greatest support of the masses should be formulated jointly.

It is perfectly clear that the socialists have every chance to test the sincerity of the Communists in practice by accepting their proposals for unity of action.

When the enemies of unity have exhausted their arguments they begin to intimidate rank-and-file socialists by alleging that after the victory of the united front the Commu-nists will make short work of them. They refer to the fate of the Russian Mensheviks. However, one should bear in mind the historical conditions prevailing in Russia at that time: a bitter civil war was raging and most of the Mensheviks formed a bloc with the whiteguards and supported the armed struggle against Soviet power.

Things took a different course in a different historical situation. In the European People’s Democracies the bulk of the membership of the Socialist Parties joined the ranks of the united parties of the working class and many of their former leaders now hold important state posts.

Under present-day conditions, which are more favourable to a victory of the work-ing class, the Communists, while remaining loyal to the principles of Marxism-Leninism, can and must seek co-operation with the socialists not only in the struggle against the threat of war and in defence of democracy, but also in the joint struggle for socialism. In the countries where historically formed Social-Democratic Parties are functioning, the Communists want these parties to participate not only in the working-class conquest of power but also to undertake a share of the efforts in laying the founda-tions of socialism and to form part of the socialist governments.

In the name of the Communists of the entire world this was authoritatively con-firmed by the Moscow Conference of Communist Parties (November 1960). Its State-ment says that as in the struggle for immediate aims, “so also in the struggle for the con-

quest of power and the building of socialism the Communist Parties are in favour of es-tablishing co-operation with the socialist parties”.211

Thus none of the arguments against communist and socialist unity of action can withstand criticism. There are no insurmountable obstacles to the co-operation of Com-munists and socialists. The lack of unity is not due to the fact that they have nothing in common or that the Communists threaten to make short work of the socialists. They could easily come to terms if the reactionary forces of capitalism did not hamper them.

Anti-Communism—Slogan of Reactionary Splitters

The real motive that actuates many leaders of the Socialist International is their anti-communism. The crux of the matter is not at all that they are reformists and therefore cannot co-operate with Communists, who are representatives of a revolutionary ideology.

Reformists who are seriously striving for even minor reforms that may benefit the workers understand that to achieve success requires the joint efforts of all working-class organisations. However, they are usually restrained by the die-hard splitters who have a professional interest in preserving the split in the working-class movement. In modern bourgeois society this has become a very profitable occupation for the most adroit ca-reerists from among the leaders of the reformist trade unions and Social-Democratic Par-ties. The specialists in this business (such as Meany and Brown in the U.S.A., Spaak in Belgium, Guy Mollet in France, Brandt in the Federal German Republic, Pollack in Aus-tria, Tanner in Finland) have adapted the aims of the notorious “cold war” to the condi-tions of the working-class movement. They always act under the banner of anti-communism, although they know very well that this frayed banner serves—and has re-peatedly served—the aims of the blackest reaction, which seeks to split the forces of every democratic movement and to destroy it piecemeal. Owing to their hostility to communism and terror in face of the growing influence of socialism in the world, they surrender to the reactionary, conservative forces. In recent years the representatives of the extreme Right wing have secured the adoption by the social-democratic parties in a number of countries (West Germany, Austria and others) of programmes which com-pletely reject Marxism, the class struggle and traditional socialist watchwords, and in the first place the demand for nationalisation.

In their hatred of communism they are in no way inferior to the most inveterate reac-tionaries of the ruling class. Blinded by this hatred they would rather relinquish the de-fence of the most urgent needs of the working people than co-operate with Communists. When such apostles of anti-communism are faced with the alternative of either co-operating with Communists or allowing reactionaries to come to power, they unhesitat-ingly choose the latter. “Better fascism than the Popular Front,” such is the position of these people.

Fortunately, the working-class movement does not have so many out-and-out ene-mies of unity as to make it impossible to shut them out. But so far they are still in con-trol in the reformist movement because the reactionary bourgeoisie supports them with

all its might.

A comparison of the activities of the splitters with the policies of the ruling circles clearly reveals the mainsprings of their behaviour. The aggressive circles wage a “cold war” against the U.S.S.R., and the leaders of the Socialist International carry it into the working-class movement. The imperialists call for “Atlantic solidarity” to fight commu-nism, and the Right-wing leaders of Social-Democracy appeal for the same thing. The Western colonial powers try to frighten the liberated peoples of Asia and Africa with the “menace of communism”, and the Right-wing socialist leaders implore the young states not to have anything to do with the Socialist countries. Recently the Right-wing social-ists have begun to come out with hypocritical condemnations of colonialism and expres-sions of sympathy for the national-liberation movement. But who can forget that for decades they were a mainstay of the colonial policy of the imperialist powers and in practice still support the machinations of these powers against the peoples who have freed themselves or are in process of doing so?

In short, the “cold war” advocates in the working-class movement are champions of the interests of the aggressive, imperialist bourgeoisie among the working people. Through them the ruling circles of the imperialist states seek to perpetuate the split in the working-class movement. The champions of anti-communism actually have no other platform save splitting the working class, and for them “reforms” are in essence only a camouflage aimed at deceiving inexperienced people.

When this deception comes to light and the masses begin to turn away from the bel-licose anti-Communists, the latter resort to circumvention. Most frequently attempts are made to represent Social-Democracy as a kind of “third force”. By juggling with words the Right-wing leaders of the Socialist International assert that in international affairs they take no sides and play the part of arbiter between the East and West. They pretend to adopt the same independent “third way” in questions of home policy, opposing both extreme reaction and the Communists.

But he who talks about the “third force” deceives either himself or others. As a mat-ter of fact there is no “third” way between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, between reaction and democracy. The Right-wing Social-Democrats demonstrate it very clearly themselves by actually co-operating with the bourgeois reactionary circles. The best of the adherents of the “third force” idea sooner or later come to recognise the necessity of united action with the Communists. This once more confirms Lenin’s words that in poli-tics it is impossible to avoid a choice between the capitalists and the working class, that “any attempt to form something in between results in the fact that even wholly sincere people slip to one side or the other”.212

The advocates of the “third force” try to flirt with both the workers and capitalists. They promise the former to fight capitalism and the latter, to defend them from commu-nism. On this basis they demand new “credits” from both. But in granting “credit” to the Right-wing Social-Democrats, the capitalists demand that they should redeem it imme-diately by intensifying their attacks on Communists. The working class, on the contrary, expects an intensification of the struggle against the arbitrary rule of the capitalist mo-

nopolies. But since the political speculators cannot pay both bills at the same time they inevitably become bankrupt. It is no accident that the theory of the “third force” has not met with a broad response among the masses and is now less and less frequently brought to mind.

Anti-communism is directed not only against the revolutionary vanguard of the working class, but also against all the working people and democrats. True, at first the reactionaries sow illusions that repressions and restrictions will be directed only against Communists and will not affect others. But no sooner do the working people swallow the bait and refrain from resisting the measures aimed at the Communists than the reac-tionary bourgeoisie proceeds to the next phases of the “operation”, i.e., it extends the campaign of persecution to the Social-Democratic Parties, the trade unions, and even liberal-bourgeois movements and organisations.

Thus the question as to who hampers working-class unity of action can be answered in only one way: it is hampered by capitalist reaction, the ruling oligarchy of monopoly capital. It is in the interests of capitalist reaction that the advocates of anti-communism and organisers of the “cold war”, who claim to be leaders of the working-class move-ment, act in the leadership of the working-class organisations. The arguments they put forward against unity do not express, and, indeed, conceal their real motives.

The splitters in the ranks of the working-class movement enjoy the broad support of the capitalist monopolies and governments. The most active Right-wing Social-Democrats are given profitable posts. For example, as reported in the West European press, in the fifties 410 leading members of the German Social-Democratic Party held 929 highly-paid posts in big West German companies and banks. Sixty-five socialist leaders were directors in the concerns of Mannesmann, Klöckner, Krupp, Flick, etc. The salaries of these directors reach 100,000-150,000 marks a year. Of the 600 directors of the nationalised enterprises in Austria, 400 are members of the Socialist Party. Twelve of the 25 members of the leadership of this Party are directors and managers of state and private enterprises with salaries of up to 500,000 schillings a year each.

When the Right-wing socialist leaders become members of governments, monopoly capital sometimes allows them to satisfy some of the demands of the working people. When the pressure on the part of the working people leaves the big monopolies no other alternative, they make concessions, but in such a way as to strengthen the positions of the socialists against the Communists. At the very first available opportunity they com-pensate themselves by raising prices or by other means. Capitalist circles use the same tactics by encouraging trade unions that are under the influence of the Right-wing So-cial-Democrats, and by persecuting Left-wing trade unions.

That is why unity of action of the working class cannot be attained by negotiations and agreements alone. It calls for an active struggle against the machinations of the reac-tionary bourgeoisie and for the isolation of the latter’s agents in the working-class movement. The struggle for working-class unity of action is an important and inalien-able part of the whole struggle of the working people against monopoly capital and im-perialism.

3. Ways and Means of Attaining Unity of Action in the Working-Class Movement

The Masses of Workers Want Unity

Despite the splitting activities of the Right-wing leadership, the urge for unity is grow-ing among the mass of the workers. This finds expression in very diverse forms. For ex-ample, in many enterprises of France, Italy, Britain, Belgium and other countries all work-ers readily respond to the appeal to act jointly when there is a strike in the offing; they or-ganise united strike committees, which include Communists, socialists, catholics. This is also seen in the numerous cases where socialist workers have voted for communist candi-dates in elections despite the prohibition of the leadership of their parties.

The striving for unity increases as the consequences of the dangerous present-day policies of the imperialist governments become evident. Socialist workers are growing increasingly anxious and apprehensive. This compels the leaders of the Social-Democratic Parties to manoeuvre, to resort to various stratagems and sometimes even to give in to the demands of the rank-and-file socialists.

Resistance to the policy of the Right-wing leaders is growing in the Social-Democratic Parties, embracing even part of the functionaries. Certain changes occurring within the social-democratic movement facilitate the achievement of unity of action among the working people, although the Right-wing social-democratic leaders continue to oppose it.

Hitherto, the greatest experience in co-operation between Communists and socialists has been accumulated in the struggle for the economic interests of the working people. Many capitalist countries have had examples of united action in this field. The Italian, French, Argentine and Japanese workers and the working people of other countries achieved big successes in recent years by joint, concerted action in strike struggles. The number of strikers often ran into hundreds of thousands and even millions.

Co-operation in political problems has achieved its most notable successes in Italy, Japan, Finland, Chile and some other countries. During the struggle for banning nuclear weapons, many Communist Parties of capitalist countries repeatedly acted in concert with the local organisations of the Socialist Parties.

During the first post-war decade the Italian Communist Party and Italian Socialist Party accumulated experience in fruitful co-operation. Since 1934, when they signed their pact, the two parties have acted in concert on the main problems of internal and foreign policy and inflicted not a few defeats on the forces of reaction. The 1958 Con-gress of the Socialist Party broke the pact of unity of action unilaterally; this act, forced on the socialists by the Right wing is clearly contrary to the actual requirements and mood of the rank-and-file members of this Party. After all that the Italian Communists and socialists have gone through together, this rupture cannot but be temporary.

Co-operation between the working-class parties has been successfully developing in Japan since they corrected their past sectarian mistakes. In the heroic struggle against the Japano-American Treaty that developed in the spring and summer of 1960, Communists and socialists acted in unity, providing leadership for the broad masses of the Japanese

people. Good experience in pursuing a united front policy has been accumulated in Chile. The Communist Party, the Socialist Party, the Popular Socialist Party and other democratic parties organised here a Front of Popular Action, which holds strong posi-tions in the parliament and the country.

The struggle for unity of the international working-class movement entered a new stage after the Twentieth Congress of the C.P.S.U. had pointed out new opportunities that were becoming available in this field. The appeal for co-operation made by so au-thoritative a Communist Party as the C.P.S.U. met with a wide response among the so-cial-democratic masses. The Socialist International was compelled to discuss the ques-tion of relations with the Communists. Elements interested in frustrating unity of action and in continuing the “cold war” in the working-class movement forced a negative deci-sion on the International. However, neither the C.P.S.U. nor the other Communist Par-ties consider that this decision reflected the real feelings of the socialist workers. Com-munists will not retreat from their policy of unity of action with all working people. “This is not a temporary tactical slogan,” said N. S. Khrushchov at the Twenty-Second Congress of the C.P.S.U. (October 1961), “it is the general policy of the Communist movement, dictated by the fundamental interests of the working class.”213

It is to be regretted that the cause of unity is still only slowly gaining ground and unity is not so wide as the present-day international situation requires. Some of the past disagreements which greatly aggravated the relations between the different detachments of the working class still make themselves felt. However, permanent factors which are stronger than the machinations of the splitters now operate in favour of unity. The chief of these factors is the growing urge towards unity among increasingly broad sections of the workers.

Correct Approach to Socialist Workers

It would be wrong, of course, to pin all one’s hopes on the spontaneous movement of the masses towards unity. Here, as the leading bodies of the Communist Parties have repeatedly pointed out, a great deal depends on the Communists themselves and on the methods of carrying out the policy of unity of action.

The first and decisive thing in this matter is a correct approach to the socialist work-ers. The indignation of Communists at the repeated treachery of a number of social-democratic leaders is understandable but it is no reason for regarding all socialists as “agents of imperialism” and for rejecting contact and comradely exchange of opinion with them. Attacking all socialists indiscriminately only plays into the hands of the real enemies of working-class unity. Communists and working people who are social-democrats are class brothers. Communists proceed from the conviction expressed in the Statement of the Moscow Conference of 1960: “The overwhelming majority in the So-cial-Democratic Parties, especially the workers, are supporters of peace and social pro-gress.”214

The post-war period has shown that complex processes of differentiation are taking place inside the social-democratic movement. Most of the Socialist Parties have fairly

strong, even if at times undefined, Left-wing currents. In the British Labour Party, for example, during any serious turn of events in domestic or international affairs, differ-ences are revealed between the local organisations and the Party leadership.

In a number of Social-Democratic Parties things went as far as a split into independ-ent parties of Right-wing and Left-wing socialists (Italy, Japan, France, Norway, Argen-tina and Israel). Later some of them merged again but the differences between the Right and Left wings have persisted.

Experience has shown, however, that in many cases splits among socialists and the separation of a Left wing fail to cause any changes in the policies of the Social-Democratic Parties. Many rank-and- file socialists, even those dissatisfied with the anti-communist line of their Right-wing leadership, do not want to take so decisive a step as a split because they have grown accustomed to their Party and value its traditions. The Right-wing leaders skilfully take advantage of this and continue to set the tone in the Socialist Parties. But in the long run the bankruptcy of the anti-communist policy will open the eyes of rank-and-file socialists. Sooner or later, honest Social-Democrats who remain true to the banner of socialism will realise that it is necessary to change the es-sentially bourgeois policy pursued by the extreme Right-wing elements and then to re-move these elements from the Party leadership. In such a case the transition of a Social-Democratic Party to new political positions corresponding to the interests of the working class may occur without a split, which is undoubtedly the best course. At any rate, this is an internal affair of the Social-Democratic Parties, which they will have to decide on for themselves.

The Left wing of the socialists can, under all circumstances, play its part in over-coming the split in the working-class movement. The Left-wingers not infrequently dis-play political inconsistency, but in any event they are the most progressive section of Social- Democracy. Today their positions on many of the most important questions of internal and international politics correspond to the interests of the working people. Many Left-wingers understand the harm of the split and the necessity for working-class unity of action. The immediate aim of the Communist Parties is to help them to rid themselves of the prejudices fostered by the anti-communist splitters. By their selfless struggle against the threat of war, their defence of the vital interests of the working peo-ple and of the middle strata who often form the support of Social-Democracy, their will-ingness to back up any socialist’s initiative likely to benefit the working class, and by the honest discharge of the obligations arising from co-operation, the Communists clearly demonstrate their reliability as friends and allies.

Thus the prerequisites for co-operation between the Communists and those circles in the social-democratic movement which realise the necessity for unity of action are fully developed.

At the same time, to achieve unity of action the Communists are willing to postpone the solution of the most controversial questions. In this respect the Communist Parties follow the old, but always correct, advice given by Lenin as far back as 1922 when a conference of three Internationals—the Third, Second and the “Two-and-a-half’—was

contemplated. Lenin, who took an active part in preparing the Conference, advised the Comintern delegates to raise during the negotiations “only the least controversial” (ques-tions—Ed.), “making an attempt at partial but joint action of the masses of workers as the aim”. He recommended “our delegates to show extreme restraint during the prelimi-nary talks so long as there was any hope of attaining the aim”.215

Nor do Communists today refuse to compromise or make necessary concessions for the sake of establishing unity of action with the Social-Democrats. To be sure, sectarians think that by making a concession Communists compromise themselves. Their political courage is only enough to make them persist in their attitude regardless of the conditions and requirements of the moment. However, Leninist courage is shown only by those who for the sake of so great a cause as unity of the working-class movement are not afraid to make a necessary concession, to meet the future ally half-way.

Lenin compared the Social-Democratic Parties with closed premises where repre-sentatives of the bourgeoisie conduct their propaganda before a rather numerous gather-ing of workers. Should Communists pay for admission to these premises—asked Lenin—in order to be able to speak to the workers who until now have been under the exclusive influence of the reformists? And he answered that it would be a great mistake to reject all conditions and to refuse to pay anything to enter these rather well-guarded, closed premises. Lenin taught that “Communists must not stew in their own juice, but must learn to act so that they may, without fearing certain sacrifices and mistakes which are inevitable when starting a new and difficult undertaking, get inside the closed prem-ises where representatives of the bourgeoisie bring influence to bear on the workers. Communists who refuse to understand and learn this cannot hope to win the majority of the workers.”216

Each country has its own conditions of struggle, its own traditions in the working-class movement. The ways that lead to working-class unity differ in different countries. Under some conditions unity can be achieved during an election campaign, under other conditions during the struggle for trade-union and social rights, under still other condi-tions in waging a campaign for disarmament, etc. The ability to look for and select the particular occasion, the special event, which in a given country may prove to be the shortest way to co-operation among all trends in the working-class movement, is one of the main conditions for success of the Communist Parties in their struggle for a united front.

Ideological Differences Are No Obstacle to Co-operation

But cannot the ideological differences between Communists and those socialists who realise the necessity for co-operation hinder their co-operation? For while socialists agree with Communists in many respects as far as the present-day tasks of the working class are concerned, they differ with them over fundamental questions of social devel-opment, above all, such questions as recognising the necessity for overthrowing capital-ism and establishing a dictatorship of the working class during the transitional period. In order to prevent unity of action, the Right-wingers usually point to this as an insur-

mountable obstacle to co-operation. Is this true?

Communists do not in any way want to under-estimate or hush up the existing ideo-logical differences. They have criticised and will criticise the ideological positions and Right-wing opportunist practice of social-democracy, and will continue activities that prompt the social-democratic masses to adopt the path of consistent class struggle against capitalism, for the victory of socialism. While proposing unity, the Communists do not hide the fact that they have no intention of renouncing either their principles or their political views. Nor, incidentally, do they ask this of the Social-Democrats, believ-ing that practical co-operation between the working-class parties in the bourgeois coun-tries can be arranged without renunciation of principles.

Of course, it is quite impossible to discuss any ideological differences with mali-cious enemies of working-class unity and inspirers of anti-communism. Anti-communism does not contain a single grain of constructive policy for a working-class party; nor does it have any positive ideological content; the ideology of reformism which it uses as a cover is nothing but a mask. As a matter of fact, the champions of anti-communism have lost the right of calling themselves even reformists. If they sacri-fice the vital interests of the working people in order to frustrate co-operation with the Communist Parties, then what kind of reformists are they? Every honest Social-Democrat at least believes he is fighting for the interests of the working people and he will not scorn allies in this struggle. But anti-Communists are not reformists at all; they are inveterate enemies of the working-class movement.

It is clear that with such people the Communists will never be able to find a com-mon language. It is quite different, however, with the conscientious advocates of reform-ism who are sincerely striving for progressive social changes.

There are fundamental differences between the Marxist-Leninist and the reformist ideas of socialism. The Communists have criticised and will continue to criticise the er-roneous positions of the reformists on the question of the class struggle, the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Using the successful building of social-ism in the U.S.S.R. and the People’s Democracies as an example, the Communists will persuade the socialist workers of the correctness of the way to socialism based on Marx-ism-Leninism.

But it is already possible to find something in common in the ideas of socialism en-tertained by both Communists and sincere Social-Democrats, something that opens the way for their joint struggle for the basic ideals of the working class. For both of them socialism means above all the establishment of public ownership of the principal means of production.

What then prevents socialists, at any rate those who take this idea seriously, from co-operating with the Communists in the struggle for replacing the system of capitalist private ownership by a system in which public ownership will prevail? For example, could not the Communists and socialists jointly support the demands of the mass of the workers for nationalisation of the property of the monopolies?

Of course, Communists and socialists explain the possibility of a peaceful transition

to socialism differently, but in this question they have undoubtedly acquired not a few points of contact. They can successfully co-operate wherever the conditions favour such a transition. And the greater the unity in the working-class movement, the greater the chances in a number of countries for a peaceful transition to socialism.

Communists and socialists can come to a broad mutual understanding in the struggle for reforms to alleviate the conditions of the working people in capitalist countries. The Communists and socialists differ in their appraisal of these reforms. For many Social-Democrats reforms are the only possible way to socialism. Today—they reason—the state is introducing certain measures aimed at regulating the national economy, tomor-row it will introduce social security measures (pensions, etc.); thus, according to the re-formists, the introduction of socialism is beginning within the framework of bourgeois society. Socialism, as they see it, is introduced in capitalist society piecemeal. Some day—they hope—it will thus be possible to “reform” capitalism completely and trans-form it into socialism:

Communists regard this principal idea of the reformists as fundamentally erroneous. They do not deny that individual reforms to benefit the working people can be wrested from the capitalist state; even when it is in the hands of the monopolies. However, the concessions that can be wrested from a capitalist state are far from being socialism, since the class nature of the capitalist state is retained; it remains an instrument in the hands of the capitalist monopolies. It is no accident that as soon as the pressure of the masses weakens, the state takes back all its concessions or adapts them to the needs of the monopolies in such a way that only the memory of their initial substance remains.

To start building socialism, it is necessary first of all to take away the power from the ruling monopolies and hand it over to the working people—such is the Communists’ deep conviction confirmed by long experience of the international working-class move-ment.

At the same time the Communists are in no way opposed to reforms. They offer the socialists extensive co-operation in the struggle for all types of reforms that improve the living and working conditions of the working people, for nationalisation of the property of the monopolies, for improving the system of social insurance, for extending trade-union and democratic rights, for strengthening the guarantees of world peace, and so on. And the more extensive the unity of action and co-operation between the different trends in the working-class movement, the easier will it be to wrest from the monopolies and their state concessions that strengthen the fighting ability of the working class.

Necessity for Patient Comradely Explanation

Communists consider it their duty to strive to overcome the reformist ideology that the Right-wing splitters in the working-class movement use as a cover. But to overcome the ideas of reformism is no simple task. Behind the reformist theories the Communists see not only error but also a misuse of the real aspirations of the masses.

Observing the tremendous difference between the conditions of their own life and the life of the privileged upper stratum of society, and encountering arbitrary police rule

and encroachments on the rights of the working people, the masses spontaneously strive for a democratic order and social equality. But they often fail to see the real way to a new, truly democratic life. The illusions of bourgeois democracy, especially potent in the West European countries and the U.S.A., weigh heavily upon many of the working people. Not a few workers seek some easy way to socialism, one without any struggle or class conflicts, and which does not involve a sharp break in the customary tenor of their life. The ideologists of reformism take advantage of all this and palm off their theories on the working people, thus retarding the development of their class-consciousness.

We must also remember that in recent decades the social composition of many So-cial-Democratic Parties has substantially changed. There are less and less workers in their ranks and more and more petty-bourgeois elements, office employees and bour-geois intellectuals. In the French Socialist Party, for example, not more than a quarter of the members are workers.

But the main thing is that the reformist theories have the support the ruling classes. The bourgeoisie is not afraid of these theories. Not infrequently it even willingly allows them to be propagandised praises them in the columns of its press, while Communists are persecuted on account of their views. The ruling classes are not afraid of admitting the ideologists of reformism to government posts, at the same time ousting Communists from such posts at the earliest opportunity. What is more, the bourgeoisie sometimes allows the Social-Democrats to conduct their “socialist” experiments, which do not af-fect the foundations of its class rule and in some cases even strengthen these founda-tions; at the same time the bourgeoisie supports reformist illusions among the masses.

To overcome the reformist ideology we must use methods of patient persuasion and comradely exchange of opinion rather than a mere repetition of our own slogans. No didactic or peremptory tone, and no slighting or, especially, contemptuous attitude to-wards the convictions of a social-democratic worker are permissible. The argument with socialists must be a real controversy and not an exchange of unflattering epithets.

While working among the masses of social-democratic workers, Communists ex-pose the erroneousness of the reformist theories (“democratic socialism”, etc.), setting against them the scientific socialism of Marx and Lenin, which has achieved such his-toric triumphs. By open discussions in the press, and in conversations with socialist workers, Communists strive to dispel their anti-communist prejudices and show them that the principles of Marxism-Leninism coincide with the vital interests of the working people.

While exposing those who are really underlings of the imperialist bourgeoisie, the Communists are ready to co-operate with all those in the ranks of the social-democratic movement who sincerely strive to put an end to capitalism, all those who want to fight for improving the conditions of the working people, for peace, democracy and socialism.

4. Policy of Democratic Unity

The Communist Parties are fighting not only for a united working-class front; they are striving to unite broader sections of the people. Working-class unity should be the

basis for the unity of a democratic movement of the entire nation.

Never in the past were there such favourable conditions for this unity. At the present stage of the general crisis of capitalism, as was shown in Chapter 10, side by side with the main class antagonism between labour and capital the conflict between the small monopoly clique and the rest of the population is coming ever more clearly to light. The stronger the oppression by monopoly capital becomes and the more it subordinates the state to itself, the broader and more diverse are the forces it evokes against itself. Mo-nopoly capital is encroaching upon the interests not only of the workers and peasants but also of the middle strata of the population, the office workers, the intelligentsia, and even certain sections of the bourgeoisie. Not only the immediate interests of all these strata of society but also the most important interests of the nation are in danger. Repub-licans; patriots and pacifists, in short, all who remain faithful to the traditions of democ-racy and national freedom, are seriously alarmed at the growing tendencies towards a reactionary dictatorship of the monopolies and the increasing danger of a new war.

Thus various social strata find a common interest, which can form an objective basis for their joint action against the rule of monopoly capital. The Marxist-Leninist Party of the working class is destined to be the vanguard of such democratic unity. As the stan-dard-bearers in the struggle for peace and democracy, the Communist Parties strive to be in the front ranks of the Popular Front against the reactionary policies of monopoly capi-tal and imperialism.

The policy of the Communist Parties for establishing unity of action and co-operation with all the national and democratic forces is a policy of democratic unity; it is democratic because all sections of the people are being united primarily around democ-ratic demands and slogans. Of course, this does not mean that the grounds for wide, popular unity disappear after the solution of the democratic tasks. As we have already seen, in our epoch a socialist transformation of society corresponds to the vital interests of ever wider sections of the population. The policy of democratic unity therefore makes it possible to enlist these sections for the solution of socialist problems. The way to this, however, is through organisation of the mass struggle for general democratic demands and the material interests of the working people.

A good deal of experience in regard to joint action of various sections of the popula-tion on the basis of democratic demands has been accumulated since the end of the war. The most striking example of this is the popular movement in defence of peace. The world-wide campaigns for banning the atomic bomb and stopping nuclear tests offer ample testimony that it is quite possible to achieve co-operation of the most heterogene-ous social trends and organisations, including those that are very far from communism.

What a Workers’ Party Must Do

When objective prerequisites for uniting different sections of the population against the oppression of the monopolies are present, the central feature of the situation is the activity of the working-class revolutionary party itself. Everything depends on its ability to find a common language with the various political and social organisations and

movements. The fighting and organisational unity the popular forces cannot come about spontaneously.

To secure the co-operation of heterogeneous social forces, of which many are far removed from communism and some are infected with anti-communism, is a compli-cated matter requiring patience and tact. Here one has to counter the intrigues of reac-tionary forces, the vacillations of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois groups, and their at-tempts to subordinate the whole movement solely to their interests.

The experience of various countries has shown that the following factors are of the greatest importance in achieving unity of action of the democratic forces;

A strong and united working-class movement is the chief guarantee of achieving such unity of action. Not all who are fighting for peace and democracy today are allies of the working class in the exact sense of the word. They take part in the struggle for peace and democracy, but when it comes to permanent co-operation with Communists they begin to vacillate and easily succumb to the influence of official propaganda.

For such social forces to begin to co-operate with the Communist Party, propaganda and agitation alone are not enough. In the first place, the working-class movement must itself be strong and well organised so as to inspire all the national and democratic strata with confidence in the ultimate victory of the people. Secondly, the working class can win the confidence and support of the other classes and social groups only if it defends their legitimate and just interests as it does its own.

The Party of the working class has many ways of doing this. It fights in parliament for reforms and benefits for the peasants, handicraftsmen, artisans and small business people. It makes a careful study of the demands of the peasant, radical, republican and other democratic parties and lends its full support to those that coincide with the inter-ests of the working people. The Party supports the proposals of any peasant, democratic or pacifist leader if they correspond to the aspirations of the working people and are aimed at improving their conditions.

Fraternal ties with all working people and a reputation among them of being the most consistent and resolute champion of their interests gives the working class a guar-antee of victory in the struggle against the rule of the reactionary bourgeoisie.

Correct choice of the platform for co-operation. The revolutionary Party of the working class cannot demand that its potential allies co-operate with it only on its own terms. Without for a moment losing sight of the specific interests and needs of the work-ing class, and while striving for their greatest possible satisfaction, the Party at the same time seeks to formulate general demands acceptable the potential allies. Since the other social forces are also interested in fighting the oppression of the monopolies, it is rela-tively easy to discover common demands. But even in this case, as experience shows, it is impossible to secure agreement on all points at once. The platform for unity of action is elaborated gradually, beginning with partial issues. This gives the co-operating parties a chance convince themselves of the sincerity of each other’s intentions and to acquire mutual confidence. Confidence is an extremely necessary element without which no united front can endure.

At the same time, Communists do not hide the fact that they do not support all de-mands of the petty-bourgeois sections of the population. The working class can have interests in common with these sections, but contradictions also exist. The Communist Parties take this into account in advance and where necessary make a firm declaration of their position in relation to particular demands that are unacceptable to the working class. Unity is achieved not by endless concessions, but by resolutely supporting the just demands of the allies of the working class and simultaneously combating vacillations of a certain part of them that endanger the common aims of the people’s united front.

Ability to compromise and make necessary concessions is an important quality of a working-class party that wishes to organise the co-operation of diverse class forces. Lenin considered this ability an absolute necessity for the class-conscious vanguard of the working class. Without it, he said, it is impossible to conclude an alliance with either the individual groups of the working people or with the middle strata who inevitably vacillate and act inconsistently. Lenin wrote: “Those who fail to understand this, fail to understand even a particle of Marxism, or of scientific, modern socialism in general.”217

Without relinquishing any of its principles arising from the Marxist ideology, the revolutionary Party of the working class at the same time displays flexibility and takes into consideration the legitimate interests of the other social and political forces united in the bloc. It is important only—Lenin taught—that compromises and concessions should not lower but raise the general level of class-consciousness of the vanguard of the working class and enhance its ability to struggle and win.

How does this look in practice? For example, one of the most important principles of socialism, bound up with its very essence, is that privately owned capitalist industry must be nationalised. In practice, however, this principle can be carried out by various methods. Although the victorious working class has the right to take away from the capi-talists the property they have amassed by exploitation, it may, in appreciation of the ser-vices rendered by certain sections of the bourgeoisie in the struggle against the monopo-lies, make concessions to them. After the victory of the revolution it may leave the mid-dle bourgeoisie in possession of its property. The people’s state may even help the mid-dle bourgeoisie (with credits, raw materials, tax privileges, and a guaranteed market). Later, however, when the question of completing the nationalisation of the whole of the national economy comes up, the state may carry it out peacefully and gradually, taking into account the legitimate interests of the owners; for example, by buying the means of production from them, i.e., by granting them a certain compensation.

This example confirms that the Communists propose co-operation sincerely. They do not make promises that cannot be fulfilled, but in drawing up the united front pro-gramme take into account not only the immediate but also the future interests of their allies. Their concessions and compromises are well grounded and accord with their view of the possibility of building socialism in co-operation with their allies in the democratic front. This line of the Communists is of great importance for the success of the policy of democratic unity.

While displaying political flexibility the Communist Parties at the same time reso-

lutely rebuff the revisionist elements, who are ready to engage in unprincipled deals which may result in the Communist Parties becoming merged in the general national movements and losing their independence and may, in the long run, weaken the unity of the democratic forces.

It is important not only to achieve political accord; agreement on united action needs to be consolidated organisationally. A united front becomes a powerful force only when the allies do not confine themselves to declaring their community of aims, but necessar-ily reach agreement on setting up a united organisation (such as a National Front, a Front of National-Democratic Unity, etc.), and on joint action within the framework of this organisation. This presupposes the formation of a co-ordinating body for joint elabora-tion of a united policy, and a firm agreement to the effect that the cooperating parties will obey the jointly adopted decisions. All this, of course, does not mean doing away with the organisational and political independence of the parties and movements taking part in the united front.

It goes without saying that the strength of the united front does not depend only on the extent of agreement between the leading bodies. The chief thing is the joint action of the rank-and-file organisations, of their whole membership, who form the real strengths of the bloc.

The decisive factor ensuring the victory of the united front is the vanguard role of the Marxist party of the working class. The leading influence of a working-class party is the result of its own political activity and not of any pressure or dictation. When the Party pursues a correct policy, when the entire people heeds its voice and its prestige rapidly increases, the other political parties and groups recognise its leading influence themselves and give it a decisive voice in elaborating the policy of the united front.  

The experience of the People’s Democracies has shown that after the victory of the democratic bloc the Right wing of the bourgeois parties may attempt to push the work-ing-class Party out of the leadership in order to hamper the introduction of urgent social reforms. The same experience has shown, however, that once the Marxist Workers’ party has won the sympathies and support of the bulk of the membership of the bour-geois-democratic parties it is able to isolate their Right-wing leaders, consolidate the unity of the democratic bloc and begin moving along the path of radical social changes.

The leading role of the Marxist party in a democratic bloc does not mean that it can dictate or command. Even when it has a majority, it avoids imposing its decisions and strives to win unanimous consent through explanation and persuasion, If the Party were to act by dictatorial methods, without taking the legitimate interests of its allies into con-sideration, it would run the risk of losing them, would find itself isolated and would thus fail to achieve the aims pursued by the democratic bloc. The Communists are not inter-ested in making temporary use of their partners in the democratic front and then discard-ing them, as reactionary propaganda asserts. On the contrary, they want to advance far-ther together with them so as to reach a real solution of all the democratic problems and to satisfy in the best possible manner the just demands of the broadest sections of the people, something that is possible only under socialism. The method of persuasion,

which is the chief method of the Party’s work inside the bloc, does not, however, ex-clude the right to criticise the vacillations and inconsistency of the partners or to wage a resolute struggle against the manifest enemies of unity who are acting in their ranks.

Finally, as experience has shown, the policy of democratic unity cannot be put into effect without a resolute struggle against sectarianism and Right-wing opportunism. At the time when the united front is only in course of formation, Left-wing sectarian ele-ments are a particular danger since they antagonise the potential allies of the working class by their refusal to consider the interests of others. But when the united front has become a fact, Right-wing opportunism may become a special danger because it com-pletely capitulates to the demands of the bourgeois allies, weakens the independent posi-tion of the revolutionary party of the working class and slips into the position of bour-geois nationalism.

The difficulties encountered in carrying out the policy of democratic unity are par-ticularly great in the West European countries, where anti-communist prejudices are still strong and where the working class has to deal with such an experienced and cunning adversary as the West European bourgeoisie. In these countries the Communists are op-posed by numerous, tricky bourgeois parties that are skilled in deceiving the masses with the most “democratic” and “peaceable” phrases. Nevertheless, the Communist Parties are persistently working to build against the ruling capitalist monopolies a powerful na-tional democratic front which will bar the way to fascism and war, and open up the road to further social progress.

CHAPTER 15

ALLIANCE OF THE WORKING CLASS AND PEASANTRY  UNDER CAPITALISM

1. Struggle for the Interests of the Peasantry

Of all the non-proletarian classes of bourgeois society, the closest to the proletariat is the peasantry. The workers and peasants are closely related both by their origin and by their position in capitalist society. The working class was formed historically as a result of the peasants being ruined and dispossessed of their lands. Exploited by capital, the villages even today continue to add to the ranks of the working class. Groups of seasonal workers come to the towns from the countryside. The workers and peasants are also brought closer together because they are both toilers who earn their bread in the sweat of their brows. They have a common class enemy. As a matter of fact, as Marx and Engels pointed out, the exploitation of the peasant differs from that of the worker only in form, while both have the same exploiter—capital. That is why in urgent matters such as sav-ing the world from a nuclear war, or fundamental social changes, the working class turns first of all to the peasantry.

Despite the kinship and affinity of the workers and peasants, an alliance between them is not established spontaneously. The ruling bourgeoisie for a long time succeeded in disuniting the workers and peasants, and in many countries they are still successful in this.

Of all the political parties known to history only the Communists have waged a con-sistent struggle for strengthening the alliance of workers and peasants. Marx and Engels were the first to point out the necessity for such an alliance, drawing the lessons of the de-feat of the proletariat of Western Europe in the revolutionary battles of 1848 and the tragic fall of the Paris Commune in 1871. The statements of Marx and Engels on the peasant question, consigned to oblivion by the opportunists of the Second International, served as the starting-point for Lenin in elaborating the programme of the Bolshevik Party. The alli-ance of the working class and the peasant; became one of the principal ideas of Leninism. This idea distinguishes the Communist Parties from the Social-Democratic Parties which have no faith in the socialist tendencies of the peasantry and instil the same distrust among the workers. This same idea, too, distinguishes the Communist Parties from the peasant parties, whose leaders, as a rule, set the peasants against the workers, which only plays into the hands of the big bourgeoisie and the big landowners.

Necessity for an Alliance of the Workers and Peasants

A close alliance of the working class and the peasantry is dictated by the vital inter-ests of both classes. In the first place the peasantry itself through centuries of experience becomes convinced that it is useless for it to expect the satisfaction of its essential needs from bourgeois governments and parties.

When the bourgeoisie fought for political power against the rule of the feudal lords

it used as its shock force the peasants who sought to cast off the fetters of serfdom. The peasant uprisings and the peasant wars in Europe shattered the mainstays of feudalism and created the prerequisites for the victory of the bourgeois revolutions in England, France, Germany, Italy and other countries. But in the countryside the fruits of the bour-geois revolution were reaped mainly by kulaks, usurers and merchants who grew rich by exploiting the working peasants. The rich people in the countryside became the bulwark of the bourgeois state and its reserve in the struggle against the revolutionary movement of the working class. They were the channels for spreading bourgeois influence amongst the peasantry. The social differentiation rapidly destroyed the relative community of interests which obtained within the peasant communes under the yoke of the feudal lords. While the kulaks and rich peasants drew closer to the urban bourgeoisie, the poor peasants increasingly gravitated towards the working class.

The victory of the bourgeois revolutions cleared the way for big capital in the coun-tryside, where it everywhere destroyed small-scale production and forced enormous masses of peasants to abandon their homes. The development of capitalism in Europe was attended with a veritable migration of peoples. Millions of ruined peasants emi-grated to distant lands in the hope of becoming independent farmers. But there, too, they found themselves in the iron grip of capital.

After consolidating its political power, the bourgeoisie of Western Europe became the worst enemy of the peasant movement. The bourgeois governments of Western Europe supported to the very end the Romanov dynasty in Russia, which had been placed in power by the landlords. They invariably came to the aid of the monarchies, which had remained as a legacy of feudalism and whose thrones shook under the on-slaught of the peasant movement. The imperialist bourgeoisie of Europe and North America has done all it could preserve the feudal forms of exploitation in the colonial and semi-colonial countries. Owing to its efforts, almost the same forms of feudal land-ownership and servitude that existed in the Middle Ages have persisted up to now, in the second half of the twentieth; century, in Asia, Africa, Latin America and even some parts of Europe, such as Spain and the south of Italy.

Thus the bourgeoisie has not only failed to solve the peasant problem, but has even become the main obstacle to the liberation of the peasantry in all countries where the historically just cause of abolishing obsolete feudal and semi-feudal forms of land-ownership has to be carried into effect. Thus the prerequisites are created for an anti-capitalist alliance of the working class and the peasantry.

The experience of the Great October Socialist Revolution has confirmed the Marx-ist-Leninist thesis that in countries faced with the task of abolishing the survivals of feu-dalism the whole peasantry can join forces with the working class, because the latter is the only class capable of carrying the agrarian revolution to its conclusion, i. e., of giv-ing land to the peasants. In the people’s democratic revolutions which occurred in Europe and Asia the alliance of the working class and the peasantry has brilliantly stood the test. In alliance with the workers, the peasants have become for the first time in his-tory a ruling class, building a new, socialist society.

However, the alliance of the working class and peasantry is needed not only in the countries in which feudal or semi-feudal landownership still remains. It is also becoming a vital necessity in the developed capitalist countries. In these countries the operation of the universal law of capitalist accumulation in agriculture leads to the differentiation and disintegration of the peasantry. The middle strata are eroded, while the extreme groups—the rich peasants and poor peasants—increase. The big farmers, whose farming is based on the exploitation of wage labour, become more closely linked with industrial and banking capital. The overwhelming majority of the peasants, however, become more and more ruined—-part of them go to the towns where they swell the ranks of the prole-tariat, while those who remain in the countryside gradually become semi-proletarians. Ever larger masses of peasants fall into enslaving dependence on the agricultural banks and monopolist corporations. In order to make ends meet, they are forced to work as hired labourers for part of the year.

Thus capitalism ruthlessly reduces to nought the efforts of the peasants to become independent farmers on their own land. Lenin’s conclusion, based on his study of agrar-ian relations in Russia, Western Europe and the U.S.A., is confirmed: a considerable proportion of small farmers and the majority of very small farmers are not independent farmers but essentially wage workers with an allotment.218

After the Second World War, monopoly capital conducted an unprecedented offen-sive against the peasants and farmers, striving to ruin and eliminate farms of a peasant type and replace them by big capitalist enterprises. In the capitalist countries the concen-tration of production and capital in agriculture relentlessly sweeps away the family farms. The myth of the stability of small-scale peasant farming has been finally dis-pelled. The monopolies have taken up ruling positions in agriculture as well. Small-scale farming survives at the expense of the incredible privations, under consumption and ex-cessive labour of the peasants. Agrarian crises increasingly ruin the countryside.

Thus the peasant question, which formed the basis of all past popular movements, is still one of the most important political issues in our industrial age. However, its objec-tive content is changing. From anti-feudal it is becoming increasingly anti-monopolist and anti-imperialist.

The peasant question is all the more important since the peasantry still constitutes the greater part of the population of the capitalist world. Although the proportion of the population engaged in agriculture has continually decreased during the last 150 years, it was still 59 per cent in 1952. Even in capitalist Europe the peasantry still forms about one-third of the population.

Despite the fact that the peasants constitute the majority of the population in many countries, they cannot achieve their emancipation from the yoke of the landlords and monopoly capital without the support of the working class.

Marxist theory explains why the workers constitute the leading force in the alliance of the workers and peasants. It is due to the fact that, because of the very conditions of their life, the workers are much better organised than the peasants, large masses of workers being concentrated in the towns, where they have already had a long experience

in fighting the exploiting classes. In nearly all capitalist countries, the workers have or-ganised their militant Communist Parties, which have demonstrated not only the desire but also the ability to fight for the interests of all working people. It is necessary for the working class to have the leading position in the alliance in order to achieve success in the common cause and not for the sake of any advantages or privileges compared with the peasants. The class-conscious workers take upon themselves the main brunt of the struggle; they are ready to make and actually do make the greatest sacrifices.

What Is the Essence of the Feudal Survivals?

The aims and objectives of the joint struggle of the working class peasantry vary from country to country. Where feudal relations persist or survivals of these relations are still strong, the first and foremost task is the struggle against feudalism, against feudal forms of exploitation of the peasants by the landlord class. As already stated, this applies to the southern areas of Italy, to all of Spain and many countries of the East and of Latin America.

The survivals of feudal economic relations take various forms, of which the main and most typical are the following:

Firstly, landownership is still largely in the hands of the big landlords. Owing to their poverty most of the peasants cannot buy land and are forced to rent it from the landlords on enslaving terms. Secondly, payment of rent in kind or in a share of the crop. The peasants give the landlords a considerable part of their crop, sometimes half or even more.

Thirdly, the system of labour service on the landlord’s land. The peasants are forced to till the landlord’s land with their own primitive implements. This makes the peasants virtually serfs performing corvée labour for the feudal lord.

Fourthly, a dense web of debts entangling most of the peasants, making them insol-vent and increasing their dependence on the landlords and usurers.

Fifthly, various methods of extra-economic compulsion. The peasants are at the mercy of local officials, magistrates and the police, who are usually in the service of the big landowners.

The results of all these survivals of feudalism are well known: extreme technical backwardness of agriculture, desperate poverty of the overwhelming majority of peas-ants, meagreness of the home market and lack of means to industrialise the country.

In the countries where feudal relations persist it is impossible to do away with eco-nomic backwardness and the poverty of the people without an agrarian revolution or a radical agrarian reform. Although in some places bourgeois governments carry out par-tial agrarian changes for the benefit of the peasants, only people’s power based on an alliance of the working class and peasantry is capable of abolishing completely all the survivals of feudalism and of transferring the land to the peasants without compensation.

The alliance of the working class and peasantry, which is primarily directed against feudal-landlord oppression, is an essential condition for establishing a broad democratic coalition that united all the progressive forces.

Capitalist Monopolies Are the Chief Robbers of the Workers and Peasants

In the well-developed capitalist countries the chief enemy of all the oppressed classes, including the peasantry, is monopoly capital. Large capitalist combines acquire power not only over industry, but also over agriculture. They exploit not only the work-ers, but| also the peasants.

Through a ramified network of credit institutions, land banks and insurance and other companies, finance capital has subordinated millions of peasant holdings to its control. The dearness of industrial commodities, low prices for agricultural produce, and rising taxes and rents force the peasants to borrow from banks by mortgaging their land or other property. This results in ever greater indebtedness of the working peasants, who become increasingly dependent on capital. In case of non-payment of the debt, which happens more and more frequently, the land becomes the property of the banks and in-surance companies. Thus, in 1956 in the U.S.A. 30.1 per cent of all farm land was mort-gaged to banks, insurance companies and other credit institutions. The mortgage debts (i.e., the total credit received on the security of land) of American farmers, and therefore their dependence on the banks and other monopolies, is continually increasing. In the post-war period the total of these debts more than doubled, amounting to 11,200 million dollars in 1959.

The price policy of the capitalist monopolies has a serious effect on the position of the peasantry. This policy consists in buying agricultural produce and raw materials from the peasants at low prices and in selling them industrial commodities at high prices. This unequivalent exchange produces a gap between the prices (the “price scis-sors”), as a result of which the peasants receive for the same quantities of agricultural produce less and less of the machines, fertilisers and fuel that they need. For example, in France the prices of the industrial commodities bought by the peasants had increased 36-fold in 20 years (1938-58), while the prices at which the peasants sold their produce had increased only 16-fold.

The “price scissors” is a concealed form of robbery of the peasants by the monopo-lies. The high taxes to pay for the militarisation of the economy and the armaments race, to maintain the expanded state machinery and to subsidise the monopolies are an open form of robbing the peasants. The workers and peasants bear the main burden of the taxes. For example, in France the working peasants pay about 40 different kinds of tax. Marx vividly defined the hatred of the French countryside for the taxes. He wrote: “When the French peasant paints the devil, he paints him in the guise of a tax-collector.”219

The peasants pay a large tribute in the form of rent to the big landowners and banks. In 1950-56, the U.S. farmers paid an average of 3,000 million dollars of rent a year, which nearly equals the sum of the annual incomes of the American monopolies from foreign investments.

The oppression of the monopolies and the competition of the big farms, which use machinery on a large scale, ruin large numbers of the peasantry. In the U.S.A., for exam-ple, the number of farms decreased by 1.3 million in 15 years (1940-54), and by a further

1.1 million in the next five years (1954-59). In the countries belonging to the European Economic Community (the German Federal Republic, France, Italy, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg) between 1950 and 1958 the number of those independently engaged in agriculture decreased by 3.5 million as a result of the ruin of small peasant farms.

With the conversion of monopoly capitalism into state-monopoly capitalism the ousting of medium and small peasant farms becomes a deliberate policy of bourgeois governments. Such is the aim of so- called programmes of “aid"’ to agriculture, which in reality proves to be aid to the big capitalist farmers. They receive credits and subsidies from the state to buy machinery, fertilisers and building materials, and this at the same time artificially creates a profitable market for the capitalist corporations which are in-terested in selling these commodities.

The direct invasion of agriculture by big capital is a characteristic feature of the post-war period. This is one of the most important reasons for the considerable changes that have taken place during the last 10-15 years in the technical equipment of capitalist agriculture in the U.S.A., Canada, Britain, France, and the Federal Republic of Ger-many. A high degree of mechanisation of agricultural enterprises, extensive use of chemical fertilisers, use of selected seeds and the breeding of pedigree cattle are becom-ing more and more typical of the agriculture of these countries. Characterising the changes in U.S. agriculture, the American economist, Victor Perlo, writes: “Monopoly capital, seeking ever new areas for investment, is no longer satisfied with the indirect appropriation of ground-rent and of surplus-value produced in agriculture, through the price scissors and interest on debts. It is moving into direct operation of large-scale agri-cultural enterprises on a vast scale.... For monopoly capital, full application of advanced techniques combined with the hiring of farm labour, mainly Negro, Puerto Rican and Mexican, at extremely low wages, permit the realisation of a satisfactory rate of profit despite the price scissors.”

It is not by chance that the ideologists of monopoly capital in the U.S.A. and other countries repeat over and over again that it is high time the “technically weak farms” were more quickly done away with and more generous state support given to the large holdings. A new danger of ruin is threatening millions of peasant holdings. For example, according to the plan for the “integration” of agriculture in the six countries of the “common market” during the next few years eight million peasant farms will disappear. State-monopoly capitalism threatens the very existence of the peasantry as a class.

All this inevitably leads to the struggle of the peasants in the principal capitalist countries becoming essentially an anti-monopoly struggle. The oppression of the mo-nopolies has also considerably increased in the colonial and dependent countries, where it is combined with feudal forms of exploiting the peasantry. Here the land hunger of the peasantry results not only from the concentration of land in the hands of the landlords, but also from the fact that vast areas of land are taken up by plantations owned by for-eign monopolies. Whereas formerly emancipation from the oppression of the feudal landlords was the peasants’ main problem, today they are facing everywhere the prob-lem of fighting the oppression of the monopolies as well.

2. Communists Are Defenders of the Vital Interests of the Peasant Masses

The policy of the Communist Parties on the peasant question takes into account the changes in the objective content of this question in our epoch. At the same time it is based on the special features of the position of the peasantry in the different countries.

Whatever the nature of the enemy against whom the working people of the country-side are waging their struggle, defence of the immediate interests of the peasants is one of the chief aims of this struggle. The Communist and Workers’ Parties consider it a vital duty to defend such demands of the peasants and agricultural workers as equalisa-tion of the rights of the agricultural workers with those of the workers of other occupa-tions, abolition of the “price-scissors”, reduction of taxes and rent, provision of cheap credit, and expansion of the market for agricultural produce by raising the wages of the working people and re-establishing normal trade relations with all countries.

The Communists take into account the special features of the position of the peas-antry not only in each country as a whole, but also in its various regions. In the south of Italy, for example, land hunger is a particularly acute problem. The Italian Communists therefore consider helping the peasants in their struggle for land to be of paramount im-portance. In the north of Italy, where there are large agricultural enterprises of a capital-ist type (which is also characteristic of many areas in France), the defence of the vital interests of the agricultural workers is the first and foremost task; this includes the sup-port and organisation of their struggle for increased wages, improved working condi-tions, unemployment relief, etc.

It has also been shown in practice that the peasants can be helped through parliament. The Italian and French Communist Parties have extensive experience in this respect. The Italian Communists conduct a continual, vigorous struggle in parliament for the improve-ment of the terms of agricultural agreements in the interests of working tenants, for the establishment of rent control, etc. The Italian and French Communists succeeded in having their parliaments adopt a number of laws in the interests of the peasants.

In the struggle for the interests of the peasantry the Communists have to overcome many difficulties and obstacles. The bourgeois parties and groups, and in many countries the Catholic Church, do all they can to keep the peasants under their influence, carry on a demagogic propaganda among them, and slander the working class and the Commu-nists. They try to hinder the formation and consolidation of an alliance of the working class and peasantry and to prevent the spread of the influence of the Communist Parties in the countryside. The difficulties encountered by the Communist Parties in their work in the countryside are also due to the fact that a considerable part of the peasant organi-sations in North America {U.S.A., Canada) and in West European countries, except It-aly, are under the influence of the reactionary parties and groups connected with mo-nopoly capital.

Peasants’ Struggle for Agrarian Reform

Since the overwhelming majority of the peasants own little or no land, the struggle for agrarian reform becomes one of their most important aims.

After the war, the ruling circles of a number of capitalist countries were forced, un-der the pressure of the mass of the peasants, to effect a certain redistribution of land. But the reforms carried out by the bourgeoisie and the landlords were, of course, inadequate. Even in Italy, where the biggest struggle for land occurred, the reform was a very lim-ited one and failed to satisfy the needs and hopes of the peasantry. Only 11 per cent of large landed property was affected by the agrarian reform. The distribution of land was not substantially altered. In Italy there are still 2.5 million landless peasants, while 1.7 million peasants have plots of 0.6 hectares or less.

The Communist and Workers’ Parties are uniting the peasants to struggle for a truly democratic agrarian reform. Their main demand is “Land for those who till it”. At the same time, in proposing solutions to the problem of allotting land to the peasants, the programmes of the Marxist parties take into consideration the special features of the agrarian relations in the country concerned.

The French Communist Party is fighting for the expropriation of the lands and prop-erty of the big landowners and for their transfer to the working peasants—small tenants, sharecroppers, agricultural workers and peasants having little land.

The Italian Communist Party regards a general agrarian reform as one of the “struc-tural reforms” to limit and undermine the economic power of the monopolies. Limitation of large-scale landownership is envisaged for the purpose of releasing up to 5 million hectares of land for handing over to the tenants and agricultural workers.

The agrarian reforms proposed by the Communist Parties of the Latin American countries envisage the confiscation of lands from landlords who own great estates and the gratuitous (or with a minimal compensation payment) transfer of these lands to the peasants owning little or no land. The documents of these Communist Parties declare that the democratic state which will be created in the course of the national-liberation struggle will recognise the peasants’ right to the ownership of land seized by them from the landlords and will issue them appropriate title deeds. The ownership of land will also be guaranteed to peasants who cultivate unused landlords' and state lands but do not have any property rights to these lands. Peasants who till land they have rented will be given possession of this land. In these countries the struggle for land constitutes one of the most important elements of the general democratic movement. It is clear that the success of this struggle is inseparable from the success of the national-liberation move-ment of the peoples of these countries against American imperialism.

Here the aims of the anti-imperialist revolution completely coincide with those of the anti-feudal agrarian revolution. This is particularly clearly confirmed by the victory of the people’s revolution in Cuba. The abolition of the power of the American monopo-lies there also deprived the big landowners, the possessors of latifundia, of all support. The Cuban people’s government transferred their land without compensation to the peasants and peasant co-operatives, into whose hands passed also a large part of the dwellings, farm buildings, cattle and other means of production that had belonged to the landlords and plantation owners.

The continuous and consistent struggle of the Marxist parties for turning the land

over to those who till it gives the lie to the bourgeois propaganda that tries to persuade the peasants that the Communists want to deprive them of land. As a matter of fact, the Communists guarantee the peasants not only the retention of the land they own, but also a reasonable increase in the land they farm.

3. What a Victory of the Working Class Offers the Peasants

The defenders of big capital and of the landlords continue to spread the slander that the proletarian revolution gives the peasants nothing and is hostile to them.

This slander is best disproved by the historical experience of Russia and the other socialist countries. Facts show that the proletarian revolution was not only far from hos-tile to the peasants, but that, on the contrary, it was this revolution that helped them to realise their most cherished hopes by giving them land and liberating them from the yoke of the landlords and capitalists.

In Russia, as early as November 8, 1917, i. e., the day following the revolution, the Second Congress of Soviets abolished the landlords’ ownership of land, without any compensation and declared that all land in the country was turned into national property and was transferred to the use of those who tilled it.

Agrarian reforms were also carried out in all the People’s Democracies. These re-forms abolished the landlords’ ownership of land put into effect the principle: “the land belongs to those who till it.” As a result of agrarian reforms in the European People’s Democracies, the peasants received 14 million hectares of arable land.

In China, the land reform carried out with the active participation of the peasants themselves gave the latter possession of about 50 million hectares of land. The peasants were exempted from paying rent to the landlords, which had constituted an average of one-half to three-quarters of the cost of the crop, and were freed from other burdens and requisitions.

In summarising the experience of the socialist revolution in Russia, Lenin repeatedly and insistently pointed out that with the establishment of the power of the working peo-ple the first and foremost duty of the new government would be to adopt measures for an immediate and decisive improvement of the material standards of the peasant masses. Lenin regarded such measures as one of the decisive factors in consolidating the power of the workers and peasants, the alliance of these classes under the leadership of the working class.

At the same time, Lenin stressed that a division of land alone, a mere transfer of the landed estates to the peasants, does not solve the peasant question and does not deliver the working peasants from poverty, kulak dominance, backwardness and the low pro-ductivity of small-scale farming. Only collective cultivation of the land, only co-operation on a socialist basis can pave the way to a well-to-do life for the peasantry.

In strict accord with these directives of Lenin's, the Communists of all countries ap-peal to the working peasants to take the path of building socialism.

Now hundreds of millions working on the land know from their own experience that only by socialist unification, co-operative association, is it possible to improve the life of

all peasants and to put an end to the exploitation and oppression of man by man. Only socialist unification offers the working peasants the broadest opportunity of farming on the basis of the latest achievements of science, of improving the agricultural technique and making rational use of the powerful modern machinery which facilitates work and enormously raises its productivity, i.e., makes it possible to produce increasingly more material goods for every peasant.

Lenin considered it particularly important that the union of the peasants in producer co-operatives should be voluntary and based on their own interests. The peasant must be convinced from his own experience that large-scale collective farming using up-to-date machinery is much more profitable than petty farming.* In Lenin’s view, it is precisely the use of various forms of voluntary co-operation that makes possible in the country-side the transition to the new, socialist order “in a way that is simple, easy and intelligi-ble to the peasant”.

• See Chapter 22 for Lenin’s Co-operative Plan in greater detail.

When the enemies of socialism assert that the peasantry, as a class of private own-ers, is by nature alien and hostile to socialism, they manifest their contempt and disdain for the peasantry and their flagrant under-estimation of the common sense and creative abilities inherent in the peasantry as a class. The working class and the Communist Party resolutely reject such an approach to the working people of the countryside. They have a profound faith in the intelligence of the working peasants, believe in their creative pow-ers and are certain that under the friendly leadership of the working class the peasantry is quite capable of becoming an active builder of the advanced, socialist system. Experi-ence has fully confirmed these views.

The Soviet Union was the first country where mass socialist cooperative association was carried into effect in the countryside. For three decades now the Soviet peasants have been living under a socialist, collective-farm system. Instead of the 25 million small and tiny peasant holdings which existed in the country when collectivisation be-gan, the Soviet Union now has more than 44,000 agricultural artels, i.e., large-scale so-cialist farms (in the post-war period, as a result of increasing the size of the collective farms, their number is considerably less than before the war). The sizes of these farms make it possible to use the powerful modern machinery produced by state industry.

The increase in the technical equipment of the collective farms and the advantages of large-scale farming result in raising the living standards of the peasants; moreover, the rise applies not to a particular group or section of the peasants, but to the whole peasantry.

The victory of the co-operative system in the agriculture of the countries of the so-cialist camp is a great achievement of the alliance of the working class and peasantry. The creation of co-operatives in the countryside is the only correct and reliable way of radically improving the life of the peasants and of introducing modern scientific and technological methods into the historically backward countryside. The advantages of association have become so evident that even in capitalist countries the peasants seek to

organise co-operatives to aid them in a collective defence against the attacks of the mo-nopolies. Later on this may facilitate socialist co-operative organisation of the bulk of the peasantry in these countries.

The history of recent decades shows what a great force the alliance of the working class and peasantry is and how much it can and does give both classes. That is why the creation and strengthening of this alliance is one of the most important tasks of the Communist and Workers' Parties.

CHAPTER 16

THE NATIONAL-LIBERATION MOVEMENT  OF THE PEOPLES AGAINST IMPERIALISM

1. Rise of the National-Liberation Movement and Break-up of the Colonial System

Only a few decades ago the colonial rule of the imperialist power seemed unshakable. The division of the world into a handful of privileged, oppressor nations and an over-whelming majority of oppressed peoples deprived of rights was declared by the imperial-ists to be a natural state of affairs, which could not be changed. The ideologists of coloni-alism talked of the racial inferiority of the enslaved peoples and depicted them as an enormous mass of human beings for ever stagnating in apathy and submissive indiffer-ence. However, the idea that colonial domination could not be shaken proved an illusion. Life itself refuted the slander about the inferiority of the peoples of the colonial and de-pendent countries, about their passivity and eternal submissiveness to the imperialists. The crisis of the colonial system began simultaneously with the general crisis of capitalism.

The Split of the World into Two Systems and the Rise  of the National-Liberation Movement

Here too the turning-point was the Great October Socialist Revolution. By shaking the very foundations of imperialism it gave a mighty impetus to the national-liberation movement in the East, opening up for it prospects of victory over the colonialists. The October Revolution for the first time successfully united in one stream the uprising of the proletariat against the capitalist system and the struggle of the enslaved peoples of tsarist Russia for the overthrow of national-colonial oppression.

The first socialist state became an inexhaustible source of moral and political sup-port for the oppressed peoples of the world. In particular they saw the inspiring example of the Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union, which in a very short period of his-tory passed from colonial backwardness to the all-round flowering of their national economy and culture.

A new stage of the national-liberation struggle began as a result of the Second World War. Many countries of the colonial world were drawn into the maelstrom of war; some of them (in Asia and North Africa) themselves became the theatre of hostili-ties. The needs of war economy impelled the imperialist powers to speed up the devel-opment of certain industries in their colonial possessions and this led to the rapid growth of the local proletariat.

The emancipatory, anti-fascist character assumed by the Second World War in the course of time, especially after the Soviet Union entered it, evoked a mighty response among all the oppressed peoples. The rise of the political consciousness and organisa-tion of the masses was also facilitated by the internal weakness of the Western colonial powers that became evident during the war years.

The most favourable conditions for the development and success of the national-

liberation movement were created by new alignment of forces in the international arena resulting from the rout of German fascism and Japanese imperialism and from the strengthening of the might of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the people’s de-mocracies. The formation of the world system of socialism and the associated weaken-ing of the positions of the imperialist camp made it easier for many countries of Asia and Africa to win their independence. The national-liberation struggle has assumed gi-gantic dimensions and the crisis of colonialism has entered its concluding phase, that of the break-up of the colonial system.

In 1939 the colonialists still dominated almost two-thirds of mankind. After the Sec-ond World War, however, the situation radically altered. The colonial empires that were the creation of centuries began to collapse with increasing speed. Between 1945 and 1960 more than 1,500 million people freed themselves from the imperialist yoke and took the path of independent development. In the colonies that still remain there are now not more than 76 million people, less than three per cent of the world’s population. Thus, the complete elimination of the colonial system is on the way. With its final dis-appearance what is perhaps the most shameful page in the annals of capitalism will have been turned over.

The break-up of the system of colonialism is thus a result of the powerful upsurge of the national-liberation struggle under favourable international conditions created by the weakening of imperialism and the transformation of socialism into a world force.

The imperialists try in every way to belittle the role and significance of the national-liberation movement. For this purpose they insistently spread the myth that the colonial and semi-colonial countries have won their political freedom not as a result of struggle and revolution, but with the aid of the imperialist powers. At the same time attempts are made to picture the long rule of the capitalist monopolies in the colonial countries as a necessary period of “preparing” these countries for independent existence. In this con-nection a great deal is being said about the “civilising mission” of capitalism in the colonies.

As a matter of fact, the “mission” of capitalism in the colonies had nothing to do with the interests of their peoples. The imperialists were never concerned with the all-round development of the economy of the colonies or with preparing them for independ-ent existence. All fabrications to this effect are exposed by the simple fact that all the countries that have broken away from imperialist oppression and have become inde-pendent are underdeveloped, i. e., they are very backward economically, precisely be-cause of foreign domination.

It stands to reason that during the many decades of their rule in the colonies the im-perialists have objectively and in spite of themselves done some historically useful work there. Guided by egotistic, mercenary considerations they have objectively and against their will hastened the ripening of the prerequisites for a political and social revolution in Asia. It is precisely in connection with this that Marx referred to the colonialists as “the unconscious tool of history”. At the same time, however, he emphasised that the “civilising” activity of the imperialist bourgeoisie promised the masses neither national

nor social liberation. In particular Marx wrote: “All the English bourgeoisie may be forced to do in India will neither emancipate nor materially mend the social condition of the mass of the people, depending not only on the development of the productive pow-ers, but on their appropriation by the people.” He furthermore pointed out that the Hin-doos would never be able to reap the fruits of civilisation till they “themselves shall have grown strong enough to throw off the English yoke altogether”.220

History has confirmed the correctness of Marx’s words. It has also demonstrated that from the point of view of the imperialist “civilisers” no people of any colony is ever “ripe” enough or “quite ready” for independent existence till it rises against the rule of the colonialists. The facts testify that the colonialists leave only when forced to do so by the actions of the mass of the people. The colonial peoples wrest their independence from the imperialists; they do not get it as a gift.

The liberation of the hundreds of millions of colonial slaves has taken place, of course, in various ways, including armed struggle and methods of political pressure. But whatever the concrete means, the basis of liberation has always been a struggle of the broad mass of the people.

Driving Forces of the National-Liberation Struggle

The colonial oppression of the imperialists weighs heavily, although in varying de-gree, on nearly all the sections of the population of the enslaved countries, impelling them to struggle for liberation. In view of their vital interests, the working class, the peasantry and considerable sections of the local bourgeoisie cannot reconcile themselves to the rule of foreign monopolies, which is responsible for the ruthless plunder of natural resources, hunger, poverty and all manner of oppression. And if, nevertheless, the impe-rialists succeed in finding some kind of support in these countries it is only in the shape of a handful of feudal chiefs, whose power is maintained by foreign bayonets, and the parasitic groups of the big bourgeoisie who make their profits by collaborating with the colonialists. The absolute majority of the population of the colonies sympathises with the liberation struggle or directly participates in it.

The most active part in this struggle is played by the working class. Despite its rela-tive numerical weakness in the colonial countries, the working class and the Communist Parties which stand at the head of it are in the forefront of the national-liberation move-ment. The working class sooner than any other acquires class and national consciousness because it suffers more than any other class from exploitation and racial discrimination. As an advanced class opposed to all oppression and free from mercenary considerations, the young proletariat of the colonies better than any other section expresses the funda-mental, vital interests of the whole people. Experience has shown the working class to be the most consistent anti-imperialist force capable of securing the following of the broad sections of the peasantry and urban working people.

The peasantry, which suffers from a double oppression of the local feudal chiefs and the foreign monopolies—is a tremendous potential force. The peasantry forms the broadest mass basis of the national-liberation movement. For the peasantry the elimina-

tion of colonial oppression is inseparably connected with the abolition of the feudal sur-vivals in the countryside and with the solution of the agrarian question—the question of land. However, as Lenin pointed out, the peasantry is the most numerous section and, at the same time, the section of the population that is “hardest to move”. Owing to the very conditions of its existence, its illiteracy and backwardness, the colonial peasantry cannot take the lead in the liberation struggle of the people. In saying this, the Communists in no way belittle the historic role of the peasantry in this struggle, but merely note objec-tive facts. They never forget that the peasants constitute the majority of the population in the colonial and dependent countries and that therefore only through a close alliance with the peasantry can the working class become the leader of the national-liberation movement.

The most contradictory element of this movement is the bourgeoisie. The various groups of the bourgeoisie have not only different but frequently diametrically opposite attitudes to the national-liberation struggle. The reactionary top section of the bourgeoi-sie and the comprador bourgeoisie connected with imperialism are usually hostile to the national forces. Together with the feudal landlords, who are interested in retaining their privileges, this part of the bourgeoisie forms the bulwark of imperialist rule in the colo-nies.

The so-called national bourgeoisie usually takes a different view of the matter be-cause, as a rule, it invests its capital in industry and is therefore interested in creating and controlling a national market and in defending it against the rapacity of foreign monopo-lies: It sees the way of achieving this in the creation of a national state and in liberation from foreign dependence.

The national bourgeoisie, which itself suffers from the dominance of foreign mo-nopolies and is humiliated by the imperialists, seeks not only to join the national move-ment, but to control it. Since it is the bourgeoisie that has the greatest access to educa-tion and political activity under the conditions of colonial oppression, it is no wonder that in many countries the prominent leaders of the liberation movement come precisely from its ranks and that it seeks to impose its own slogans on the movement.

Marxists give due credit to this progressive section of the bourgeoisie for its patri-otic efforts and they support its struggle against the reactionaries and imperialists for national freedom and independence. But at the same time Marxists-Leninists do not shut their eyes to the inconsistency and vacillations of the national bourgeoisie, to its endeav-our to retain many survivals of the old in social life, and to the existence of anti-patriotic groups in its ranks. Only the working class is capable of fighting consistently against imperialist oppression and for complete national independence.

That briefly is how Marxism-Leninism sees the question of the driving forces of the national struggle. Of course, the concrete situations in the different countries vary greatly. Everywhere, however, the national-liberation movement is based on the com-mon interest of the widest social strata in economic and cultural progress, is getting rid of colonial enslavement, plunder by foreign monopolies and the belittling of national dignity.

International Working-Class Movement and Struggle of the Colonial Peoples

Marxism has been from the very outset an irreconcilable enemy of all national op-pression and has consistently fought for national equality, for the complete freedom and self-determination of nations. The well-known formula of Marx and Engels, “A people that oppresses other peoples cannot itself be free”, was termed by Lenin the “fundamen-tal principle of internationalism”. And proletarian internationalism is an inalienable part of Marxism.

Abolition of national oppression is of vital interest to the working class because this oppression always and primarily affects the working people, hampers their spiritual de-velopment and keeps them away from the class struggle. By engendering distrust and alienation among the workers of different nationalities it prevents them from coming together and joining their forces in the struggle for their common class demands. Lenin noted that “nothing so much holds up the development and strengthening of proletarian class solidarity as national injustice”.221

The revolutionary Marxist parties always resolutely supported the liberation struggle of the colonial peoples against the imperialist bourgeoisie oppressing them. As early as 1916, Lenin wrote: “Socialists must not only demand the unconditional and immediate liberation of the colonies without compensation—and this demand in its political ex-pression signifies nothing else but the recognition of the right to self-determination—but they must render determined support to the more revolutionary elements in the bour-geois-democratic movements for national liberation in these countries and assist their uprising—and, if such be the case, their revolutionary war— against the imperialist powers that oppress them.”222

Lenin had profound faith in the creative powers of the peoples of the East and he foresaw that the great day would come when they would break the fetters of colonial enslavement. The decisive historical significance that he attached to the co-operation of the working-class and national liberation movements is evident from the fact that he de-clared it would be correct to supplement the well-known slogan of Marx and Engels by saying: “Workers of all countries and oppressed peoples, unite!”223

The imperialist bourgeoisie tries to set against this position its programme of retain-ing the colonies. Bourgeois propaganda— not without the aid of Right-wing socialists—tries to persuade workers who are not class-conscious that the retention of colonial pos-sessions is in their interests. It asserts that renunciation of the colonies will entail grave economic and social consequences, that it will stop the supply of raw materials to the metropolitan countries and will result in curtailment of production, unemployment and deprivation. A powerful stream of such propaganda is directed against the workers of Britain, France, Holland and the other colonial powers where “imperial” traditions and prejudices are especially persistent. The Communists and other progressive elements who demand that the colonies should be granted immediate independence are accused by the imperialists of “subversive activity”, attacks on “historically established connec-tions”, etc.

Communists do not in any way deny the importance of the economic connections

established between the metropolitan states and their colonies. Nor do they deny the fact that the industry of the developed countries depends on the supply of raw materials from Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Britain, for example, cannot do without Middle East-ern oil, which covers 70 per cent of her fuel needs. But does this mean that the Arab countries must continue to be colonies of British imperialism? Britain must and can re-ceive Middle Eastern oil, Malayan rubber and African cotton, but she must do so under normal commercial conditions and not by robbing the legitimate owners of these re-sources. It is therefore not a question of breaking the economic connections which have been historically established between the metropolitan states and their colonies, but one of transforming the forced, imperialist relations into voluntary and mutually profitable ones. If anything suffers by that, it will only be the profits of the big capitalists and not the interests of the mass of the people.

Experience teaches the class-conscious workers that colonialism does great harm to the fundamental interests of the working people of both the oppressed and oppressor nations. The super-profits extorted by the monopolies from the colonies have failed to bring happiness to any people. To be sure, the imperialist bourgeoisie throws crumbs from these super-profits to the representatives of the privileged top layer of the working class in an endeavour to bribe them and turn them into its hangers-on. But this layer of the “workers’ aristocracy” is very thin, and its existence only harms the common cause of the working people, because this “workers’ aristocracy” is most easily made the vehi-cle of bourgeois influence in the working class.

Nor must we forget that colonialism has become the source and breeding-ground of extreme reaction in the metropolitan states themselves. The colonies have become a ral-lying place for the dregs of bourgeois society, who enter the service of the colonialists and learn to apply methods of terroristic suppression. In 1936, the Spanish colonies of Africa were the incubator in which Franco’s uprising against the Republic was hatched. History repeated itself in Algeria where the fascist cut-throats serving in the French parachute troops in North Africa started an anti-Republican mutiny and then became the bulwark of reaction on the territory of France herself. Thus, following the Spaniards, the French workers have been able to see for themselves that Marxism was right in its con-clusion made long ago that a people which oppresses other peoples runs the risk of los-ing its own freedom.

Attitude of the Working Class to Nationalism of Oppressed Nations

The movement of the peoples for colonial liberation is often waged under the banner of nationalism. In this connection the servitors of imperialism slanderously assert that Communists support the liberation struggle of the colonial peoples only as a matter of tactics; as internationalists they allegedly cannot sympathise with the nationalist aspira-tions of the peoples of Asia and Africa.

Such allegations are false from start to finish. In making them the advocates of colo-nialism are merely trying to introduce confusion into the clear question as to who are the friends and who are the enemies of the national-liberation movement.

Marxism-Leninism approaches nationalism, as it does all social phenomena, from a concrete historical point of view, i.e., from the point of view of the interests of social progress. Lenin repeatedly warned against abstract formulations of the question of na-tionalism and above all against confusing the nationalism of an oppressor nation with that of an oppressed nation.

The imperialist states, such as the U.S.A., Britain, France, etc., are one thing. Here bourgeois nationalism has become the symbol of national exceptionalism, racial arro-gance and militant chauvinism. It serves the monopoly bourgeoisie to justify enslave-ment of other nations. To this reactionary, colonialist nationalism, Communists, as pro-letarian internationalists, are indeed irreconcilably hostile.

The nationalism of the peoples of the colonial and dependent countries is another thing. This nationalism, as a rule, reflects the sound democratise of the national-liberation movements, the protest of the masses against imperialist oppression and the striving for national independence and social reforms. Lenin had this in mind when he wrote: “The bourgeois nationalism of every oppressed nation has a general democratic content which is directed against oppression, and it is this content that we support un-conditionally.”224

The nationalism in the countries of contemporary Asia and Africa is, as a general rule, precisely such nationalism. It is a nationalism of oppressed nations struggling against their enslavers and fighting for political and economic independence. It mani-fests itself in countries where national ties are for the most part only in the process of formation and where the bourgeoisie as a whole is, under certain conditions, still able to play a historically progressive role. Noting this trait of the bourgeoisie, Lenin wrote: “The Western bourgeoisie is in a state of decay; it is already confronted by its grave-digger—the proletariat. In Asia, in contrast, there is still a bourgeoisie capable of cham-pioning sincere, militant, consistent democracy, a worthy comrade of France’s great enlighteners and great leaders of the close of the eighteenth century.

“The principal representative or the principal social support of this Asian bourgeoi-sie, which is still capable of fighting in a historically progressive cause, is the peas-ant.”225

The nations and national consciousness in the countries of Asia and Africa are being formed in the struggle against imperialism and feudalism; this leads to the awakening of the masses from medieval dormancy, to a struggle against colonialism, backwardness and reaction. All this imparts to the nationalism of the contemporary East a democratic, progressive content. National consciousness forms the initial stage of anti-imperialist consciousness, particularly for the many millions of peasants.

Marxist-Leninists regard such nationalism as historically justified. They can support it with a clear conscience and they do so without relinquishing an iota of the principles of proletarian internationalism.

Of course, Communists are aware that even the nationalism of an oppressed nation has its reverse side. It usually reflects the ideology and desires of a reactionary top sec-tion of exploiters who endeavour to utilise nationalist slogans in their own selfish inter-

ests, often at the expense of other nations.

Communists support nationalism only in so far and as long as it serves the cause of winning national freedom and victory over imperialism and feudalism, and awakening in the masses a sense of their own dignity, which the oppressors suppressed and derided. All preaching of racial or national exclusiveness, all attempts to make use of nationalism for reactionary purposes, as an instrument of national egotism and subjugation of other peoples, or for the struggle against the just demands of the masses cannot meet with the sympathies of Communists.

Historic Significance of the Break-up of the Colonial System

Imperialism impedes general human progress not only by suppressing the working classes in the developed capitalist countries but also by forcing whole peoples into ob-scurity—the peoples of the colonies and semi-colonies. The powerful upsurge of the national-liberation struggle signifies the awakening of half of mankind to active partici-pation in the making of history, participation in deciding the fate of the world. This has-tens the advance of progress and vastly extends its scope.

The masses of people in Asia and Africa who have joined the national-liberation movement are a powerful factor in the destruction of imperialism, in intensifying all its contradictions. The colonies and dependent countries are still very important for the im-perialists. There the monopolies obtain at very low costs the raw materials they require and sell their industrial commodities at exorbitant prices. In the colonies and semi-colonies the imperialists establish their war bases, strongholds and communications. The national-liberation movement undermines and sometimes altogether abolishes these po-sitions of imperialism. Moreover, it transforms the colonial and dependent countries from a reserve of imperialism into allies of the progressive anti-imperialist forces. Fol-lowing the formation of the world system of socialism, the break-up of the colonial em-pires is another crushing blow against imperialism.

The break-up of the colonial system has an important, favourable influence on the development of international relations. Many of the young national states of Asia and Africa pursue an independent peaceful policy, joining the vast “peace zone”. Their anti-war position is one of the reasons why war has ceased to be fatally inevitable. The na-tional-liberation movement strengthens the cause of peace also by shattering the un-equal, forced forms of relations between countries, promotes closer relations of peoples and reduces the possibility of war conflicts.

The Programme of the C.P.S.U. adopted at its Twenty-Second Congress gives due credit to the great international role of the newly-independent countries: “The national states become ever more active as an independent force on the world scene; objectively, this force is in the main a progressive, revolutionary and anti-imperialist force. The countries and peoples that are now free from colonial oppression are to play a prominent part in the prevention of a new world war—the focal problem of today.”226

The cessation of the rapacious exploitation of the colonial countries and the devel-opment of their national economy make it possible to utilise world resources much more

fruitfully. This brings closer the time when it will be possible to overcome the glaring difference that now exists in the levels of economic development of the different coun-tries and to secure for all the people on earth a life worthy of human beings. The revival and development of the thousand-year-old culture of the peoples of the East, which has been slighted and subjected to destruction by the colonialists for centuries, will at last enrich the culture of the whole world.

The decay of the colonial system is thus a tremendous triumph not only for the peo-ples who have thrown off the colonial yoke, but also for all progressive humanity.

2. Main Achievements of the National-Liberation Revolutions  in Asia, Africa and Latin America

As a result of the diversity in the conditions and forms in which the former colonial countries won their independence, they have found themselves at different stages of po-litical development. This is particularly true of the countries which threw off the yoke of colonialism after the Second World War.

Where the anti-imperialist front was under the leadership of the working class and its Marxist, Communist Parties, the revolution did not stop at the bourgeois-democratic stage but developed into a socialist revolution, along the lines of a people’s democracy.

Where the movement was headed by the bourgeoisie or bourgeois influences pre-dominated in the anti-imperialist national front, the national bourgeoisie that came to power led society along the path of capitalist development, thus delaying the transition to a higher stage of the revolution.

As a result of the break-up of the colonial system the following are the principal groups of countries that have now been formed:

1. Countries which, having thrown off the yoke of imperialism, have taken the path of building socialism. This group has broken away not only from the colonial but also from the capitalist system and has joined the socialist camp (the Chinese People’s Re-public, the Korean People’s Democratic Republic and the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam).

2. Countries which have won their political independence and pursue an independ-ent foreign policy, which have freed themselves from imperialist enslavement but re-main in the capitalist system of economy (India, Indonesia, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Ceylon, Iraq, the United Arab Republic, Algeria, Syria, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco, Libya, etc.).

3. Countries which won their independence but immediately allowed it to be greatly limited by entering into fettering economic agreements and joining the aggressive blocs of the imperialist powers (Pakistan, Thailand, the Philippines).

Lastly, some countries continue to be enslaved (colonies in Africa, remnants of the colonial possessions in Asia and Latin America, some island possessions of Britain, Por-tugal, the U.S.A. and other imperialist powers).

It should be remembered that, apart from the states which have firmly taken the path of building socialism, the other newly-independent states are still in process of political

formation. After the winning of independence, their social development has not only been greatly accelerated but is taking place under conditions of a sharp struggle of dif-ferent class forces. The policies of these countries and their position in the world system of states depend on the forces— reactionary or progressive—that gain the upper hand in this struggle. Owing to this the boundaries between the second and third groups of coun-tries are still quite fluid.

Asian Countries that Have Taken the Path of Socialism

An anti-imperialist and anti-feudal revolution in its most complete form has taken place in China, North Korea and North Viet-Nam, where it was headed by the working class led by Communist Parties.

The experience of these countries has shown that the leadership of the proletariat makes it possible to score the greatest success in achieving national liberation and elimi-nating the results of colonialist rule. Particularly instructive in this respect is the progress made by the great country of China. It had to solve problems similar to those which his-tory has posed before the other countries of Asia and Africa that have thrown off the yoke of imperialism. These problems include, in the first place, consolidation of the in-dependence won and its extension from the political sphere to the sphere of economy and culture. Closely connected with this is the great task of accelerating progress in the economic, social and cultural spheres so as to overcome the age-old backwardness and to put an end to the dominance of semi-feudal relations, poverty, ignorance and illiteracy of the broad mass of the working people.

How has People’s China coped with the gigantic tasks of national revival and recon-struction, the accomplishment of which all the peoples of Asia had vainly expected from their old rulers for many decades?

We shall start with the agrarian problem, which is particularly urgent and acute in the East. People’s China is the first of the large Asian states to have been able to use its state independence for carrying out broad democratic reforms, in the first place for solv-ing the land problem in favour of the working peasantry. In the course of three years (1949-52) the land reform in the Chinese People’s Republic put an end to feudal land-ownership. Some 50 million hectares of landlords’ land was transferred to the peasants.

As soon as the land reform had been carried out an extensive movement for co-operation in production was started in the countryside. By their own experience the peasants quickly learned the advantages of collective labour. As early as the middle of 1956, less than four years after the land reform, the co-operative organisation of agricul-ture was essentially completed.

People’s China courageously and completely put an end to its economic dependence on foreign capitalist monopolies by nationalising without compensation all the indus-trial, transport and commercial enterprises, banks and insurance companies these mo-nopolies had owned. The property of the comprador bourgeoisie, of the high officials of the Chiang Kai-shek regime and of all counter-revolutionaries, was nationalised at the same time.

The conversion of the principal means of production into national property and the transfer of the key economic positions to the people’s state made it possible to proceed to a planned industrialisation of the country and the most rational utilisation of all its resources. With the aid of the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries, China in less than four years restored her shattered economy and after another four years—in 1957—began to compete economically with Britain, one of the industrially most devel-oped capitalist states. This is at once a remarkable result of economic development and an indication of the tremendous potentialities of a country after taking the path of social-ist development. People’s China has raised the living standards of the working people in town and country, brought about an extensive cultural revolution and trained numerous national specialists for industry, agriculture and science.  

As a result, People’s China has been transformed in a historically short time into a really Great Power and an anti-imperialist and anti-colonial force of world importance. Its independent, peaceful policy is capable of producing a powerful effect on the situa-tion in Asia and throughout the world. The attempts of American imperialism to isolate the C.P.R. have ignominiously failed,

A similar development is taking place in the Korean People’s Democratic Republic and the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam, In these countries, as in China, a united peo-ple’s democratic front headed by the working class with its Communist Parties was formed. Land reform, confiscation and nationalisation of the property of foreign mo-nopolies and traitors to the motherland, and extensive democratisation of social and po-litical life, have ensured for these countries a rapid strengthening of their national inde-pendence, economy and culture.

Immediately after the establishment of people’s power, the peoples of both Korea and Viet-Nam had to fight a bitter war against foreign aggressors and the internal reac-tionary forces. This created tremendous difficulties for the young states, but they stood the test of war with honour and upheld their independence. The fraternal aid and support received by them from the other socialist states played an invaluable part in their strug-gle.

The fact that the southern parts of Korea and Viet-Nam are still under the rule of re-actionary bourgeois-landlord governments and their imperialist patrons has left its spe-cial mark on the development of the Korean People’s Democratic Republic and the De-mocratic Republic of Viet-Nam. The national-liberation struggle here cannot be consid-ered ended until national unity is restored. The K.P.D.R. and the D.R.V.N. play a his-torically progressive role as the standard- bearers of this unity.

Having taken the path of socialism, the People’s Democracies—the C.P.R., the K.P.D.R. and the D.R.V.N.—are quickly doing away with the consequences of colonial-ism and are vividly demonstrating the advantages and merits of this path to the other people that have thrown off the yoke of imperialism.

The Non-Socialist Asian States in the Struggle for Consolidating  Their Independence

The course of events in our time has fully confirmed the Marxist Leninist thesis that the national-liberation movement of the oppressed peoples is essentially anti-imperialist and that it strengthens the forces of peace, democracy and progress. This is true not only of the countries which have won their independence and are building socialism, but also of those which after becoming independent have remained capitalist.

Although the scope of the social transformations in many of the young states of Asia and the nature of the changes that occurred in the life of their peoples cannot be com-pared with the changes that have taken place in the socialist countries of Asia, the pro-gress made by them is incontestable. Appraising the situation in these states, the Pro-gramme of the C.P.S.U. points out that “Their peoples have entered a new period of de-velopment. They have emerged as makers of a new life and as active participants in world politics, as a revolutionary force destroying imperialism.”227

The appearance of the young national states on the international arena has radically altered the balance of forces in favour of peace. These states oppose the aggressive course of the imperialist powers, expose colonialism and strive to safeguard peace. A lasting peace is an objective necessity for the countries which have won their independ-ence and have set themselves the task of eliminating, as rapidly as possible, the eco-nomic backwardness they had inherited from colonialism. They have nothing to gain by war, which would only jeopardise their independence. Hence most of the young states pursue a policy of peace and international co-operation. The efforts exerted in this direc-tion by India, for example, have won her recognition and respect on the part of all peace-loving peoples. It is no accident that Asia became the birthplace of the famous “five principles” of peaceful coexistence confirmed in the decisions of the Bandung Confer-ence (April 1955).

Essential changes have likewise taken place in the internal situation of such coun-tries as India, Indonesia, Burma, Ceylon, etc. Since they won their political freedom they have spared no efforts in developing their national economy and reducing its depend-ence on the imperialist powers. In some of them nationalisation of the property of for-eign companies has been carried out to a greater or lesser extent (nationalisation of all Dutch enterprises in Indonesia, of insurance companies and some British mines in India, of two of the largest British shipping companies in Burma, of the port of Colombo in Ceylon, etc.). In all these countries the central banks and the management of the finan-cial system, which were previously wholly controlled by the colonialists, have passed into the hands of the state. Foreign capital is barred by legislation from a number of im-portant spheres of the national economy. Restrictions have been imposed on the export of profits by foreign monopolies and on the import of foreign goods that indigenous en-terprises have arranged to manufacture. The part played by the state-owned sector of the economy, especially in heavy industry, has increased in almost all the young Asian states. In recent years, industrial output has appreciably increased, the manufacture of many formerly imported commodities has been organised and the working class has

grown in numbers. Whereas before the Second World War the average annual rate of growth of production was one per cent, in recent years it has increased to four per cent.

The first cautious steps have been taken in land reform although the elimination of the survivals of feudalism in the countryside as a whole is proceeding slowly. In India it is mainly the feudal system of intermediaries—jagirdars and zemindars—introduced by the British that has been abolished. In the other liberated countries too land reform legis-lation has not gone beyond a certain restriction on land ownership by landlords, affect-ing only the biggest feudal chiefs, and a partial reduction of rent.

Of course, the national bourgeoisie, which has strengthened its position and ex-tended its sphere of activity, has gained the most from all the reforms so far carried out. This fully confirms Lenin’s remark that “from the standpoint of national relations, the best conditions for the development of capitalism are undoubtedly provided by the na-tional state”. 228 But at the same time national independence has contributed a good deal that is new and constructive to the life of the broad sections of the population in the young Asian states. The single fact alone that the working people in town and country no longer suffer from the double oppression that weighed on them before, alters the conditions of their existence and of the struggle for their economic and political rights. The situation for this struggle is much more favourable within the framework of an in-dependent state than it was during the arbitrary rule of the foreign monopolies.

Awakening of the Peoples of the Arab East

In recent years the peoples of the Arab East have come into the forefront of the na-tional-liberation struggle by undertaking a broad offensive against the positions of colo-nialism. Seven new states—Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Libya, Sudan, Tunisia and Mo-rocco—have come into being in this area since 1943. Extensive changes have also oc-curred in the Arab countries. A republic was proclaimed in Egypt and the country has completely freed itself from British occupation. As a result of the Revolution of July 14, 1958, the republican system has triumphed in Iraq, which was long considered a bul-wark of British dominion in the Arab world. The Algerian people’s many years of strug-gle to form their own free, independent state have been crowned with a glorious victory.

The struggle of the Arabs against imperialism and for their national independence is of great international significance. Its results are important not only for the Arabs them-selves, but also for the general fate of imperialism and its colonial policy. The fact is that the Middle East has come to play an important role in the economic, political and mili-tary strategy of the principal imperialist states, above all Great Britain and the United States. The Middle East is the site of numerous British and American war bases. Here, too, the foreign monopolies annually obtain millions of tons of cheap oil — nearly a quarter of the world's oil supply.

It is therefore easy to understand what a blow the imperialists suffered from the up-surge of the national-liberation struggle of the Arabs, who set out to recover their inde-pendence and become masters of the natural resources of the Arab East.

The blow was the more unexpected because the administration of the foreign colo-

nialists and the local feudal cliques supported by them had made the Arab peoples very backward economically, and the territories they inhabited had become some of the most poverty-stricken areas of the world. The imperialists thought the elementary struggle for existence absorbed all the Arabs’ energy and that their backward and downtrodden con-dition would prevent them from rising to an organised anti-colonial war.

These illusions collapsed first of all in Egypt, where the action of the army headed by nationalist-minded officers put an end to king Farouk’s regime and his pro-British clique. The Egyptian Republic nationalised the Suez Canal and destroyed the halo of “sanctity” with which the imperialist monopolies tried to surround their property in the Middle East. The attempt of the Anglo-French imperialists to restore the status quo and recover the Suez Canal by force of arms ended in defeat for the aggressors, while the faith of the Arabs in the triumph of their just cause still further increased.

The following two factors proved of particular importance for the success of the na-tional-colonial revolution in the Arab East.

Firstly, the final exposure of the Western powers as the bitterest enemies of Arab in-dependence. Britain and France destroyed the last remnants of trust by their armed at-tack on Egypt in the autumn of 1956. The United States, who managed to wear a mask of “anti-colonialism” longer than the others, also had to discard it. By proclaiming in 1957 the “Eisenhower Doctrine”, i.e., the intention to use armed force in the Middle East at its own discretion, and by illegally landing its troops in the Lebanon in 1958, Wash-ington showed the Arab peoples that its policy was determined by the interests of the American oil monopolies. This had far-reaching consequences, as evidenced by such facts as the anti-imperialist revolution in Iraq and the bankruptcy of the imperialist-sponsored Bagdad Pact, which lost its last Arab member.

Secondly, the friendly political and economic aid rendered to the Arab peoples by the Soviet Union and other socialist countries {Soviet aid in building the Aswan High Dam, in equipping the modern port of Hodeida in the Yemen, etc.). This disinterested support ended the economic, political and moral isolation in which the Arab countries were kept by the imperialists, and increased their strength tenfold. During such severe trials as the Suez conflict the Arabs saw particularly clearly who were their friends and enemies.

One of the characteristics of the liberation movement in the Middle East is that it is developing under the slogan of Arab unity. This idea was born in the struggle against the colonialists and for national independence, and it brought the Arab peoples closer to-gether.

As an expression of solidarity in the anti-imperialist struggle, and as a form of the fraternal co-operation and mutual aid of the Arab states, their unity plays a big and con-structive part in the struggle for independence. The idea of unity is particularly intelligi-ble to the mass of the working people who suffer equally from capitalist exploitation and from economic and cultural backwardness. As long as the slogan of unity retains its anti-imperialist character and does not have the aim of raising some Arab states above the others, it receives the support of all progressive, democratic forces.

However, the reactionary trends in the Arab world are trying to make this popular idea serve their own interests. The extreme nationalist groups seek to interpret the slogan of unity as one calling for immediate unification of all the Arab peoples around the strongest Arab state, with the aim of subordinating all of them to a single government.

It is quite clear, however, that state unification is a very complicated and delicate matter which cannot withstand haste or pressure and can be successful only when the objective prerequisites for it are present. A union in which the right of nations to self-determination is violated, and in which a nation loses even part of its social gains and political liberties, cannot be lasting and useful.

Struggle for the Liberation of the Peoples of Africa

Together with the island colonies of Britain, the United States, France, Portugal and several other imperialist powers, Africa remained for a long time one of the main strongholds of colonialism, For that very reason it has become the arena of a sharp con-flict of two opposite tendencies—the irrepressible striving of the African peoples for independence and the efforts of the imperialists at all costs to consolidate their positions in Africa in order to postpone the final collapse of the colonial system.

The age-old rule of the imperialists in Africa was of a particularly ruthless nature. This is accounted for by the terrible economic backwardness and the low cultural and political development of the population, which in many regions continues to live under conditions of feudal and even tribal relations. The so-called “colour bar”, a whole sys-tem of racial discriminations which humiliate the Africans and ensure a number of privi-leges for the white settlers, also served to consolidate foreign domination in Africa. Sav-age racial discrimination served to disunite the inhabitants of Africa, and facilitated the exploitation of the masses by the imperialists.

However, during recent decades here, too, a new alignment of forces has developed, favourable to the struggle for freedom and independence. Ever greater numbers of Afri-cans are migrating to the towns and are drawn into the growing industries (mainly min-ing and processing of agricultural produce). The workers of the factories, mines and transport are the first to go through a school of class and national consciousness. At the present time the working class in Africa already exceeds 12 million, of which three mil-lion are organised in trade unions. In Africa, where there are no working-class parties in most of the countries, an important part is played by the trade unions, which often as-sume the functions of political organisations. A great success for the working-class movement was the founding of the All-African Federation of Trade Unions. Since the war, youth, women’s and other organisations of Africans have also made their appear-ance. A local intelligentsia has emerged and among them a mood of resentment against discrimination and racial oppression has developed with exceptional rapidity. Millions of peasants, for the most part driven off the lands they had cultivated and now restricted to areas unfit for crop husbandry, also refuse to put up with the present situation.

As a result of the humiliations, terrorism, and manifold restrictions introduced in most of the colonies, the peoples of Africa have developed a deep hatred of the imperial-

ists. The example of Kenya shows what sharp forms the resistance of the African peo-ples to the dominance of the colonialists may assume. In that country the British military forces had to conduct extensive operations for many months against the tribes that had risen in arms; in the course of the operations both sides suffered big losses. Despite the cruel police terror, now one and now another African colony is shaken by extensive popular uprisings.

In spite of tremendous difficulties and sacrifices, the national-liberation struggle has borne fruit also in this part of the world. After 150 years, during which Africa was the colonial preserve of West European capital, it has rapidly advanced to the front line of the anti-colonial, anti-imperialist struggle. At the beginning of 1956 there were still only five independent states in the whole African continent. By the middle of 1962, however, there were already more than 30, and they included four-fifths of the population of the continent, i. e., more than 200 million people.

However, tens of millions of Africans are still in the position of colonial slaves. To this day the “Dark Continent” is still the world’s largest area of direct colonial exploita-tion. Over a score of African countries and territories, with a population of almost 40 million, are still bound by the fetters of colonial slavery. Britain, Portugal, Belgium, France and Spain still have colonial possessions in Africa. The 10-million indigenous population of the South African Republic lives under conditions marked by racial terror and colonial exploitation.

The struggle for the complete liberation of the African continent becomes more and more implacable. In Angola, Mozambique and the Cameroons it has taken the form of open clashes between the population and the troops of the colonialists.

Facts show that the imperialists are ready to employ the most subtle and extreme methods to maintain their hold in Africa. The African peoples had convincing proof of this from the example of the events in the Congo, That country has recently been the scene of the main efforts of the imperialist plunderers, headed by the U.S.A., which at all costs wants to keep in its hands the exceptional natural wealth of the country. The colonial powers have openly begun to destroy the Congolese national independence won by its people through many years of struggle. They impudently intervene in the internal affairs of the Congolese Republic, using methods of terror and bribery. They encouraged the murder of the head of the legal| government, the national hero Patrice Lumumba. They have set up the separatist puppet government of Tschombe and armed bandits of national traitors, through which to destroy the patriotic forces.

Consequently, the national liberation of the Congo, as of a number of other African countries, is still incomplete, and their peoples| face the prospect of a stubborn struggle for liberation, which alone can deliver them from the claws of the imperialists.

The colonialists try to bind the liberated countries of Africa by new forms of de-pendence. To this end they endeavour first of all to create in the young states a trusty support from venal elements, and at the same time to win over persons whose social and economic position impels them to come to an agreement with the imperialists. Whereas formerly they gave every possible support to the native clan and tribal nobility, which

they regarded as their chief bulwark, now they count on “taming” the local, mainly trad-ing, bourgeoisie. The imperialists hope to induce this bourgeoisie to make a deal with them and give them its support in the struggle against the masses. With this end in view they are giving a certain measure of encouragement to the local bourgeoisie and making minor financial and political concessions to it. With the aid of foreign firms they attempt to bribe unstable elements among the leaders of the national parties, civil servants and intellectuals who have studied in European countries.

Most of all, however, the imperialists put their hopes on splitting the ranks of the na-tional-liberation movement, on sowing discord and dissension among the national parties and leaders, and also among the young African states. They try to utilise for their own benefit the circumstance that nowhere is the liberation movement so disunited and scat-tered as in Africa, that nowhere else are there so many barriers of language and race. The colonial powers, headed by the U.S.A., are not averse to setting against one another com-peting nationalist leaders, chiefs of hostile tribes, and leaders of religious groups, thus put-ting the African peoples on the path of internecine struggle. With the same aim in view they would like to counterpose one group of the young African states to another, utilising the contradictions between these states to prolong their own domination. Hence the most important condition for the further success of the national-liberation movement in this part of the world is the establishment and utmost strengthening of the solidarity of the African peoples, both those already liberated and those still oppressed by imperialism.

This is the more important because the imperialists have no intention of voluntarily ceasing to plunder the wealth of Africa and devise all sorts of plans for jointly exploiting it. Particularly dangerous for the African countries, and above all for the former colonies of France and Britain, are the plans for drawing them into the “common market”. This is nothing but a modified version of the “Eurafrican” project, i.e., a plan for preserving and consolidating the economic and political positions of the imperialists in this continent.

Conditions today, however, are favourable for the struggle of the African peoples striving for complete independence. The sympathy of the world’s democratic forces is on their side. Some of the young African states have already achieved initial successes in winning economic independence. The national democratic parties in power in Ghana, Guinea, Mali and some other African countries are making it their aim to eliminate alto-gether the consequences of colonialism, to establish a national industry based on priority development of the state sector, to secure the progress of agriculture by carrying out land reforms in the interests of the peasantry and by organising cooperatives.

With the accomplishment of the tasks of political liberation, all the young African states are faced with the big problem of the prospects for their social and economic de-velopment. Under African conditions, these prospects have their specific features. The point is that capitalism here is mainly represented by foreign capital. Pre-capitalist rela-tions predominate in the life of the native population. In most areas private ownership of land has not yet developed and joint tillage of the soil is practised. The local bourgeoisie is still weak, it is still in process of formation, and in some countries it does not really exist as a class.

For the independent African states, or at any rate the majority of them, all this gives rise to the possibility of their achieving rapid social and political progress, omitting the painful path of capitalist development.

Latin American Countries in the Struggle for Real Independence

The experience of the Latin American countries vividly confirms the truth that po-litical independence which does not rest on a well-developed national economy does not suffice to guarantee the peoples' deliverance from imperialist oppression. Although the score of states in this part of the world have long been considered independent, almost all of them have actually remained heavily dependent on the imperialists.

The many years of domination of foreign, primarily North American, capital have retarded the economic, cultural and political development of the Latin American states. Even the largest of them do not have a well-developed, modern heavy industry and act as raw material appendages of the United States. The economy of nearly all Latin American countries is of the monoculture type, i. e., it supplies the North American mo-nopolies with some particular mineral or agricultural raw material (oil, ore, wool, coffee, meat, fruit, etc.). Hence their economy is enormously dependent on exports and imports, on the world prices of raw materials and industrial commodities. Taking advantage of this, foreign capital brings constant pressure to bear upon the Latin American countries and dictates the most unprofitable terms of exchange to them. As a rule, the U.S.A. pur-chases their raw materials at low prices and sells them its industrial commodities at high monopoly prices. Unequal exchange, along with the export of profits by foreign capital and extortionate interest on foreign credits and loans, devitalises the economy of the Latin American countries and perpetuates their economic backwardness.

Because of this, Latin America, like a magnet, attracts North American capital seek-ing profitable investment. During 1929-61 alone, capital investments of the U.S.A. in this area increased almost 3.5-fold, from $13,500 million to $12,000 million, which con-stitutes 36 per cent of all the foreign investments of the U.S.A.

The historical conditions under which many of the Latin American countries ac-quired their independence and the dominance of foreign monopoly capital led to stagna-tion and backwardness not only in the economic, but also in the social and political spheres. In most Latin American countries the power fell into the hands of a reactionary landlord oligarchy. The owners of innumerable herds and vast plantations—latifundia—sought only to enrich themselves and retain the privileges of their class at the expense of national interests. They willingly came to terms with North American capital in which they saw a wholesale buyer of their goods. The extreme cheapness of labour and the re-tention of feudal and semi-feudal relations in agriculture yielded enormous profits to the landowning oligarchy despite the low prices of agricultural produce established by the U.S. monopolies.

For a long time the national bourgeoisie in the Latin American countries was very weak and could not even dream of competing with foreign capital. At the same time the big trading bourgeoisie sought to retain the existing order of things in which it grew rich

by reselling goods imported from the U.S.A.

This is the main reason why many Latin American countries became a preserve of the blackest reaction and conservatism. Many of them were ruled by military dictators who were connected with the local latifundia-owning oligarchy and the North American monopolies. With the aid of the U.S.A. they ferociously suppressed all attempts of the mass of the working people to improve their condition.

Not even elementary land reforms have as yet been carried out in most of the Latin American countries, and millions of peasants have no land. At the same time the latifun-dia-owners, who comprise one per cent of the Latin American population, possess 50 per cent of all the tillable land. Their land monopoly was always the basis of tyrannical regimes. Hence the agrarian question cannot be separated from that of the democratisa-tion of political life in Latin America. Despite the republican system and the old free-dom-loving traditions of the peoples, until recently there were either no bourgeois-democratic liberties there or they were severely curtailed; the Left-wing, progressive parties were driven deep underground and many representatives of the intelligentsia, even of a bourgeois-liberal type, were forced to emigrate.

After many decades of a formally independent existence the peoples of Latin Amer-ica have now found themselves before a new stage of their national-liberation struggle, which must make the Latin American countries independent in the full sense of the word. Judging by the nature of the problems now facing the peoples of Latin America, it is a question of launching an anti-imperialist, agrarian, democratic revolution.

The events of recent years indicate that this new stage of the national-liberation struggle in Latin America has already begun and is successfully developing in spite of the counter-attacks of reaction and the open intervention of the United States. This is facilitated primarily by the growth in numbers and organisation of the working class and the greater maturity of the Latin American Marxist parties which are overcoming their former sectarian mistakes.

Since 1940 the working class in Latin America has almost doubled in numbers and now exceeds twelve million. The growth of the working class reflects the comparatively rapid development of capitalism in the Latin American countries in the last decades, de-spite the backwardness of the social and economic structure of these countries. The scope and intensity of the class struggle of the Latin American proletariat grows year by year. With increasing frequency working-class action develops into nation-wide strikes (for example in Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Venezuela). During the strike struggles, in which many millions of the working people took part, single trade union centres were formed. In many countries, the working class already fights not merely for its own im-mediate economic interests, but also for national aims, for demands of a democratic na-ture that affect other sections of the population as well. In the vanguard of the broad movement for defending national wealth from being plundered by the monopolies are the workers of Chile, Venezuela, Brazil, Uruguay and other countries.

The many millions of peasants are fast awakening politically and demanding that an end be put to landlessness and feudal relations in the countryside. They are organising in

mass unions and federations, sometimes even rising to an armed struggle for the re-allotment of land and against the dominance of the landlords. However, the alliance be-tween the working class and peasantry is only beginning to be formed, The establish-ment and consolidation of this alliance is essential if new, serious successes in the anti-imperialist struggle are to be achieved.

The arbitrary rule of the foreign monopolies impels also part of the bourgeoisie in the Latin American countries to take an anti-imperialist stand. As in other countries, dif-ferentiation is taking place within the bourgeoisie, which is becoming increasingly dif-ferentiated into a national bourgeoisie (mainly a petty bourgeoisie, and a middle bour-geoisie connected with industry) and a big bourgeoisie, part of which is directly linked with foreign monopolies and, together with the latifundia-owners, serves as the mainstay of U.S. imperialism in Latin America. The fundamental economic interests of the na-tional bourgeoisie increasingly conflict with the policy of U.S. monopoly capital. The aggressive course of the North American militarists also enhances the anti-imperialist moods of the national bourgeoisie, which does not want any war.

Thus objective conditions which were previously lacking are now being established for the creation of national democratic unity in the struggle against imperialism, the lati-fundia-owners and the venal big bourgeoisie. This unity of the patriotic forces is more and more becoming a political reality in Chile, Ecuador, Uruguay, Venezuela, Brazil and a number of other countries. The broad masses of the people in Latin America are stead-ily becoming more active. In recent years dictatorial governments which were in league with the North American monopolies have been overthrown in several of these coun-tries. The weakening of the position of these monopolies is seen also in the nationalisa-tion of a number of important branches of industry in Mexico, Uruguay and Argentina, the growing demand for the nationalisation of the Panama Canal, and the incipient isola-tion of anti-patriotic elements.

The specific features of imperialist rule in the Latin American countries leave their mark on the nature of the revolutionary processes in this part of the world. Foreign, pri-marily North American, imperialism exercises its rule there not directly as in the colo-nies, but through the intermediary of local ruling circles. These circles act as a screen between the main exploiter and the masses. Hence it is impossible to achieve complete independence and end subjection to Yankee imperialism without removing from power the latifundia-owners and venal big bourgeoisie. This was clearly shown by the Cuban people's revolution of January 1, 1959, which overthrew the Batista dictatorship that had had full support from the U.S.A. for many years.

The Cuban revolution became a beacon for all the Latin American peoples because for the first time it achieved a radical solution of the basic tasks confronting every one of these countries. It nationalised the property of the American corporations and of their servitors and stooges, and carried out a radical land reform, abolishing the latifundia and distributing the land among the peasants and agricultural workers. Relying on the assis-tance of the socialist camp, it began to carry out an extensive plan for industrialisation and the development of a diversified agriculture. It abolished the old military and bu-

reaucratic apparatus that was hated by the masses and carried out a number of measures which provided the basis for improving the life of the working people. After accom-plishing the general democratic and anti-imperialist tasks in a short space of time, the revolution did not stop half-way, but developed into a socialist revolution. The Cuban people set itself the great aim of building the first workers’ and peasants’ state in the Western hemisphere. This has given a new stimulus to the liberation movement of the peoples of Latin America and has appreciably hastened its development.

Of course, this process takes place through contradictions, with zig-zags and re-verses. Supported by the United States, the reactionary circles are trying to give battle to the national-liberation movement. The North American monopolies do not hesitate to interfere openly, as happened in Guatemala in 1954 or in the organisation of intervention against the Cuban Republic in 1961. As an instrument of its imperialist policy, the U.S.A. makes use of the so-called Organisation of American States and of “aid” pro-vided under the programme hypocritically termed the “Alliance for Progress”. In the long run, however, such actions merely increase the revolt of the Latin American peo-ples against imperialism.

The further upsurge of the national-liberation struggle in the Latin American coun-tries will depend mainly on the growth of the popular movement, greater political con-sciousness and better organisation of the mass of the working people, and the creation of a broad anti-imperialist national front of all the democratic forces, in which the revolu-tionary parties of the working class are destined to play a prominent role.

3. Immediate Prospects of Historical Development  of the Countries Liberated from Colonial Oppression

One of the basic problems today is that of the paths and prospects of historical de-velopment of the countries liberated from the colonial yoke. It affects the fate of many large and small peoples comprising a considerable section of mankind. The question of the direction in which they are going is of vital importance both for these peoples them-selves and for the progress of the world as a whole.

The young independent states, the Programme of the C.P.S.U. points out, belong neither to the system of imperialist states, nor to that of socialist states. But the over-whelming majority of them have not yet broken loose from the network of world capital-ist economy although they occupy a special place in it. They are a part of the world that is still exploited by the imperialist monopolies. So long as these countries do not put an end to economic dependence on imperialism they will play the part of the “world coun-tryside” and remain an object of semi-colonial exploitation.

Clearly, the liberated states cannot simply repeat the usual course of capitalist de-velopment that was passed through by the old European states.

Such a repetition cannot happen in our day because both the internal and external conditions for it are absent. It is well known that in the Western countries capitalist in-dustrialisation was carried out largely by means of the exploitation of the colonies and other weak states. National capital in the young states of Asia and Africa does not have

this possibility; it is not only unable to “conquer” foreign markets and sources of raw materials, it is still forced to wage a hard struggle for existence against the old imperial-ist plunderers.

The prospect of a “leap” from backwardness by super-exploitation of the working class and ruination of the peasantry, as happened in the countries of “classical” capital-ism, is also unreal. The mass of the people will now certainly not tolerate the “classical” capitalist course with its painful primitive accumulation and bitter suffering of the work-ing sections of the people. A certain part is also played by such factors as the general discredit of capitalism in the eyes of the peoples and the growing influence of the exam-ple and experience of the socialist countries.

For all these reasons the economic construction taking place in the young national states after the conquest of independence, although still within the framework of capital-ism, nevertheless differs in a number of specific features. Characteristic of these coun-tries, first of all, is the active role of the state in economic life, in creating and extending the state-owned sector of the national economy. In India, for example, the main branches of heavy industry have been proclaimed a sphere for the predominant activity of state-owned enterprises. A large state-owned sector in industry, transport, power and irriga-tion is also being set up in Egypt. Similar tendencies are observed in Indonesia, in the young African states and some other countries.

The partial planning undertaken in many of the liberated countries must also be in-cluded among state-capitalist measures. For example, India, Egypt and Indonesia have adopted and are now carrying out four- and five-year plans of economic development and are making large state investments in the national economy. These efforts made by the state to introduce planning into the economy come up against the operation of the spontaneous laws of capitalism. Besides, only an insignificant part of the economy is subject to state control. Nevertheless, the drawing up of plans for economic development facilitates more expedient utilisation of national resources for the purpose of speedily overcoming the former colonial backwardness.

The state-capitalist forms of economic life developing in the young national states should not be confused with what is now observed in the developed capitalist countries of the West, where state-monopoly capitalism prevails, which means an over-all reac-tionary rule of the monopolies, which fully subordinate the state machine to themselves. In the countries of Asia and Africa, state capitalism in its present form is not an instru-ment of the imperialist monopolies; on the contrary, it was called into existence in the endeavour to find a defence against the attack of the capitalist monopolies of the West and is objectively aimed against their expansion.

All this warrants the conclusion that at the present stage in the liberated non-socialist countries state capitalism plays a progressive role. The very spread of such forms is very significant and provides a new symptom of the bankruptcy of capitalism. Even the lead-ing circles of the national bourgeoisie are forced to admit that under modern conditions private enterprise is unable to meet the requirements of the independent development of the young states. This is already evident from the fact that in some of these states, for

example, India, Burma, Indonesia and others, the building of a “socialist type of society” has been proclaimed as the official aim. Although this “type” is very far from the scien-tific, Marxist ideas of socialism, and, as a rule, reflects petty-bourgeois notions of social-ism, it is convincing proof of the growing popularity of socialist ideas and the loss of prestige by capitalism.

It would be wrong, of course, to over-estimate the progressive significance of the state-capitalist forms and to assume that they will automatically and under all conditions help to strengthen the anti-imperialist forces. It should be borne in mind that in the eco-nomically underdeveloped countries state capitalism determines the growth not only of the working class, but also of the national bourgeoisie. Should capitalism continue to develop with the concentration of production inherent in it, the state-owned sector may here, too, become the economic bulwark of a reactionary regime, if power gets into the hands of representatives of the biggest, essentially monopolist, national companies.

In these countries, therefore, everything will depend on the relationship between the various classes and the social and political forces, and which of them will have a deci-sive influence on social development.

The experience of more than a decade of the independent existence of the main lib-erated countries has shown that contradictory processes are taking place in their internal life. A deep insight into these processes was given in the report of the Central Commit-tee of the C.P.S.U. delivered by N. S. Khrushchov at the Twenty-Second Congress of the Party.

The struggle for political independence, N. S, Khrushchov noted, united all the na-tional forces that suffered under the colonialists and were prompted by common inter-ests. “Now that the time has come to tear up the roots of imperialism and introduce agrarian and other urgent social reforms, the differences in class interests are coming more and more into the open.”229 The demarcation between the forces takes place along the following lines. Wide sections of the working people, and a considerable part of the national bourgeoisie that is interested in a solution of the main tasks of the anti-imperialist, anti-feudal revolution, want to advance farther along the path of consolidat-ing independence and of social and economic reforms. But among the ruling circles of these countries there are also forces which are afraid of further co-operation with the democratic, progressive sections of the nation. They would like to appropriate the fruits of the popular struggle and hinder further progress of the cause of national independence and democracy. These forces pursue a policy of agreement with the imperialists outside their countries and with the feudalists within them, and resort to dictatorial methods. Where the victory of such a course leads can be seen from the examples of Pakistan, the Philippines, South Korea and South Viet-Nam. Degradation of the national economy, the exhausting burden of military expenditure that is connected with participation in the war blocs of the imperialists, and ultimately the threat of complete loss of the independ-ence that had been won — such are its direct consequences.

Thus, two contradictory tendencies are clearly visible in the political life of the lib-erated countries. In the policy of the governments of the national bourgeoisie this most

often finds expression in inconsistency, in an inclination towards unprincipled compro-mises in deciding major questions of the country's life. Thus, the effort to build up na-tional industries often goes hand in hand with a liberal attitude to foreign capital, which continues to pump out large revenues from the economy of the liberated countries.

The urgent changes required in the social and political spheres are also being carried into effect slowly. In most of the young states feudal and caste privileges have been abolished, the legal status of women has been improved and some bourgeois-democratic reforms have been carried out. But at the same time democracy still suffers from some essential restrictions, the Communist Parties are being persecuted or completely banned. The political activity of the mass of the working people at times meets with severe re-pression.

In no field, however, does the inconsistency of the national bourgeoisie manifest it-self so clearly as in the agrarian problem. Here more than anywhere else it makes con-cessions to the feudal-landlord elements by sacrificing to them the interests of the many millions of peasants who bore the brunt of colonial oppression. The landlords are often given enormous compensation for the lands taken from them, while considerable masses of peasants continue to suffer bitterly from lack of land, poverty, high taxes and bondage to usurers. The feudal survivals in agriculture are still a very big obstacle to the creation of a well-developed national economy. In the meantime, the national bourgeoisie in power, although interested in destroying feudal relations, is afraid to encroach on the property of the landlords. As a rule, it prefers to let the landlords retain their large land-holdings and only helps them in changing to a capitalist type of enterprise. It is clear that this way of economic development is slow, painful for the people and takes place mainly at the expense of the interests of the bulk of the peasantry.

A general appraisal of the role of the national bourgeoisie at the present stage was given in the Statement of the Moscow Meeting of Representatives of Communist and Workers’ Parties (1960), and in the Programme of the C.P.S.U.

“In present conditions,” the Statement says, “the national bourgeoisie of the colonial and dependent countries unconnected with imperialist circles is objectively interested in the accomplishment of the principal tasks of anti-imperialist, anti-feudal revolution, and therefore can participate in the revolutionary struggle against imperialism and feudalism. In that sense it is progressive.”230

At the same time both the Statement and the Programme of the C.P.S.U. point out the instability of the national bourgeoisie and its tendency to compromise with imperial-ism and feudalism, which increases as social contradictions become sharper.

Since a considerable section of the national bourgeoisie remains interested in con-solidating the political, economic and cultural independence of their country, there still exists in the young states of Asia and Africa a basis for broad co-operation of all the na-tional and democratic forces—the working class, the peasantry, the progressive circles of the national bourgeoisie, and the national intelligentsia. Under favourable conditions this co-operation can go so far as to include participation of the working classes and their parties in the management of the state. It is this prospect that provides the basis for

the idea of a state of national democracy as a state that expresses the interests not of any one class but of a bloc of broad sections of the people.

How Marxists envisage the principal features of such a state is described in the Statement of the Moscow Meeting of Representatives of Communist and Workers’ Par-ties in 1960, elaborated with the participation of delegations from the Communist Parties of the Asian, African and Latin American countries. A state of national democracy is described as “a state which consistently upholds its political and economic independ-ence, fights against imperialism and military blocs, and against military bases on its ter-ritory; a state which fights against the new forms of colonialism and the penetration of imperialist capital; a state which rejects dictatorial and despotic forms of government; a state in which the people are assured broad democratic rights and freedoms (freedom of speech, press, assembly, demonstrations, establishment of political parties and public organisations), the opportunity to work for the enactment of an agrarian reform and the realisation of other democratic and social changes and for participation in shaping gov-ernment policy”.231

It is clear to Communists, and they try to bring it home to the broad masses, that only by the path of non-capitalist development is it possible to put a speedy end to age-old backwardness, to raise the living standards of the whole people, and to consolidate properly the independence of the country. Under present-day conditions, with the pre-sent relation of forces in the international arena, and with the support given by the world system of socialism, non-capitalist development of the liberated countries is a perfectly feasible path.

The choice of one or other path of development, of course, is the internal affair of the people of each country.

4. Imperialism Is the Chief Enemy of the Liberated Countries  and Peoples Struggling for Their Independence

The imperialists refuse to reconcile themselves to the loss of their colonies. They are searching for ways of saving colonialism. These searches have given rise to numerous theories of “neo-colonialism”, i.e., a new colonialism which is alleged to be free from all the defects of the past and which reconciles the interests of the oppressed and those of the oppressors. Actually, this new colonialism is nothing but an effort to attain the usual imperialist aims by indirect control of the countries that have achieved liberation, and in this way to make the independence they have won purely formal or to deprive them of it.

In the practice of colonialism, the method of indirect control is not new. The new feature is the attempt to make it the chief instrument of present-day colonialism, since the old methods of direct coercion of the peoples are so discredited that not even the im-perialists as a whole dare defend them.

New Forms of Colonial Policy

In the first place, the colonialists are making every effort to extend the social basis of their rule and to find new military, political, economic and ideological means of con-

solidating it. As already mentioned, the feudal and comprador circles have always been the traditional social support of the imperialists. Since these classes depend on anti-quated economic relations, their positions have now become much weaker. Besides, they have (with minor exceptions) irremediably compromised themselves in the eyes of the mass of the people. While continuing, wherever possible, to support the feudal lords and the compradors, the imperialists have been looking for other allies mainly among the representatives of the Right wing of the national bourgeoisie most alien to the interests of the people, and also among certain groups of the intelligentsia and reactionary clergy. Relying on the most reactionary circles of the local exploiting classes, they endeavour to set up military despotic regimes wherever possible and to put power in the hands of puppets obedient to the imperialists.

In order to reach a deal with these circles, the imperialists try to intimidate them with the non-existent “communist menace”, bring military and political pressure to bear and offer them certain financial and economic inducements.

The old, “classical” colonial policy started out from the striving to hinder the colo-nies, in so far as it depended on the imperialists, from developing any, except extractive, industry. In words the inspirers of “neo-colonialism” support industrialisation, but by this they mean only the development of the light and mining industries and means of transport and communication, something that cannot essentially endanger the economic positions of the foreign monopolies. At the same time the strivings of the Asian, African and Latin American countries for real industrialisation continue to meet with resistance. There were many cases, for example, when the Western countries refused to supply the young states with industrial equipment, machinery and machine tools. In the last resort the imperialists establish their own enterprises in these countries, but demand freedom to export their profits and various guarantees against nationalisation. The imperialist mo-nopolies generally greatly resent and resist the development of a state-owned sector in the economy of the former colonial and dependent countries.

Aggressive blocs, like SEATO and CENTO, organised on a “mixed” basis, i.e., with the participation of the formally independent states and their previous imperialist op-pressors, have become the main military and political form of the new colonialism. Formed under the banner of “anti-communism”, these blocs actually aim at opening the gates of the former colonial countries to the military forces of imperialism, establishing political and strategic control over these countries and utilising them for the struggle against the national-liberation movement of neighbouring peoples.

In the economic sphere, new forms of enslavement of the liberated countries, such as their inclusion in the “common market” system, coming more and more into the fore-front. Through the channels of the “common market”, the imperialists would like to flood these countries with their surplus goods, whereas it is clear that the nascent indus-try of the young states of Asia and Africa cannot compete with the industry of the West. At the same time the monopolies want to continue pumping out raw materials and food-stuffs as cheaply as possible from the underdeveloped countries. If the young states were to submit to these plans it would mean reconciling themselves to the role of agrarian-raw

material appendages of the imperialist countries. And in the course of time this would inevitably entail the loss of political independence.

Is there a possibility of averting this danger? Experience shows that there is. Many of the young independent countries are introducing a system of strict state control over foreign trade and currency operations, taking the first steps towards establishing a mo-nopoly of foreign trade. They are also making plans for setting up their own regional trade and economic associations, independent of the capitalist monopolies and counter-posed to them.

Of late the ideological bases of colonial policy have also undergone a certain revi-sion. Under present conditions the imperialists have more and more often to refrain from open propaganda of racism and outdated theories of the white man’s “superiority”. Fal-ling in with the social moods, even the most inveterate imperialists are now not averse to discoursing on the single human family and the right of all peoples to independent exis-tence. Actually, however, the new signboards (for example, that of the “interdepend-ence” of the metropolitan countries and the former colonies) serve as a cover for the old aims of colonial enslavement.

Such “novelties” also include various theories of “collective colonialism”, of late repeatedly advocated by American imperialists, in the Congo, for example, where the united front of the old and new colonialists even used the emblem of the United Nations as a screen. This manoeuvre aims at replacing the rule of individual Western powers in the colonies by their joint exploitation of the colonial countries, invariably with the lead-ing participation of American capital. Of course, the oppressed peoples have no reason to expect any more relief from this than a person could feel on finding out that he was being robbed by a gang rather than a single robber.

In our days the champion of the new colonialism and its principal support on a world scale is American imperialism. Since the Second World War, the United States has noticeably enlarged its dollar empire. In addition to the actual seizure of part of China (Taiwan) and the occupation of a number of Japanese islands in the Pacific, the American monopolies have settled down in South Viet-Nam and South Korea and have acquired important economic and strategic positions in North Africa and the Middle East.

Nevertheless, until recently American imperialism managed to pose as a champion of “anti-colonialism” and of “liberation” of the oppressed peoples. It won this reputation in the cheapest possible manner, by demagogically criticising some of the most outra-geous actions of the European colonial powers and by offering economic “aid” to the underdeveloped countries. Some short-sighted people did not at once realise that the “anti-colonialism” of the American monopolies was a mere pretence and that they re-fused to act together with the European colonialists only when they wanted them to be defeated in the hope of taking their place. As for American economic “aid”, its purpose is to chain the countries accepting it to the war chariot of American imperialism. Suffice it to say that, even from the data of a special committee of the American Congress itself, of the total allocations of the U.S.A. for foreign states, an average of seven per cent are

for actual economic “aid”, and five per cent are for technical “aid”. The remaining 88 per cent are used directly or indirectly for military purposes. Small wonder that many Asian and African countries, despite their need for capital, have repeatedly declined of-fers of aid from the U.S.A.

The peoples of the world can see ever more clearly that in our time the United States has become the main bulwark of modern colonialism, without which it would have col-lapsed much sooner.

Thus, as the Programme of the C.P.S.U. points out, imperialism remains the chief enemy and the chief obstacle to the solution of the national problems facing the young sovereign states and all dependent countries. A paramount condition for the solution of national tasks, the Programme stresses, is a consistent struggle against Imperialism.

Anti-Communism Is an Instrument for Demoralising and Splitting  the National-Liberation Movement

The Communist Parties have been in the forefront of the national-liberation move-ment for many years. Despite the terrorism used by the colonial authorities and persecu-tion by local bourgeois and feudal reactionary forces, Communists are making a great contribution to the struggle of the peoples for freedom and independence. They display inflexible courage and make big sacrifices in defending national interests and upholding the demands of the workers and peasants. Communists are well known to the people as staunch fighters against imperialism, social injustice and all forms of oppression.

In the countries where Communists form part of the united front of national libera-tion, they actively and selflessly struggle for the common cause, strive for a radical solu-tion of the national problems and for the satisfaction of the urgent needs and require-ments of the mass of the working people. They co-operate sincerely with the other patri-otic forces, are loyal to their partners in the anti-imperialist struggle and faithful to their engagements. Without the participation of Communists, success in the cause of national liberation and revival is now unthinkable in any country.

Anti-communism is the more dangerous to the national-liberation movement since, if not repulsed in good time, it can demoralise and split the ranks of the fighters against imperialism. The Programme of the C.P.S.U. contains the timely warning: anti-communism is becoming the chief weapon of reaction in the struggle against the democ-ratic forces of the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. It is the meeting ground of imperialist ideology with the ideology of the pro-imperialist elements and reactionary groups of the bourgeoisie in the countries freed from the colonial yoke.

Anti-communism is kindled primarily by the colonialists who were driven out of the colonies and refuse to reconcile themselves to their loss. The agents of imperialism are always on the look-out for weak spots in the countries that have liberated themselves. They intimidate short-sighted politicians with the “communist menace” in order to dis-tract their attention from the struggle against the real danger—imperialism. They sow suspicion in the ranks of the national front and strife among the countries and among different sections of the population in each country, not shrinking from using the basest

methods of provoking national and racial discord. The imperialists try in this way to dis-rupt the internal unity so much needed by the young states; they try to break the interna-tional solidarity of these states and, if possible, to provoke conflicts among them in the hope that they will then again fall an easy prey to the imperialist plunderers. Examples of such perfidious tactics could be repeatedly observed in the Middle East, in Indo-China, and in a particular marked form in Africa,

In propagating anti-communism, the colonialists rely mainly on their old agents among the former bourgeois and feudal leadership. But they also cleverly speculate on the errors of some of the nationalist elements who have come to power in a number of the young states. Being at times unable correctly to understand and appraise the causes of the difficulties which arise from time to time in these states, the nationalist elements put the blame on the Communists, thus objectively helping the intrigues of the imperial-ist powers.

The limitations of the ideology of nationalism show themselves in this particularly vividly. To be sure, bourgeois nationalists take for granted that all the patriotic forces of the nation should be united in the struggle for independence against the colonialists. But the narrow-minded bourgeois nationalist is not prepared to take into account that unity of the patriotic forces does not suddenly appear in a ready-made form and that it cannot be regarded as something present once and for all and unchanging. After the expulsion of the colonialists, when the problem of liberation has essentially been solved, society inevitably begins to search for answers to the social questions raised by life itself. For example, the question of land reform arises, and it turns out that the peasants and land-lords have different views on the subject. The differing views of the workers and em-ployers who shortly before were fighting together against the imperialists also come to light. This is quite natural because nationalism does not abolish class differences and the contradictions in class interests.

State wisdom consists precisely in the ability to find the right ways of solving the most important social problems that arise in every country after national independence has been achieved. Some bourgeois nationalists, however, do not want to take this into consideration. They insist that in the name of national unity the workers should sacrifice their demands for shorter hours and higher wages, that the peasants should relinquish their demand for a fair re-allotment of the land, etc. And when this does not happen, when the social relations begin to become strained, such nationalist elements begin to look for scapegoats. They accuse the Communists of weakening national unity. They begin to imagine all sorts of “communist plots”, although in actual fact it is objective processes of social development that come into operation, not because they are willed or desired by any particular party, but because of the existence of classes with different interests.

The attacks on Communists are a source of satisfaction only to the enemies of the national independence of peoples, for the Communists are the most active and militant force in the struggle against imperialism.

The Moscow Meeting of Representatives of Communist and Workers’ Parties

(1960) solemnly declared: “The aims of the Communists accord with the supreme inter-ests of the nation. The reactionaries’ effort to break up the national front under the slo-gan of ‘anti-communism’ and isolate the Communists, the foremost contingent of the liberation movement, weakens the national movement. It is contrary to the national in-terests of the peoples and threatens the loss of national gains.”232

All practical experience of social developments during recent years confirms the correctness of this proposition. It is characteristic that the murky tide of anti-communism and persecution of the Marxist-Leninist parties and their press rises first of all in the countries where the ruling circles are ready to make a deal with the imperialist forces. This is, of course, no accident. Those who are really devoted to the ideals of na-tional independence and freedom, who are not planning a compromise with the imperial-ists behind the back of the people and who, after the solution of the all-national prob-lems, seriously intend to work for the solution of the problems of social emancipation of the mass of working people, have no reason to hate and fear Communists.

5. The World Socialist System Is a Bulwark of the Peoples  in the Struggle Against Colonialism

The successes of the national-liberation movement in the East are inseparable from the existence of the socialist states and their irreconcilable attitude to colonialism. This reveals the profound objective connection and community between the anti-imperialist interests of the oppressed peoples and those of the peoples of the socialist system,

The socialist countries are sincere and loyal friends of the peoples fighting for lib-eration or those who have thrown off the imperialist yoke, and they render them all-round assistance. They stand for the abolition of all forms of colonial oppression and in every way help to consolidate the sovereignty of the states rising on the ruins of the co-lonial empires. A great contribution to the historic cause of the final liberation of the peoples from the shameful yoke of imperialism was made by the Soviet Union, which was the initiator in the adoption by the United Nations Organisation of the Declaration on the granting of independence to all peoples.

In consistently opposing colonialism, the socialist countries pursue no selfish aims. Unlike the U.S.A., they do not seek to take the place of the expelled colonialists and do not look for “spheres of influence”. Socialist economy is incompatible with exploitation and oppression. It does not need to export capital because its aim of steadily improving the well-being of the working people requires increasingly greater capital investments inside the country. The socialist states are interested in expanding international trade and economic co-operation, but they are not seeking markets for the sale of surplus goods. Socialist economy does not know any crises of over-production.

In supporting the national aspirations of the colonial peoples the Soviet Union and the People’s Democracies are guided by principles of socialist ideology, which is irreconcilably opposed to all oppression and defends equality of rights and friendship among the peoples. By opposing colonialism, the socialist countries at the same time help to lessen the danger of war. It is well known that during the last 10-12 years the

attempts to save or restore colonialism were the source of numerous so-called ‘local” wars. The colonial appetites of imperialism are still one of the causes of international tension.

The post-war years have convincingly demonstrated the role of the socialist states as a powerful factor in restraining the aggression of the imperialists who otherwise would have descended upon the national-liberation movement with all their might and would have strangled it.

The significance of the socialist states as an anti-colonial factor is continuously in-creasing. Firstly, the foreign policy of the socialist countries, firmly based on principle, plays an increasingly direct and decisive role in frustrating the colonialist plans of the imperialists. For example, the socialist countries made a very important contribution to the victory of the Egyptian people over the imperialist aggressors. They also foiled the attack of the colonialists against Syria and later against the young Iraqi Republic. Sec-ondly, the socialist camp is becoming the bulwark of the young national states of the East in their struggle for economic independence.

Significance of Economic Co-operation Between the Socialist States  and the Countries of the East

The socialist states have real possibilities of helping the Asian, African and Latin American countries to develop their independent national economy. Being well aware that the way to consolidate independence is through industrialisation and that it is in this respect that the liberated countries are most in need of support, the Soviet Union and other socialist states organise economic co-operation with them on these lines. The so-cialist camp willingly and on an ever increasing scale supplies the liberated states with industrial equipment.

The Soviet Union leads the world in supplying the industrial enterprises of these states with complete sets of equipment. This gives them real prospects of attaining eco-nomic independence. At the Twentieth Congress of the C.P.S.U., N. S. Khrushchov said: “Today they need not go begging for up-to-date equipment to their former oppressors. They can get it in the socialist countries, without assuming any political or military commitments.” 233

The relations between the Soviet Union and India offer a vivid example of the aid in effecting industrialisation extended to the countries which have liberated themselves. Soviet designing and building organisations in co-operation with Indian specialists com-pleted and put into operation in 1959 the first section of a big iron and steel works in Bhilai with an annual output of 1,000,000 tons of steel. The works had been equipped with modern plant supplied by Soviet industrial enterprises. Unlike the foreign concerns, the Soviet Union does not demand for itself any share in the capital, profits or manage-ment of the works. The rate of interest on the Soviet credit is hardly one-third of that which India pays on the loan granted by a group of British banks for the construction of a steel mill in Durgapur.

By the middle of 1962, the Soviet Union had agreements on economic co-operation

with 23 underdeveloped countries. These agreements envisaged the erection of about 480 industrial enterprises and other installations. A number of them have already been commissioned.

The socialist states also willingly share their experience in economic construction and help the Eastern countries in educating their national technical specialists.

The economic co-operation between the socialist states and the young national states is marked by fundamentally new features. It is co-operation between really equal part-ners. It does not impose on them any military or political obligations, economic fetters or humiliating restrictions. It goes without saying that the socialist states do not foist their assistance on anyone, but give help when they asked to do so.

The possibility of relying for support on the socialist camp strengthens the positions of the Asian and African countries in their relations with the West. The imperialists have lost their monopoly in granting loans and in the export of equipment and technical knowledge and must therefore make concessions which they never made in the past.

The disinterested, friendly nature of the co-operation of the socialist states with the former colonial and dependent countries forms the basis for a rapid extension of eco-nomic relations between them. During the period 1953-59 the volume of the Soviet Un-ion’s foreign trade with the underdeveloped countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America increased eightfold [in comparable prices). From 1954 to 1960 inclusive, the Soviet Union alone granted these countries long-term credits for their economic development totalling over 10,000 million rubles (at 1960 prices). Aid from the U.S.S.R. already plays a considerable part in the economic life of many countries. Thus, in India Soviet credits covered approximately 15 per cent of the foreign currency expenditure for the second five-year plan, and in the United Arab Republic it covered about 50 per cent of the plan for industrial development.

The other socialist countries—the German Democratic Republic, China, Poland, Rumania, Czechoslovakia—also afford the underdeveloped countries considerable mate-rial aid (credits, provision of machinery and installations, construction of industrial pro-jects).

The idea of close co-operation between the socialist and young national states is making ever greater headway. It is also becoming increasingly popular in the countries where the dominance of the imperialists still hampers an independent policy.

As regards the Soviet Union, its position for the future was clearly laid down in the Programme of the C.P.S.U. adopted at the Twenty-Second Congress:

“The C. P, S. U, considers fraternal alliance with the peoples who have thrown off colonial or semi-colonial yoke to be a corner-stone of its international policy. This alli-ance is based on the common vital interests of world socialism and the world national-liberation movement. The C. P. S. U. regards it as its internationalist duty to assist the peoples who have set out to win and strengthen their national independence, all peoples who are fighting for the complete abolition of the colonial system.”234

CHAPTER 17

STRUGGLE OF THE PEOPLES OF CAPITALIST COUNTRIES TO SAFEGUARD THEIR SOVEREIGNTY

Sovereignty is the complete independence of a state in deciding all questions relating to its internal life and foreign relations. Sovereignty serves, as it were, as a rampart under the protection of which individual peoples are able to build their state, develop their econ-omy and culture, and enter into equal and voluntary relations with other peoples.

1. Aggravation of the Problem of Sovereignty in the Era of Imperialism

The principle of sovereignty has formally long been recognised by bourgeois law. However, this has never prevented the ruling classes of the capitalist states from en-croaching on the independence of other peoples. The entire age-long history of colonial-ism is one of a systematic and gross violation of the sovereignty of peoples by the colo-nial powers.

Even before the era of monopoly capitalism the reactionary bourgeoisie demon-strated by thousands of examples its disregard for the principle of sovereignty. Since the beginning of the epoch of imperialism the ruling circles of capitalist countries have paid still less regard to this principle.

The monopoly capital of the aggressive imperialist powers no longer restricts itself to depriving the backward and economically underdeveloped countries of their sover-eignty, but encroaches also upon the independence of the economically developed, long-existing sovereign bourgeois states. Whereas the First World War was fought mainly for a redivision of the colonies, during the Second World War German imperialism aimed not only at seizing colonies, but also at establishing its dominance over the European metropolitan countries. It aimed at enslaving the whole of Europe.

Since the end of the Second World War, monopoly capital of the United States of America has put forward its claim to world domination. The American imperialists in-tend to expand the sphere of influence of the Wall Street monopolies and make the terri-tories of other capitalist countries into a jumping-off ground and the peoples of these countries into a reserve of cannon fodder. The reactionary circles of the U.S.A. therefore seek to limit in their favour the sovereignty of the independent capitalist states since this sovereignty impedes their economic expansion and the transformation of these states into an instrument of American policy.

This course of American expansionism gives rise to various, frequently contradic-tory, tendencies in the international arena.

Most of the Asian and African national states which recently won their political in-dependence firmly defend their sovereignty. They try to keep aloof from the military blocs organised by the United States, refuse to allow their territories to be used for mili-tary bases and do not accept American economic aid, which always involves political commitments and is intended to draw the state receiving such aid into the orbit of American policy. But at the same time many old capitalist states, which have existed

independently for centuries, step by step cede their sovereign rights and powers to the United States of America and various “supranational” imperialist organisations.

Why do the ruling circles of a number of capitalist countries commit what amounts to national betrayal by agreeing to restrict their state sovereignty? They are driven to this by the narrow, egoistic class interests underlying their reactionary internal and foreign policy.

Firstly, alliance with American imperialism ensures the capitalist monopolies of these countries enormous profits from war industry and from all the industries engaged in the production of strategic materials, since the corner-stone of this alliance is the greatest possible intensification of the arms race and militarisation of the economy of every member-country of the Atlantic pact or the other aggressive blocs in which the American imperialists participate. It is precisely the big and continuous war orders of the government together with the militarisation of the country’s economy that are the main gold mine for modern state-monopoly capitalism.

Secondly, Britain, France and a number of other countries are being drawn into the aggressive blocs of American imperialism by the imperialist strivings of the reactionary circles of their big bourgeoisie. These circles are worried by the development of the de-mocratic movement following the Second World War, the growing popularity of social-ist ideas and the increased tendency of the working class towards unity of action. Like the imperialists of the U.S.A., the reactionary circles of Britain, France and some other states refuse to reconcile themselves to the establishment of a people’s democratic sys-tem in a number of European and Asian countries. They dream of restoring capitalism in these countries in order that they may again transform them into their satellites. They would also do anything to stop the break-up of the colonial system and recover their former positions in the countries which have thrown off the yoke of colonial oppression. Since the reactionary bourgeoisie of the formerly powerful but now noticeably weak-ened states has no longer any hopes of being able by itself to suppress the democratic movement within the country and of carrying its aggressive plans into effect outside, it seeks and finds guardians among the U.S. monopolists. Consequently, despite the acute contradictions between the imperialists of various countries, they have formed reaction-ary alliances, linked themselves by mutual treaties, and established war blocs and bases directed not only against the socialist countries, but also against the revolutionary work-ing-class and national-liberation movements.

Through these imperialist alliances the European capitalists hope to find the strength they need to defend their class interests. In payment for such a service they are ready to surrender the state sovereignty of their countries. At the same time they shut their eyes to the fact that in the final analysis the war blocs headed by the United States of America are instruments of the expansionist policy that American imperialism pursues at the ex-pense of its partners.

In the capitalist world this anti-national policy has resulted in a peculiar system of dominance and subordination. The bourgeois states which have become subordinate to the U.S.A. at the same time lord it over other countries. They themselves have lost a

considerable part of their political independence, but together or alone they continue to violate the sovereignty of other states.

Britain offers a characteristic example of such a dual role. As is well known, Britain has relinquished many of her sovereign rights in favour of the U.S.A. British territory is used for American air and rocket bases whose command is practically free from control by the British Government. At the same time Britain systematically violates the sover-eignty of other, weaker countries.

It may be said that the policy dictated by the interests of the monopoly bourgeoisie has placed some West European countries in a vicious circle. If the ruling circles of Britain, France, Italy and other countries wanted to defend their national instead of their imperialist interests they could pursue an independent policy without getting into bond-age to the U.S.A. They would have enough strength and resources to pursue such a pol-icy and would not need to seek support on the other side of the ocean or pawn their in-dependence in the American political pawnshop. But since they pursue primarily impe-rialist aims for the attainment of which they lack strength and resources they have to resort to American aid, although they know the high price they have to pay for it.

Thus the independence of the developed capitalist countries is threatened with a double danger—the internal danger from the “domestic” reactionary bourgeoisie, which puts its narrow class interests above everything else, and the danger from without, pri-marily from the financial oligarchy of the U.S.A.

In subordinating the other capitalist countries, the United States of America relies on its increased economic and military power. The search for reliable markets for the sale of their “surplus” industrial and agricultural products and the hunt for new sources of cheap raw materials and for profitable spheres of capital investment are the economic motives underlying the imperialist expansion of the American monopolies. They regard the subordination of other states as the surest way to new and unprecedented enrichment. Their calculation is extremely simple: the greater the dependence of any particular coun-try on the U.S.A., the easier will it be for the American monopolists to exploit its econ-omy, make inroads into its national economy and gain additional profits.

Furthermore, it is necessary to take into account political and military considera-tions. The U.S. financial oligarchy regards its expansion into the capitalist countries of Europe and other continents as a component part of the general plan of its struggle against the socialist countries and for world supremacy. It is no accident that the attack of the U.S.A. on the sovereignty of the other capitalist countries is accompanied by the endeavour to turn almost all of Western Europe and a number of Eastern countries into American war bases.

Lastly, the American monopolies aim at directly influencing the internal policy of foreign countries. By consolidating its dominance over the weaker capitalist states the U.S.A. is in a position to interfere in their internal affairs, spreading reaction in them and demanding persecution of the democratic forces. The Moscow Meeting of Representa-tives of Communist and Workers’ Parties was fully justified in stating that international developments in recent years had furnished many proofs that "American imperialism is

the chief bulwark of world reaction and an international gendarme, an enemy of the peoples of the whole world”.235

Forms and Methods of Attacking Sovereignty

Among the various methods used by American imperialism, pride of place is taken by the establishment of political and military-strategic control over other capitalist coun-tries. The setting up of American war bases on the territory of these countries has be-come the instrument of such control and a constant threat to their independence.

The establishment in peacetime of a system of foreign bases on the territory of large independent capitalist states is a new and unprecedented development in international relations. It is a peculiar form of annexation. It reduces to naught the sovereign rights of the states, particularly in the immediate vicinity of the bases. Moreover, a state that puts air bases at the disposal of a foreign power loses its sovereignty over a considerable part of its air space, while a state that allows a foreign power the use of its naval bases loses control over part of its territorial waters. It is characteristic that during the 1958 Middle Eastern crisis the American command made arbitrary use of the bases in West Germany and Italy to transfer American troops to Lebanon. These countries were in fact not even asked for their agreement. In general, foreign war bases seriously restrict the freedom of action of the state on whose territory they are located, since this state is constantly threatened with the danger of military intervention and can easily become an object of the “policy from positions of strength”.

Lastly, another serious danger must also be borne in mind. It is clear that, should the imperialists unleash a war, the states that have allowed foreign war bases to be built on their territory will be the first to incur retaliation by nuclear rockets. Hence, the govern-ments which have assumed the role of armour-bearers of American imperialism, may plunge their countries into a military catastrophe in the interests of the overseas mo-nopolies.

Undivided control over its armed forces has always been one of the most important attributes of a sovereign state. As a result of the existence of the North Atlantic bloc (NATO), the principal problems of the war policy of the West European countries are decided at meetings of NATO’s leading bodies, where the tone is set by the American representatives. Problems of arming, training and stationing troops have actually passed out of the jurisdiction of the national governments into foreign hands.

The U.S. monopolies are also intensifying their attacks against the sovereignty of the other capitalist countries in the economic sphere. The forms of these attacks greatly vary and include granting of subsidies, long- and short-term credits, loans, etc. American loans and credits are granted on certain conditions of a military, political or economic nature, which aim at firmly binding the recipient states to the war chariot of American imperialism. Thus in exchange for granting Britain a 3,700-million-dollar loan in 1946 the United States secured a relaxation of the system of imperial preferences, i.e., Britain relinquished a number of advantages she enjoyed in her trade with the countries of the British Empire; Britain also made concessions in the so-called “sterling zone” and soon

afterwards allowed the U.S.A. to construct war bases in Great Britain.

The export of capital by American monopolies, leading to the seizure of many en-terprises and even whole branches of industry in foreign countries, is another important instrument for undermining the sovereignty of these countries. During the first post-war years, the U.S.A. was essentially the only exporter of capital on the world market, Dur-ing the first five years following the war, American foreign investments doubled and by 1955 reached 45,000 million dollars. Although later on competition in the field of capi-tal export was renewed, the American monopolies succeeded in setting up strongholds in the largest capitalist countries. Moreover, it is very characteristic that in the post-war years private investments by U.S. corporations flowed chiefly into Western Europe, primarily into Britain.

Thus one of the basic tendencies in the modern capitalist world is seen also in the economic sphere, viz., the tendency of the American monopolies to deprive the inde-pendent capitalist countries of their financial and economic independence. Side by side with this there is a tendency of the monopolies to “unite” and form international state-monopoly unions which also infringe the sovereignty of individual countries. The ten-dency to such unification is inherent in the very nature of monopoly capital, which does not have enough scope in one country.

The formation of international state-monopoly unions invariably ends in the domi-nance of the strongest partner over the others. Hence, the establishment of such unions leads to the loss of sovereignty by the weaker capitalist states or to a restriction of their sovereignty.

After the Second World War, tendencies towards economic “integration” found par-ticularly strong expression in Western Europe. Here, as already mentioned, large state-monopoly associations made their appearance. These included the European Coal and Steel Community, the European Community of Atomic Energy (Euratom) and others. This pyramid of monopoly unions is crowned by the European Economic Community (the “common market”). In all these cases it is a question of agreements between mo-nopolies on dividing markets, regulating prices, establishing tariffs, etc. The imperialists advertise in every possible way the “supranational” nature of these organisations, but in reality their “supranational” nature is expressed in the fact that their member-countries have lost their independence in determining important aspects of their economic policy. Many functions of the national governments have passed into the hands of agencies vir-tually controlled by the strongest member of the union. West Germany, which has be-come the chief partner of American monopoly capital, is increasingly coming to the fore as such a predominant force in capitalist Europe.

Thus the military and economic expansion of American imperialism involves a threat to the sovereignty and independence of a number of capitalist countries. A system of satellites dependent in some degree or another on the leading imperialist power—the United States of America—is coming into being.

2. Cosmopolitanism and Not Patriotism Is the Ideology  of the Imperialist Bourgeoisie

Above we discussed the motives which prompt the reactionary forces in undermin-ing the sovereignty and independence of states. It stands to reason that these motives are kept secret because they are not such as can be openly displayed to the peoples. On the contrary, the real aims of the attacks on sovereignty are carefully disguised, for which purpose various ideological means are used, prominent among them being propaganda of cosmopolitism. Of course, this is not the old idea of cosmopolitism which was current in the nineteenth century and not infrequently implied a broad view of the world free from national prejudices. The question here concerns the ideology encouraged by the imperialists, which propagates a sham “obsolescence” of the principle of sovereignty, the “legitimacy” of limiting state independence, an indifference to national traditions and contempt for national culture. This ideology alleges that at the present time the idea of motherland is devoid of any meaning.

For the financial oligarchy of the U.S.A., cosmopolitism has proved the best way of disguising its struggle for world supremacy and for the doing away with the independ-ence of other states. For the West European monopolists it has become a convenient ex-cuse for their betrayal of the national interests, for their bargains with the U.S. finance capital at the expense of their peoples.

Modern cosmopolitism manifests itself in different ways. For example, it permeates the propaganda which praises the existing European inter-monopoly agreements and calls for conclusion of other similar agreements. The unions of monopolists are pre-sented as an embodiment of the ideas of “unity of the European peoples” and as the way to overcome “national limitations”. Small wonder that such propaganda is openly sup-ported and financed by the big monopolies.

There are, however, also more concealed and refined forms of propagating cosmopolitism. These, as a rule, take the guise of humane, democratic and even “social-ist” ideas.

The favourite thesis of the ideologists of cosmopolitism, especially the Right-wing socialists among them, is the allegation that in the modern world the principle of sover-eignty has become an obstacle to the development of the productive forces.

But how can favourable conditions for the development of the productive forces be ensured on a broad interstate basis? Certainly, not by infringing the sovereign rights and interests of any particular state, but by co-ordinating these interests in the course of equal and mutually beneficial co-operation. The greatest possible expansion of interna-tional trade could play an important part in this. The development of co-operation in sci-ence and technology (exchange of specialists and scientific and technical information, carrying out joint production projects, etc.) is also of great significance.

Of course, all this is not enough to ensure a complete and free development of the productive forces on an international scale. That requires a number of radical measures of an interstate character: co-ordination of economic plans, co-operation between the industries of different countries, joint training of specialists, etc. But such measures can

be carried into effect only under a planned system of economy which is free from anar-chy of production and the competitive struggle, under a system based on complete con-fidence of the different peoples and states in each other. Such a system is socialism.

The enemies of Marxism assert that by defending the principles of state sovereignty and independence Communists oppose the tendencies of social development and want to preserve the division of the world into states and the disunion of the nations in the inter-national arena. But similar fabrications in the past were already dealt with by Lenin who wrote: “We demand freedom of self-determination, i.e., independence, i.e., freedom of separation for the oppressed nations, not because we have dreamt of splitting up the country economically, or of the ideal of small states, but, on the contrary, because we want large states and the closer unity and even fusion of nations, but on a truly democ-ratic, truly internationalist basis, which is inconceivable without freedom to separate.”236

Today too Communists are consistent supporters of economic and political co-operation between the European and other peoples and of the utmost rapprochement be-tween them. But they are categorically against the integration which is being effected by the capitalist monopolies in the latter's selfish interests. The “Europe of the trusts” is not a union of equal peoples. By rejecting such “European unity” Communists oppose not the idea of a rapprochement of the peoples, but the utilisation of the “common market” to deepen the split in Europe, to establish closed economic blocs and to convert them into bases for aggression.

According to another frequently adduced argument, the abolition or restriction of sovereignty paves the way to economic prosperity and higher living standards for the peoples. Renunciation of “national limitations" is alleged to lead to an establishment of closer economic relations between countries, the pooling of their resources and expan-sion of markets, which should have a favourable effect on the economic conditions of each of them.

But in actual fact “integration" involves something quite different. The working class of the West European countries is already beginning to experience the far from favourable consequences of the “common market”: growth of unemployment as a result of the closing down of so-called “uneconomic” enterprises (e.g., in the coal industry of France and Belgium); a marked increase in the intensification of labour as a result of the acuter competitive struggle of the monopolies; rise in the cost of living, despite the re-moval of customs duties. And also due to come are such anti-working class measures as “equalisation” of wages and unification of social legislation in all the countries of the “common market”, the lowest level being taken as the standard in each case.

In addition to arguments of an economic character, the advocates of cosmopolitism are equipped with various other theses of a political nature. They say, for example, that the renunciation of sovereignty is necessary for the defence of democracy, eliminating the danger of war and strengthening peace. They say that the capitalist countries must sacrifice their sovereignty in favour of the U.S.A. in order jointly to defend democracy from the “menace of communism”.

In this thesis everything is false from beginning to end. To begin with, democracy in

the Western countries is threatened not by communism but by the offensive of the mo-nopolies, which are spreading reaction in all spheres.* Secondly, it is precisely renuncia-tion of sovereignty in favour of the U.S.A. that exposes the West European democracy to the greatest danger. It finds itself under double pressure— that of its “own” and that of the overseas monopolies. This is attested by such facts as the introduction in a number of countries of anti-labour legislation after the American model, the borrowing of American methods of “loyalty screening”, etc.

• For further details see Chapter 18.

Nor can the danger of war be eliminated by a campaign against sovereignty. In our time wars do not arise as a result of adherence to state independence, as the ideologists of bourgeois cosmopolitism allege, but owing to socio-economic causes connected with the predatory nature of monopoly capital. Moreover, as already mentioned, it is not at all for the sake of preventing war that the U.S. monopolies trample on the sovereignty of other countries but, on the contrary, in order to utilise them as jumping-off grounds from which to begin an aggressive war.

Lastly, the propagandists of cosmopolitism claim that the principle of sovereignty is antiquated because it hampers the development of general culture and impedes the fu-sion of the peoples into one family. However, in our days general culture is made up of the cultural achievements of individual nations and is not something apart from them. Literature, art and music flourish on national soil, but fall into decay when not rooted in the people. The great works of art which have acquired world-wide renown were an ex-pression of national genius. On the other hand, art that has deserted its native soil be-comes incapable of producing great works. Thus the struggle for sovereignty and against cosmopolitism is at the same time a struggle for a real development and flourishing of culture.

All this shows that the democratic forces uphold the ideas of national sovereignty in the name of the equality of peoples, their trust in one another, their friendship, mutual aid and closer intercourse, in the interests of social progress.

3, Defence of Sovereignty Corresponds to the Interests of  All the Sound Forces of a Nation

The objective prerequisites for the unification of the broadest sections of the popula-tion in defence of national independence and peace are being created in the capitalist countries whose independence is encroached upon by the American monopolies.

The struggle for state sovereignty is one of the forms of the general democratic movement. Experience shows that this struggle has the greatest chance of success if it is headed by the working class and its revolutionary party.

The Working Class Is the Guardian of the Independence of the Peoples

The working-class movement has always advocated the right of nations to inde-pendent existence and has combated all forms of national oppression.

Marxism-Leninism regards respect for the rights of other nations and for their sov-ereignty as a prerequisite for normal relations among peoples. In 1888 Engels wrote: “To ensure international peace, it is necessary, in the first place, to eliminate all possible forms of national friction, and every people must be independent and master in its own country.”237

In the preface to the second Polish edition of the Communist Manifesto written in 1892 Engels again emphasised that “a sincere international collaboration of the Euro-pean nations is possible only if each of these nations is fully autonomous in its own house”.238

Lenin always consistently and resolutely defended the principle of independence and equality of nations. Marxist-Leninist science sees the fullest expression of this prin-ciple in the right of peoples to self-determination. Lenin wrote that “victorious socialism must necessarily bring about complete democracy and, consequently, not only carry out full equality of the nations, but also put into effect the right of the oppressed nations to self-determination, i.e., the right to free political separation”.239

The fact that the proletariat defends the freedom of the nations, their independence and national traditions is an expression of the patriotism of the working class, which is the direct opposite of both the chauvinist and cosmopolitan ideology of the bourgeoisie. The patriotism of the working class springs primarily from the feeling of pride in the contribution that the people or nation concerned has made to the struggle of the op-pressed and exploited masses for their liberation from exploitation and oppression. The patriotism of the working class is therefore profoundly progressive and revolutionary.

The Workers Are Not Indifferent to the Fate of Their Country

Bourgeois propaganda tries to represent the capitalist class as the bearer of patriotic feelings. They want to slur over the fact that the patriotism of the bourgeoisie is always subordinate to its selfish, narrow class interests, and to disparage the patriotism of the working class and Communists. In this connection, bourgeois propagandists sometimes refer to the passage in the Communist Manifesto which says that “the working men have no country”. It is perfectly clear, however, that it is not a question of repudiating the fa-therland, but of the fact that in a society ruled by capitalists the fatherland is actually usurped by exploiters and is not a good father but a vicious stepfather to the workers. By overthrowing the rule of the exploiting classes the working class creates the conditions for the fullest possible manifestation of its patriotism, for it itself is the true bearer of patriotism in our time.

It is well known that Marx and Engels always supported the struggle of the workers in the defence of the independence of their country from the danger of foreign subjuga-tion. Nor did they ever assert that under capitalism the working class was indifferent to the fate of its country.

Developing the Marxist point of view regarding the fatherland, Lenin wrote in 1908: “The fatherland, i.e., the given political, cultural and social environment, is the most powerful factor in the class struggle of the proletariat.... The proletariat cannot be indif-

ferent to and unconcerned about the political, social and cultural conditions of its strug-gle and, consequently, cannot remain indifferent to the fate of its country.”240

It was precisely in connection with the attitude of the working class to its country that Lenin made the following well-known remark directed against a dogmatic approach to Marxism: “The whole spirit of Marxism, its entire system demands that each proposi-tion should be considered .) only historically, .) only in connection with others, and .) only in connection with the concrete experience of history.”241

Applied to patriotism this means that the proletariat is not satisfied with an abstract formulation of the question of defence of the fatherland. In what historical situation the slogan of defence of the fatherland is proclaimed, what class proclaims it and for what purposes—these are the things that primarily interest the working class. An imperialist war, when this slogan is used by the ruling bourgeoisie to dupe the masses and disguise the real motives by which the imperialist plunderers are guided, is one thing. A situation, in which there is a danger to the national independence and freedom of the country and when the national-liberation movement is growing, is quite another thing. Under these conditions, the working class is the first to rise in defence of its country, its sovereignty and independence. Under these conditions, the slogan of defence of the fatherland is not just a matter of words, but a vital problem which its most immediate and fundamental class interests call upon it to solve.

In our day, under new conditions, the patriotism of the working class, inseparable from proletarian internationalism, has become a particularly active and powerful force. At the time when the fascist barbarians threatened civilisation with mortal danger it was precisely the workers who, in the countries occupied by the Hitlerites, proved by deeds their devotion to their country and their faith in its future. While the official “patriots” of the reactionary bourgeoisie collaborated with the fascist invaders, the Communists fought in the front ranks of the Resistance movement, forming its most militant and self-sacrificing core. It is known, for example, that in the battles for the freedom of the coun-try the French Communist Party lost 75,000 of its members.

The peoples of the Soviet Union, China, Korea, Viet-Nam and all the socialist coun-tries displayed unprecedented heroism in labour and in the defence of their countries. Life itself has shown that for the masses of the people the socialist state is such a school for patriotism as not a single bourgeois state has ever been or could ever be.

The bourgeois ideologists allege that by combating cosmopolitism Marxists disavow the international character of their doctrine and become nationalists. But the authors of such falsifications perpetrate a double forgery. Firstly, they put a sign of equality be-tween the cosmopolitism of the bourgeoisie and the internationalism of the working class, and, secondly, they ascribe to Marxists the nationalist views which are characteris-tic precisely of bourgeois ideology.

The internationalism of the working class is, as already stated, an expression of the community of interests of the workers of all countries in their struggle against their common enemy—capitalism, of the unity of their aim, i.e., the abolition of exploitation of man by man, and the unity of their ideology—the ideology of friendship and frater-

nity of the peoples.

In this sense all workers belong to the same “nation”—the world “nation” of work-ing people oppressed and exploited in all bourgeois countries by the selfsame force—capital. This does not in any way mean, however, that, while belonging to the single in-ternational army of working people, the worker ceases to be a Frenchman, Englishman, Italian, etc. Quite the contrary. True and not sham patriotism springs naturally from pro-letarian internationalism.

In point of fact, does not faithfulness to the ultimate ideal of the working class im-bue the workers with a fervent desire to see their own people free, prosperous and achieving social progress? Seeking liberation from all forms of oppression and exploita-tion, the working class wants this not only for itself, but also for all the working people, for the whole nation. Only the achievement of the ultimate aims of the working class, i.e., the overthrow of the power of the exploiters, who impede the progress of the nation, and the building of socialism, can bring every nation real freedom, independence and national greatness. It follows that the most internationalist class— the working class—is at the same time the most patriotic class.

Such are some of the general principles determining the attitude of the working class to the problem of sovereignty. By adopting the most consistent position in regard to de-fending sovereignty, the working class at the same time defends the interests of the whole nation. This is why the working class and its Marxist-Leninist party can rally around it the other classes and sections of the population.

The Communist Parties of the capitalist countries hold high the banner of national independence and freedom. Preservation of state sovereignty and realisation of an inde-pendent foreign policy are demands that form part of the programme of the communist movements in France, Italy and other countries.

The British Communist Party has inscribed in its programme the demand for an “in-dependent British policy”. The Canadian Communist Party calls upon Canadians to “re-gain our national independence from the U.S.A.” The Japanese Communist Party de-mands the ending of national oppression and the restoration of the country’s independ-ence violated by the American imperialists. The Norwegian Communist Party has pro-claimed as an all-national slogan that “Norway must become a free and independent state”.

It should be mentioned that the struggle of patriots in the various countries is devel-oping under more favourable conditions than ever before. The Programme of the C.P.S.U. draws attention to this, stating: “For the first time in history, a situation has arisen in which not only the big states, but also the small ones, the countries which have chosen independent development, and all the states which want peace, are in a position, irrespective of their strength, to pursue an independent foreign policy.”242

This conclusion is based on a realistic analysis of the fundamental change in the alignment of forces in the international arena—on the fact that small countries can now rely on the powerful support of the socialist camp and of the greatly increased peace-loving forces throughout the world.

The Principle of Sovereignty Is Dear at Heart  to the Broadest Sections of the People

In our day, the necessity for preserving the independence of a state in determining its foreign and internal policy is dictated by all-national interests.

Not only the working class, but also the peasantry is vitally interested in preserving sovereignty. Under modern conditions, the competition of American agricultural capital-ists who have large surpluses of foodstuffs greatly complicates the condition of the peasantry in many capitalist countries. The influx of foodstuffs and raw materials at dumping prices from abroad brings ruin to the West European peasants. They are begin-ning to understand that they can protect their interests only if they take part in the strug-gle against the invasion of the foreign monopolies, for their economic independence and sovereignty.

The struggle for sovereignty and national dignity likewise meets with a ready re-sponse among the intelligentsia which takes very much to heart the decline of national culture caused by American intervention in this sphere. The flooding of the West Euro-pean countries with the worst samples of American literature, films glorifying crime and depravity, and periodicals propagating the “American way of life”— all lead to deterio-ration of the popular taste and perniciously affect the morals of the rising generation. Moreover, American cultural “intervention” directly harms the national intelligentsia—artists, writers, composers, actors, etc. —by making it more difficult for them to find application for their talents and abilities.

A rather large section of the bourgeoisie, excepting the representatives of big mo-nopoly capital (which, as Lenin put it, “knows no country”), is also unable to reconcile itself to the gross American interference in other people’s affairs. It is not inclined to resign itself meekly to the dominance of foreign monopolists who take into considera-tion only their own interests and advantages and bring oppression and national humilia-tion to others. The feeling of injury to their dignity experienced by many representatives of the bourgeoisie is aggravated by “insults” of an economic nature that they have to put up with.

Lenin noted as early as 1920 that “the imperialists oppress not only the workers of their own countries but the bourgeoisie of the small states as well”.243

As a result of the loss of, or encroachment upon the country’s sovereignty, the bour-geoisie (except for a small section of it) has to “make room” for others in its home mar-ket which it was accustomed to consider its own. Its income decreases because part of it, sometimes a very considerable part, goes into the pockets of foreign capitalists. From a full master it becomes a vassal to foreign capital and sometimes suffers humiliation at the hands of foreigners. As a result it begins to appreciate the value of sovereignty and the advantages of independence, and to sympathise with those who are fighting Ameri-can dominance.

Thus in capitalist countries the forces interested in preserving national independence and sovereignty constitute the majority within each nation. This makes it really possible to isolate the extreme reactionary wing of the bourgeoisie—the financial oligarchy—

which betrays the interests of the country, and to prevent the subjugation of independent countries to American imperialism.

CHAPTER 18

STRUGGLE IN DEFENCE OF DEMOCRACY  IN THE BOURGEOIS COUNTRIES

In the imperialist era the struggle for democracy acquires a special importance. In every field monopoly capitalism seeks to institute an extremely reactionary state of af-fairs in accordance with its striving for unlimited rule, ruthless exploitation of the work-ing people and extraction of maximum profits by any and every means. These strivings are primarily the result of the economic nature of monopoly capital: the consolidation of its rule means replacing free competition by monopoly and a struggle between the mo-nopolies for power and influence. But monopoly is the antithesis of freedom, it conquers by suppressing freedom in all spheres of economic and political life. “The political su-perstructure over the new economy, over monopoly capitalism (imperialism is monop-oly capitalism),” Lenin points out, “is a turn from democracy to political reaction. Corre-sponding to free competition is democracy. Corresponding to monopoly is political reac-tion.”244

The time is long past when the bourgeoisie of Western Europe and North America was a revolutionary class and champion of democracy. After coming to power and con-solidating its class rule it turned its back on the slogans proclaimed by its ideologists during the period of its struggle against feudal-absolutist reaction. As time went on, the pompous words about democracy, freedom and equality in bourgeois society were in-creasingly transformed into deceit, into an illusion. Democracy—for the rich, freedom—for the rich, that is what the principles solemnly proclaimed at the time of the bourgeois revolutions came to mean. Instead of equality, a new abyss of social and political ine-quality came into being. When capitalism entered the imperialist stage the process of degradation of bourgeois democracy and its replacement by open forms of the political despotism of monopoly capital became particularly intensified.

But although the bourgeoisie became a reactionary force it never succeeded in sup-pressing the striving of the masses for democracy. The working class and all working people who have learned from their own experience what a great significance even a minimum of democratic rights and liberties has for them and for their day-to-day life continue to bring the strongest pressure to bear on the ruling classes. It is precisely be-cause of this pressure that in many bourgeois countries a republican system was estab-lished, democratic forms of polity cal life were developed and universal suffrage was introduced.

The democratic achievements, of which the bourgeoisie of some countries now boasts, are not at all its own handiwork. They were not granted as a gift to the masses, but were wrested from the bourgeoisie during many years of bitter struggle. Facts attest that in the bourgeois countries democracy asserted itself in spite of the vacillations, treachery and counter-revolutionary moods of the bourgeoisie. In France, for example, the republican system triumphed only because of the struggle of the working class sup-ported by the other labouring classes and sections. In England it took decades of struggle

on the part of the working class and the great upsurge of the Chartist movement to bring about elementary suffrage reforms. Very instructive also is the history of organisation of workers’ trade unions, whose path to legal existence was drenched in the blood of the working people.

The constant struggle between the democratic and anti-democratic tendencies in bourgeois society was noted by Lenin. He wrote: “Capitalism in general, and imperial-ism in particular, transform democracy into an illusion, but at the same time capitalism engenders democratic aspirations in the masses, creates democratic institutions and in-tensifies the antagonism between imperialism, which negates democracy, and the masses, who aspire to it.”245

This antagonism is still fully alive today. Moreover, it has become accentuated, ow-ing to the increased efforts of the imperialist bourgeoisie to deprive the working people of their democratic rights, to restrict and curtail democracy. The struggle in defence of democracy has in our time become a prime task for all the progressive forces in bour-geois countries. The brunt of this struggle falls on the working class.

It should be borne in mind that democracy in the form it has assumed in the devel-oped capitalist countries is an aggregate of multiform and heterogeneous phenomena. It includes the forms and methods of political rule and state power elaborated by the bour-geoisie and meeting its requirements (replacement of the hereditary power of a monarch by the elective power of a president and parliament, introduction of a multi-party sys-tem, etc.). But however democratic externally these forms and methods of power may be, in essence they remain forms and methods by which the bourgeoisie suppresses its class enemies.

At the same time the concept of democracy embraces the whole complex of rights and liberties won by the working people during their long struggle: freedom of speech, press, assembly, demonstrations and strikes, the right to set up trade-union and political organisations, etc. These rights, although very incomplete and limited by the property inequality prevailing in bourgeois society, nevertheless enable the working people to defend their interests, for example, to strive for legislation restricting arbitrary fixing of wages and working hours by the employers, and providing for social insurance, etc.

Thus not everything in bourgeois democracy is of equal value for the mass of the working people. Above all they are interested in preserving and extending their civil rights, because these rights as a whole ensure the working people the maximum freedom possible under capitalism for carrying on their class struggle, the freedom legally to de-fend their immediate demands and interests, and to fight for their ultimate, class aims.

Nor is the working class indifferent to the fate of bourgeois democracy as a whole when the forces of reaction encroach upon it. Despite all its vices, bourgeois democracy as a form of class rule of the bourgeoisie offers the working people much more favour-able conditions for defending their rights than such forms of bourgeois rule as fascism and the other varieties of open dictatorship of the financial oligarchy.

Marxists cannot have the same attitude to bourgeois democracy under all conditions. It is well known, for example, that during the Great October Socialist Revolution Lenin

and the Russian Communists waged a struggle against all the political parties which un-der the banner of defending bourgeois democracy opposed the establishment of proletar-ian democracy. The point is that at that time the banner of bourgeois democracy in Rus-sia was used to mobilise all the counter-revolutionary forces for a struggle against the working class and the socialist revolution.

Today the situation in the capitalist countries, where the reactionary forces are at-tacking bourgeois democracy, is different. There the working people have to choose not between proletarian democracy and bourgeois democracy, as was the case in Russia in 1917, but between bourgeois democracy and the dictatorship of the most reactionary and aggressive elements of monopoly capital. It is not hard to understand which they choose.

1. Lenin on the Need to Fight for Democracy Under Capitalism

Lenin, more than anyone, was aware of the limited and relative character of bour-geois democracy and was able relentlessly to expose its vices and evils. However, Lenin’s criticism was directed against bourgeois democracy and not against democracy in general, as the enemies of Marxism-Leninism try to represent it. Lenin fought against petty-bourgeois illusions of the possibility of establishing true rule by the people under capitalism. He showed that the facade of any bourgeois republic, even the most democ-ratic, sanctified by slogans about the non-class, all-national will of the people, always disguises the mechanism of the class rule of capital and that the bourgeoisie strives to place all the institutions of democracy at the service of this rule.

But, while criticising those who were victims of petty-bourgeois democratic illu-sions for the sake of which they were ready to renounce the great fundamental aims of the working class, Lenin clearly saw the benefits the working class could derive even from those frequently scanty liberties which it had won at the cost of great sacrifices and blood and upon which the bourgeoisie was encroaching. He considered that “democracy is of enormous importance to the working class in its struggle against the capitalists for its emancipation”.246

Lenin was therefore implacably opposed to the backward views and moods whose bearers alleged that democracy was no concern of the working class and that the struggle for democracy would only hamper it in its struggle for its class interests.

Lenin rejected these Leftist aberrations and pointed out the fundamental and practi-cal importance of the struggle for democracy during which the working-class movement matured and grew, at the same time improving the conditions for its activities. Without winning certain political rights from the bourgeoisie the working class cannot achieve even its economic demands. Lenin taught that “no economic struggle can bring the workers any lasting improvement, or can even be conducted on a large scale, unless the workers have the right freely to organise meetings and unions, to have their own news-papers, and to send their representatives to the national assemblies”.247

But the importance of democracy to the working class is not only that it determines the conditions for the struggle of the working class. Lenin repeatedly emphasised that the demand for democracy corresponds to the ultimate aims of the working-class move-

ment. By calling on the working class to carry out the economic revolution necessary for building a new, socialist society, Lenin at the same time pointed out that “the proletariat which is not being educated in the struggle for democracy is incapable of carrying out an economic revolution”.248

All this makes quite comprehensible the profound conviction with which Lenin stated that “it would be a radical mistake to think that the struggle for democracy is ca-pable of diverting the proletariat from the socialist revolution or of hiding, overshadow-ing it, etc. On the contrary, in the same way as there cannot be a victorious socialism that does not practise full democracy, so the proletariat cannot prepare for its victory over the bourgeoisie without an all-round, consistent and revolutionary struggle for de-mocracy”.249

Of course, Lenin realised that however vigorously the struggle for democracy in bourgeois society may be waged and whatever successes it may score, it can bring the working class only partial results, limited beforehand by the framework of the capitalist system. Under this system there is not, and cannot be, full and consistent democracy for the broad mass of the working people, because the class rule of the bourgeoisie remains unaffected whatever the organisation of the capitalist state. To carry real democracy into effect under capitalism, as the petty-bourgeois fantasists hope to do, is absolutely impos-sible. But, in Lenin’s view, the struggle for democracy prepares the working class for a more successful accomplishment of its mission of abolishing all class oppression and creating a truly democratic society, i.e., a socialist society.

It follows that by acting in defence of democracy the working class proceeds from the interests of its day-to-day struggle, as well as its tasks and plans for the future.

Such is the fundamental principle which determines the attitude of the Marxist-Leninist parties to the struggle for democracy in bourgeois countries.

2. Offensive of the Capitalist Monopolies Against the  Democratic Rights of the Working People

Analysing the economic and political effects of the establishment of the power of monopolies, Lenin emphasised that in the epoch of imperialism the offensive of reaction against democratic institutions, practices and traditions takes the form of open violence against all classes and sections (except the big bourgeoisie) and spreads to the broadest spheres of political and social life.

This offensive of the monopolies is directed against democracy in general, because monopoly and democracy are in glaring contradiction. In this connection Lenin wrote: “In foreign and in internal policy alike imperialism seeks to violate democracy and strives for reaction. In this sense it is incontestable that imperialism is the ‘negation’ of democracy in general, of all democracy.”250

The Financial Oligarchy Is an Enemy of Democracy

During the general crisis of capitalism, the anti-democratic aspirations of the mo-nopoly bourgeoisie become greater and greater. The aggravation of the class struggle,

the further weakening of the positions of capitalism and the fear of socialism, whose forces are continuously increasing, drive the monopolies to extremes both in internal and foreign policy.

After the First World War, fascism triumphed in some capitalist countries and an open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinist and most imperialist elements of finance capital was established. Fascism, as the experience of Germany and Italy has shown, denotes the complete abolition of democracy. The fascist dictatorship brought with it the destruction of the workers’ organisations, ruthless suppression of all opposition, including bourgeois-liberal opposition, violation of the elementary democ-ratic rights of the working people and complete subordination of the people to the arbi-trary rule of the monopolies and their state machine, annihilation of the best forces of the nation in prisons and concentration camps, inculcation of the ideology of extreme chau-vinism and racialism, furious preparation for war and, lastly, aggression, which unleashed a new world slaughter.

The Second World War which was waged by the peoples for the purpose of van-quishing fascism, temporarily disorganised the offensive of the reactionary forces in many capitalist countries. But the victory of the peace-loving peoples over the Hitler coalition by no means put an end to the danger of savage reaction inherent in imperial-ism. Soon after the war the striving of the imperialist bourgeoisie for political reaction at home and aggression abroad made itself felt again in the bourgeois countries and pri-marily in the U.S.A., the main citadel of capitalism. In the post-war period, monopoly capital launched a new broad offensive against the democratic rights and liberties of the peoples of the capitalist countries.

Moreover, the danger threatening the democratic gains of the peoples is intensified by the following two factors.

Firstly, the growth of state monopoly capitalism, the ever greater subordination of the bourgeois state to the capitalist monopolies. The direct participation of the monopo-lies in the government enables them to abolish any democratic norms which interfere with their unlimited rule. State-monopoly capitalism means in practice the establishment of the dictatorship of the capitalist monopolies over society.

Secondly, the enhanced aggressive and reactionary character of American imperial-ism. Having ensnared a number of capitalist countries in a net of economic dependence, American imperialism began openly to interfere in their internal affairs. It relies every-where on the extreme reactionary elements. It encourages all manner of anti-democratic measures, supplying bourgeois governments with money and sometimes with war mate-rial to carry these measures into effect. In the international arena, the U.S. reactionary circles constitute the chief antidemocratic force, exerting pressure on the whole capitalist world.

To this should be added the increasing reactionary influence of the international mo-nopoly unions and aggressive blocs. The various “supranational” bodies created in Europe are in effect outside any control by the peoples themselves and make it easier for the mo-nopolists to wage a joint struggle against the people's democratic rights and liberties.

Reaction Attacks the Vital Interests of the Working Class

Reaction is waging its offensive against democracy from different directions and on a very wide front.

The offensive takes the form, for example, of an open revision of constitutional norms and electoral systems. In recent years, in the constitutions of a number of capital-ist countries numerous amendments have been introduced, dictated by the effort to en-hance the power of the bourgeois governments and to weaken the control of their activi-ties by the parliamentary bodies. The electoral laws are revised and worsened, the prin-ciple of proportional representation is flouted, resulting in the votes of the electors being redistributed in favour of the extreme Right bourgeois parties, while the working class is deprived of representation in parliaments. The legislative role of parliaments is being increasingly curtailed, the right to legislate passing into the hands of the executive power, which is subordinate to the monopolies.

These tendencies have been seen in varying degree in all the bourgeois countries, including the U.S.A., Britain, the German Federal Republic, Italy and, in particular, in France where the democratic constitution adopted in 1946 was replaced in 1958 by a constitution which virtually abolished the parliamentary regime and substituted a presi-dential regime.

Furthermore, the democratic rights of the working people are being continuously curtailed, while arbitrary police rule and terror are increasing. In the U.S.A. the McCar-ran Law was passed as early as 1950. This law legalised police control of private corre-spondence and telephone conversations which is tantamount to a thought control. Tele-phone tapping is also practised in Britain. What the unbridled power of the police in bourgeois countries can do was demonstrated by the history of McCarthyism in the U.S.A., which in a short time was able to leave its imprint on the whole life of the American people.

Not a single country in the world has ever had such a wide network of political po-lice as the U.S.A. has today. Suffice it to refer to the testimony of Cyrus Eaton, Ameri-can multi-millionaire and prominent public figure. In an interview telecast in May 1958 he stated that if one were to take the police forces of cities, counties, states and govern-ment bodies and add them up, one would have to admit that Hitler in his heyday, when he had his Gestapo, never had such organisations or shadowing people as exist in the U.S.A. today.

The working class and its organisations suffer most of all from the fury of reaction. The post-war period was marked by the introduction of anti-labour legislation in most of the developed capitalist countries. That was the way the bourgeoisie “thanked” the working class for its selfless labour and deprivations during the war years.

In the post-war period, anti-labour legislation acquired specific features which make it particularly dangerous for the working people. This can be seen from the Taft-Hartley Act passed by the American Congress in 1947, which became a model of anti-labour legislation for other capitalist states. It drastically curtailed one of the most important constitutional rights of the American working people— the right to strike. It was essen-

tially an attempt to make the bourgeois state an overseer in the working-class movement and the arbiter in disputes between workers and employers. With the state machine in the hands of the monopolies and their henchmen, it is easy to understand what the work-ers can expect from such arbitration.

Which side the bourgeois state supports can be seen in particular from the experi-ence of Britain, where perhaps the hardest struggles have had to be waged by the work-ers in the nationalised industries, i. e., in those directly controlled by the state.

Lastly, mention should be made of the general increase in using methods of terroris-tic suppression of the working people in the bourgeois countries. The incessant activity of the Ku Klux Klan and the formation of the fascist “John Birch Society” in the U.S.A., the activity of military-fascist organisations, especially the OAS in France, the revival of associations of former SS-troopers and servicemen’s unions in West Germany—all these are signs that fascist methods have by no means been discarded by Right-wing circles in the countries of the so-called “free world”. Although rabid German and Italian fascism came to grief, fascist regimes still persist in a few countries (Spain, Portugal) and are being revived in new forms in a number of others.

The offensive of reaction encounters growing resistance from the masses. But the danger is far from having been eliminated and still requires unremitting vigilance from all progressive and democratic forces in the bourgeois countries.

Anti-Communism—Favourite Tactics of the Enemies of Democracy

The offensive of reaction against democracy is usually conducted under the banner of “the fight against communism”. “Anti-communism,” the Programme of the C.P.S.U. states, “is the chief ideological and political weapon of imperialism.” The black banner of anti-communism now unites all the enemies of social progress—the financial oligar-chy and military clique, the fascists and reactionary clerical circles, the colonialists and landlords, and all the ideological and political accomplices of imperialist reaction.

Communists become the first victims of reaction because they are the most resolute opponents of capitalist slavery and the most consistent defenders of the democratic liber-ties and rights of the working people. By striking its most powerful blows at the Com-munist Parties the imperialist bourgeoisie seeks to deprive the working class of its van-guard and to paralyse its struggle.

But, as the experience of many decades has shown, the persecution of Communists also pursues wider aims. It invariably serves as a signal for the offensive of reaction on all democratic parties and organisations, on all trade unions, on all opposition. The per-secution of Communists is followed by persecution of the Left-wing socialists and then of all socialists; then comes the turn of the bourgeois liberals and then of all who are even in the least degree opposed to the dictatorship of monopoly capital.

That was the case in fascist Italy and Hitler Germany. And it is this pattern that is being followed today by the reactionary circles in a number of West European countries and in the U.S.A. In point of fact, are not those who have outlawed the Communist Party of the U.S.A., who have once again driven the West German Communists underground,

following in the footsteps of Hitler and Mussolini? By deploying all the power of their oppressive machinery against (he numerically small Communist Party, the U.S. ruling circles have demonstrated in the eyes of the world how little they themselves believe in the stability of their rule.

The fact that the Communist Parties are now banned in almost 40 countries of the “free world” is further evidence of the raging activity of the reactionary forces and the extent of the threat to the democratic gains of the working class. The danger is particu-larly great wherever reaction succeeds in isolating the Communists from the other de-mocratic parties and organisations and where there is estrangement or a split between the Communists and socialists. Today the split facilitates the struggle of reaction against the Communists; tomorrow it will enable reaction to mobilise all its forces to attack those who look on with indifference while violence is used against the Communists.

To dull the vigilance of the masses, the reactionaries spread cunning and pernicious propaganda that it is only Communists who are being attacked. That is by no means the case. Those socialist and liberal leaders deceive themselves and others who assert that if they leave the Communists to their fate, do not “quarrel” with reaction and behave “sen-sibly” they may escape blows and persecution. The whole history of the working-class movement, especially the bitter experience of the German workers during the period of Hitlerite reaction, contradicts such cowardly tactics. The onslaught of reaction can be stopped and its attacks can be repulsed only by the joint efforts of all the democratic forces.

The entire history of the struggle of the working people in the capitalist countries leads to the conclusion that democracy is indivisible. To tolerate the exclusion of the Communist Parties from the sphere of democracy already suffices to jeopardise the rights, interests and sometimes the very existence of the other progressive organisations.

Democracy Is the Basis for Mass National Movements

The straggle of the working class in defence of democracy is the more important since its success in no small measure determines the success of the other important na-tion-wide movements of the present day—the movements in the defence of peace, na-tional independence and sovereignty. All these movements are closely connected and often interwoven in practice. The struggle for democracy, for example, cannot be sepa-rated from the struggle for peace, because preparation for war is inevitably attended with mass violations of democracy and with intensified political reaction and exploitation of the working class. It should be remembered that the ability of the masses in a capitalist country to influence the policy of its ruling classes depends on the level of development of that country’s democracy.

To express their will for peace and their protest against preparations for war, the working people must have the right to demonstrations, assembly, meetings, publications, etc. To influence the policy of the government, they must have their representatives in parliament. To defend national independence and sovereignty successfully requires a definite degree of democracy so that the masses may be able to voice their will and insist

on their demands.

At the present time, therefore, the defence of democracy is the duty and responsibil-ity of all progressive people and organisations, of all friends of peace and all patriots who value the independence of their country. By defending democracy against the at-tacks of reaction and by fighting for the rights and liberties of the mass of the working people, the working class of the capitalist countries lays the basis for the triumph of the cause of peace and national independence.

3. Unity of the Democratic Forces Is an Indispensable Condition  for Victory Over Reaction and Fascism

Despite all the wishes and calculations of reaction, its attempts to curtail or abolish democracy have called into existence powerful forces of resistance. It is precisely be-cause the encroachments on democracy affect the interests of the most diverse classes and sections of the population that it is possible to establish a wide front of struggle for democracy in the capitalist countries.

Extension of the Social Basis of the Democratic Movement

The petty bourgeoisie is a most important reserve for the growth of the democratic movement. Noting the duality of the position of the petty bourgeoisie, Lenin wrote: “Marxism teaches us that as long as capitalism exists the petty-bourgeois masses will inevitably suffer from the existence of anti-democratic privileges... suffer from eco-nomic oppression.”251

Monopoly capital strangles and ruins the petty bourgeoisie in town and country, en-gendering in it feelings of resentment and protest. Owing to the dual nature of the petty bourgeois, his indignation can be used by the reactionaries in their own interests. They seek to arouse in the petty bourgeois the base instincts of a petty proprietor and to sow illusions and hopes of the restoration of his prosperity as an owner.

Fascism has shown that under certain conditions it can win over the petty bourgeoi-sie and use it for the purpose of doing away with democracy. That happened in Italy and Germany. But fascism also served as a hard lesson for the petty bourgeoisie it had de-ceived.

The objective conditions today make it easier for the working class and the Commu-nist Parties to draw the petty bourgeoisie into the democratic movement.

The attitude to democracy and its future fate has also substantially altered among the capitalists themselves. To the monopoly circles and their associates, democracy is a sur-vival of the past and a downright burden. They seek to put an end to democracy which even in its bourgeois forms interferes with their aspirations to unlimited domination in society. But another part of the bourgeoisie is not at all interested in establishing the omnipotence of the monopolies, which does not promise to be of advantage to it.

Speaking of the condition in which the small and medium capitalists find themselves in the era of monopoly capital, Lenin points out: “Here we no longer have competition between small and large, between technically backward and technically developed en-

terprises. We see here the monopolists throttling those who do not submit to them, to their yoke, to their dictation.”252

The attack of the monopolies on the middle strata of the bourgeoisie is attended with intensified political oppression. Capitalist reality offers many examples of violation of the rights and interests of the middle bourgeoisie, and persecution of the organisations, parties and publications which defend them.

It must be added to this that part of the bourgeoisie objects to a too sharp curtailment of democratic rights and liberties because it is afraid lest it aggravate the class struggle, which is fraught with great social disturbances.

The ruling class is also forced to take into account the experience of the fascist dic-tatorships in Germany and Italy, which has shown that the unlimited dominance of the extreme reactionary groups of the monopoly bourgeoisie threatens a deep split in the imperialist camp and evokes an irresistible upsurge of the anti-fascist movement throughout the world. This is precisely why the more sober representatives of the bour-geoisie call for “moderation”, maintaining that, from the standpoint of the class interests of the bourgeoisie as a whole, parliamentary democratic methods of government are more “reliable” than openly fascist methods.

The stratification in the bourgeois camp increases the possibility of rallying wide sections of the people for the defence of democracy.

The Struggle of the Working Class for Unification of All Democratic Forces

As in the other general democratic movements, the working class is destined to play the leading, vanguard role in the struggle for democracy, This follows from the fact that of all the classes of bourgeois society the proletariat by its very nature is a class which strives for the fullest and most consistent democracy and is at the same time the most courageous and organised class capable of heading the resistance to reactionary in-trigues. By showing all the other classes and strata an example of consistency and high principle in the struggle for democracy, the working class ensures its hegemony in this struggle, in which it is ready to go farther than the others. Lenin wrote: “The hegemony of the working class is its (and its representatives’) political influence on the other ele-ments of the population in the sense of purging their democratism (when there is a de-mocratism) of undemocratic admixtures...”253

The Communist Parties of the capitalist countries work untiringly to rally the broad-est sections of the people for the defence of democracy.

“A highly important task is the revival and renovation of democracy in France,” state the programme theses adopted by the Fifteenth Congress of the French Communist Party (1959). “In our country, a country of old democratic traditions, parliament can still play an important part.”254 The Party is fighting to secure that on the basis of an electoral system that really gives expression to the opinion of the people a Constituent Assembly will be elected to draw up a democratic constitution.

At its congresses, in particular the Eighth and Ninth Congresses, the Italian Com-munist Party has drawn up a broad programme of struggle for the renovation and de-

mocratisation of the country’s economic and political life. This programme, the political theses of the Ninth Congress (1960) state, “represents the general political goal which the Communists put before the working class, the peasant masses, urban middle classes and the intelligentsia, for they consider that it accords with the present situation, imme-diate needs and deepest aspirations of these masses.”255

Unification of the democratic forces is an urgent task in all the capitalist countries—the U.S.A., Britain, Belgium, the German Federal Republic, etc. In all these countries the Communists are in the front ranks of the fighters for democracy. They mobilise the masses for vigorous action against the policy of the financial oligarchy, which is en-deavouring to abolish democratic liberties.

This struggle is being waged now under different historical conditions, at a higher level of organisation of the working class and all democratic forces, and with a new alignment of forces in the world arena. In this situation the working class, by uniting the working people, can defeat the offensive of fascist reaction.

CHAPTER 19

THE DANGER OF WAR AND THE STRUGGLE OF THE PEOPLES FOR PEACE

1. Modern Imperialism Jeopardises the Fate of Entire Countries and Peoples

State-monopoly capitalism increases to an unprecedented extent the militarisation of all aspects of bourgeois society. Today in peacetime vast armed forces are being built up and maintained in the imperialist states. An ever larger part of the state budgets is being allocated for war purposes. Everywhere the police apparatus is being expanded. Repre-sentatives of military circles and of the monopolies working for war are assuming a de-cisive influence over the whole domestic and foreign policy of the states.

The highest level of development of state-monopoly capitalism has been reached in the United States, which has virtually become a country under the dictatorship of the capitalist monopolies. It has been turned into a military- and police-ridden state and is today the biggest world exploiter and world gendarme. At the present day, therefore, to speak of the chief source of the danger of a new world war means primarily to speak of the aggressively-minded circles of U.S. monopoly capital.

After the Second World War the economic, and then the political and military, cen-tre of imperialism passed from Europe to the U.S.A. The U. S. financial oligarchy, which had waxed fat on war profits, was able to lay its hands on the most important sources of raw materials, markets and fields for capital investment. Not content with this it lay claim to world domination of the dollar. Far-reaching plans of American expansion were elaborated. Feverish formation of imperialist war blocs, establishment of war bases on foreign soil, and the bribing of allies by so-called “aid” began.

In undertaking these steps fraught with the menace of war, the American monopo-lies, of course, did not reveal their true intentions. They preferred to hide behind the mask of “saviours’" of the capitalist countries from the “communist menace”. In so do-ing the aggressive circles of the U.S.A. drew on the experience of Hitler, whose anti-Soviet and anti-communist clamour assisted him, as is known, in wresting concessions from the capitalist countries which subsequently became his victims.

The key to the carrying out of the expansionist programme of American imperialism was the so-called “cold war” against the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries. As is evident from the very nature of the phrase, the “cold war”, which has bedevilled present-day international relations, is seen to be an unstable state between war and peace, a state of acute hostility and preparation for a direct armed conflict. The core of the “cold war” lies in the artificial creation and maintenance of international tension, renunciation of international co-operation on a basis of equality and of efforts to find mutually acceptable solutions through negotiation, and a proclamation of their dictato-rial methods and pressure in relation to the socialist countries (the “from positions of strength” policy). Bound up with the “cold war” is the restriction of normal trade rela-tions between East and West, the employment in peace-time of restrictive trade lists,

embargoes and economic blockade in various forms; the cessation or reduction to a minimum of cultural exchanges and scientific contacts; spy mania and the development of extensive subversive and sabotage activity against the socialist states, with which ex-ternally normal diplomatic relations are maintained.

Under its clamour about the “cold war”, the United States counts on rallying the other capitalist countries around it and reducing them to the position of obedient execu-tors of its will. For if the “cold war” were to be discontinued and the world no longer agitated with the imaginary “communist menace”, these countries would inevitably de-velop healthy tendencies to pursue an independent foreign policy in accordance with their national interests.

To prevent such a development American imperialism is concerned to entangle the whole capitalist world in a ramified system of war blocs and strategic war bases on for-eign territories. In the centre of this system is the aggressive North Atlantic Treaty Or-ganisation (NATO).

All the imperialist blocs and bases are described as “defensive”. A mere glance at the map, however, suffices to prove that what is taking place in reality is the location of imperialist forces for aggression against the Soviet Union, the Chinese People’s Repub-lic and other countries of the socialist camp. It is clear that the existence of such a sys-tem of aggressive blocs threatens universal peace and the security of the peoples. Coun-tries that lease their territory to American militarism thereby run a deadly risk.

The ruling circles of the U.S.A. are responsible for the fact that in the modern world there is an unprecedented armaments race, a senseless waste of forces and material re-sources on the creation of more and more new means of annihilation and destruction. In 1961 the NATO countries spent about 68,000 million dollars for this purpose, a sum more than four times as large as the total budget of such a country as France. And this is happening at a time when many of the young states of the world are in urgent need of funds to develop their economies.

The seriousness of the situation is aggravated by the fact that the U.S. monopolies together with their British and French partners in the war blocs have openly allied them-selves with the West German militarists and revanchists—the most aggressive elements in West Europe. NATO helps these to rearm rapidly, to build up powerful land, naval and air forces, and is preparing to give them nuclear weapons, although the Bonn regime does not even conceal its plans of preparing a predatory war against the socialist and other European countries. Things have gone so far that former Hitlerite generals, war criminals, have been appointed to the highest posts in NATO.

In effect a dangerous hotbed of aggression and war is being re-established in the centre of Europe. Another hotbed is being formed in the Far East, where the American monopolies are intent on restoring Japanese militarism dependent on these monopolies.

It has to be taken into account that the expansionist elements in the United States display an obvious inclination to a boastful overestimation of their strength and possi-bilities, a brazen adventurism. In pursuing the policy of the “cold war”, they lightly un-dertake all sorts of provocations, brandish their weapons and do not shrink from launch-

ing aggression against peoples that are struggling for independence. Yet in the situation today any attempts at military intervention in the affairs of other countries is fraught with the gravest consequences for the cause of peace. Who can say in advance that some “local” war, unleashed by the imperialists in a situation of continuing international ten-sion, will not grow into a great war conflagration or even lead to a world-wide conflict?

That is why the Programme of the C.P.S.U. emphasises that “the issue of war and peace is the principal issue of today”.256

In our time the issue of war and peace has in fact become a life and death issue for hundreds of millions of people. The main thing is to ward off a thermonuclear war, to prevent it from breaking out, for its nature is such that even its first hours or days may have catastrophic consequences for the fate of whole countries and peoples, for future generations.

2. The International Working Class in the Struggle Against the War Danger

The working class has long condemned war as a method of settling disputes between countries and peoples. In their works Marx and Engels devote many pages to a passion-ate exposure of the robberies, brutalities and endless atrocities of the wars waged by the militarists. The founders of Marxism warmly approved and supported the actions of the working class against the predatory wars unleashed by the ruling classes.

Lenin mercilessly flayed imperialism for its war crimes. In the early years of the present century he pointed out that the class-conscious part of the working class unre-servedly condemned war as a bestial method of resolving conflicts in human society. Later, during the First World War, Lenin pointed out again that “socialists have always condemned war between nations as barbarous and brutal”.257 He called for incessant struggle for peace, for efforts to put an end to wars. He said: “The ending of wars, peace between peoples, the cessation of plunder and violence—that is our ideal.”258

It is not by chance that socialism was a vital factor in the lives of such ardent and selfless fighters against militarist barbarity and the war danger as Karl Liebknecht, Eugene Debs, Jean Jaurès and others, whose names will never be erased from the mem-ory of peace-loving humanity.

However, throughout past history the working class had no opportunity of fully dis-playing its resistance to the plans for unleashing imperialist aggression. The forces op-posing war were for a long time weakly organised and disunited both on a national and international scale. They had no means of opposing their will to the plans of the war-mongers, especially during the years of the undivided rule of imperialism over the world. Such was the case, for example, before the First World War, when the main con-tingent of fighters against the war danger—the international proletariat—was split and disorganised by the treachery of the leaders of the Second International who adopted a chauvinist attitude.

On the eve of the Second World War, although the peace forces had increased, they were still scattered and too weak to oppose imperialism. The efforts of the Soviet Union—the only state consistently fighting against war—proved insufficient to prevent war.

But the tragic lessons of two world wars have not been lost on the international working class. Now, more than ever before, it understands the need for the most vigor-ous struggle against the war danger. Class-conscious workers realise that a new world war with the employment of modern means of destruction would cause unprecedented sacrifices and suffering to practically all the peoples of the world. Therefore in the capi-talist countries too an ever larger part of the workers takes part in the struggle to prevent a new war.

Nevertheless, even today the policy stubbornly pursued by the most reactionary leaders of the social-democratic trend does great harm to the anti-war movement of the working class in the capitalist countries. The Statement of Representatives of Commu-nist and Workers’ Parties (1960) justly remarks: “Some Right-wing social democratic leaders have openly adopted an imperialist standpoint, defend the capitalist system and divide the working class. Owing to their hostility to communism and through fear of the mounting influence of socialism in world affairs, they surrender to the reactionary, con-servative forces.”259 Nowhere, perhaps, is this surrender more glaringly seen than in the shameless support that the Right-wing socialist leaders of the West European countries have given to the strategy of the North Atlantic bloc—the general staff of the instigators of a new war.

The blind anti-communism of the Right-wing socialist leaders has virtually led them to openly ally themselves with the chief reactionary force today—American imperial-ism—and to support its plans of aggression and expansion. The Right-wing socialists give their blessing to American war bases in Europe, they justify the rearming of the West German revanchists, unhesitatingly vote for increased arms expenditure, justify police and judicial persecution of peace supporters—not only Communists but such bourgeois paci-fists as the philosopher Bertrand Russell in Britain. It is evident that the American imperi-alists highly value the services of the Right-wing socialists and give them support.

The whole policy of the Right-wing socialist leaders is so steeped in NATO phrase-ology that on the main questions it fully reflects the political policy of the capitalist gov-ernments in their countries. This holds good of the Right-wing leaders in Britain, the Brandt group in the Federal German Republic, the Guy Mollet group in France and some others.

The short-sightedness and danger of this policy is so obvious that in some West European socialist parties vigorous resistance to the present Right-wing leadership is already developing. In spite of official proscriptions and penalties, broad masses of the workers take part in an active struggle for peace jointly with the communists and repre-sentatives of other anti-war forces.

The most consistent defenders of peace in our day are the Communist Parties—the vanguard of the working class in all countries.

Marxist-Leninists are the most resolute and convinced opponents of wars between states. They are firmly confident that in the present situation the international working class, relying on the power of the socialist system, has an opportunity of exerting a deci-sive influence in solving the question of whether there shall or shall not be a world war.

In this sense the class interests of the workers coincide with the interests of the over-whelming majority of mankind, which does not want a new world war. “The working class which already controls a vast portion of the world, and in the future will control the whole world, cannot allow the forces that are doomed to perish to carry with them into the grave hundreds of millions of people” (N. S. Khrushchov).260

Closely connected with this is the attitude of Communists to the problem of so-called local wars. The term “local” war by itself says nothing about its nature and aims, except that it is local, limited in extent. At the same time it is clear that even a small and limited war may be aggressive and predatory. Hence Communists consider it their duty to wage a struggle both against world wars and local wars, as in general against all wars between states.

Of course, Communists are well aware of the difference between imperialist, ag-gressive, predatory wars, which they unreservedly reject and condemn, and defensive wars which the peoples are compelled to undertake in self-defence against aggression or intervention and counter-revolution. They adopt a very definite attitude too in relation to wars of national liberation waged by the oppressed peoples in order to be able to exer-cise their right of self-determination and independent national development. Such wars, naturally, have the sympathy and support of Communists, as of all honest and progres-sive people.

The experience of the working people in all countries tells them that in the Commu-nists they have the most loyal, principled and staunch fighters for the preservation of peace among the peoples. The Declaration of the Moscow Meeting held in November 1957 rightly says that “the Communist Parties regard the struggle for peace as a prime task. Together with all peace-loving forces they will do everything in their power to pre-vent war”.261 The Statement of the Meeting of Representatives of Communist and Workers’ Parties held in November 1960 is imbued with the same idea.

In supporting the united action of all who are ready to fight against war, the working class and its Marxist parties by no means lay claim to any exclusive position, still less to a monopoly in the anti-war movement. On the contrary, they eagerly support the peace-loving initiative of all sincere opponents of war. This attitude of the Communists is the result of their firm conviction that under present-day conditions war would inevitably throw mankind into an abyss of the direst calamities and for a long time put a stop to its social, economic and cultural progress.

History has placed the chief responsibility for preventing a new world war on the in-ternational working class. For this reason it is of such importance to ensure on this basis the united actions of the working class, including the united action of all its parties, Communist and socialist. As the Statement of the Meeting of Representatives of Com-munist and Workers’ Parties (1960) says, “No political, religious or other differences should be an obstacle to all the forces of the working class uniting against the war dan-ger. The hour has struck to counter the forces of war by the mighty will and joint action of all the contingents and organisations of the international proletariat, to unite its forces to avert war and safeguard peace!”262

3. Defence of Peace Is the Most Important Democratic Task

The working class is by no means alone in its resolute resistance to the imperialist plans for a third world war. The preservation of universal peace is today a problem for the whole of humanity, one affecting all countries and all peoples. It is the cardinal question of international relations and no state, great or small, can stand aside from tak-ing part in its solution.

At the same time, in regard to preventing war and creating conditions in which nu-clear weapons will never be used, the interests of the most diverse sections of society are closely interwoven and become nation-wide interests. This is the essential feature of the present stage of the anti-war movement, one which makes it the greatest mass movement in defence of peace that history has ever known.

Equally with the working class, the peasantry—the other numerically large class in society—is vitally interested in preventing war. For the broad mass of the peasantry any war is a terrible calamity. In most countries it is the chief source of “cannon fodder” and high taxes are imposed on it to meet war expenditure. Owing to being scattered and un-organised, the peasantry, as a rule, proves defenceless in face of the horrors of war and suffers the greatest losses during it.

The militarisation and preparation for war carried out by bourgeois governments runs counter to the interests of wide circles of the urban petty bourgeoisie and intelli-gentsia. Those of its representatives whose views prevent them from taking part in such an evil affair are reduced to ruin and lose their means of subsistence. It is well known also that the growth of militarism is inevitably accompanied by restrictions on the free-dom of scientific and artistic creative work, raging spy mania and suspicion, humiliating “loyalty tests”, etc. War psychosis does enormous damage to the schools, harms the education of the young generation and encourages moods of depression, fatalism and lack of faith in the future.

The process of sobering up and reappraisal of the “benefits” of aggression is increas-ing within the bourgeois camp as well. The most far-sighted representatives of the bour-geoisie cannot fail to reflect on the question whether capitalism would survive a new world war, whether its instigators would not put in jeopardy the very existence of the capitalist system. There are undoubtedly very weighty grounds for such apprehensions.

The existence of such heterogeneous motives and moods explains the fact that, de-spite all barriers and persecution, there are being formed throughout the world more and more anti-war organisations and movements of all kinds, uniting scientists, writers and artists, the youth, women, ex-servicemen and so on. These movements put forward dif-ferent slogans, sometimes pacifist or ethical, but under present-day conditions each of them in one form or another is capable of making some contribution to the common cause of the defence of peace.

At the 22nd Congress of the C.P.S.U., N. S. Khrushchov said that in face of the threat of a thermonuclear war there is developing a “process of formation of an unprece-dented coalition of the most various mass movements united by the endeavour to free humanity for ever from the catastrophe of war. The international working class, which is

becoming more and more aware of its historical responsibility for the fate of humanity, has become the great organising force of this coalition”.263

4. Possibilities for Preventing War in Our Time

The peace movement in our time is developing under conditions in which there is a real possibility of preventing war, frustrating the plans of the warmongers and preserv-ing peace for our and future generations. This possibility was first pointed out by the 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U. The statement contained in the documents of the Con-gress that wars are not fatally inevitable is of tremendous theoretical and practical sig-nificance and exemplifies the creative development of Marxism-Leninism.

Even now, of course, as the Congress pointed out, the economic basis for wars in-herent in the very nature of imperialism remains. Imperialism has not lost its characteris-tic aggressiveness, its striving for armed conquest and war. On the contrary, it has be-come even more bellicose. But of late such changes have occurred in the alignment of forces throughout the world that the question of the possibility of the successful struggle for peace can be posed in a new way.

Marxists are not fatalists. On the contrary, they recognise that the conscious will and organisation of the broad masses of the people have the same great significance in decid-ing the fate of peace as they have had in the course of human history in general. Under present-day conditions the struggle of the peace-loving forces and their resistance to the plan of a new war can play a decisive part in forcing the aggressors to halt.

The Forces of Peace Surpass the Forces of War

The conclusion drawn by the 20th Congress that wars are not fatally inevitable was further developed at the 21st and 22nd Congresses of the C.P.S.U. as well as in the most important documents of the international communist movement.

The 22nd Congress adopted a new Programme defining the political line of the Party during the coming decades. As the most important thesis of the foreign policy section of the Programme, the Party declared: “It is possible to avert a world war by the combined efforts of the mighty socialist camp, the peace-loving non-socialist countries, the inter-national working class and all the forces championing peace. The growing superiority of the socialist forces over the forces of imperialism, the forces of peace over those of war, will make it actually possible to banish world war from the life of society even before the complete victory of socialism on earth, with capitalism surviving in a part of the world.”264

Elaborating this thesis in his Report on the Programme, N. S. Khrushchov showed that the Party’s confidence in the possibility of preventing a world war is based on a comprehensive and penetrating analysis of the forces operating in the world arena. This analysis leads to the indisputable conclusion that the balance of world political, eco-nomic and military forces has changed in favour of the peace camp.265

What gives it this preponderance, what puts a curb on the aggressive efforts of impe-rialist policy?

Firstly, the unprecedented strengthening of the economic, political and military might of the Soviet Union, and the successes of socialist production, science and tech-nology, have enabled the Soviet state to accomplish a real revolution in military matters and to ensure its superiority in defence. The whole of this might is being put at the ser-vice of the preservation and consolidation of world peace.

Secondly, the appearance on the scene of the world socialist camp as an impassable barrier in the way of the aggressors. For the first time a grouping of states has been formed, and is active in the world arena, that does not pursue the aim of preparing for aggression against anyone, but on the contrary is devoting itself wholly to the struggle for peace and social progress.

Thirdly, the emergence of a large group of young national states of Asia, Africa and Latin America, for whom peace is a condition for successful national regeneration. These countries, which have refused to join the imperialist war blocs, now comprise al-most a quarter of the world’s population. Since their vital interests in actual fact coincide with the peace-loving policy of the socialist countries, imperialism is becoming isolated on a world scale in a way never before witnessed, and the basis is being created for unit-ing colossal forces in defence of world peace.

Fourthly, the tremendous growth of the activity and organisation of the peace-loving forces throughout the capitalist world. This refers to the anti-war movements of the working class, intelligentsia and other broad sections of the people, a detailed descrip-tion of which has already been given.

Taking into account all these new factors in the world situation, the Meeting of Rep-resentatives of Communist and Workers’ Parties (1960) in its Appeal to the peoples of the world firmly declared:

War is not inevitable, war can be prevented, peace can be defended and consolidated.

“Our conclusion,” the Appeal states, “is dictated not only by our will for peace and hatred of the warmongers. The possibility of preventing war arises from the actual facts of the new world situation.”266

That aggression can be nipped in the bud, that the imperialists can be halted, is today no longer a theoretical assumption but a fact that has been proved in practice. It has been clearly borne out by the experience of the anti-war struggle during the recent period. The firm attitude of the U.S.S.R. and other socialist states, relying on the active support of all peace-loving forces, has more than once helped to curb the aggressors and forced them to refrain from acts they would have undertaken if they had been able to leave the new alignment of forces out of account. The U.S.A. in the long run was compelled to consent to an armistice in Korea although influential American circles were in favour of continu-ing and extending intervention. The history of the Suez crisis in the autumn of 1956 af-fords a vivid example of effective action by the peace-loving forces. Success in stopping the Anglo-French-Israeli aggression against Egypt was possible because the imperialists were subjected to a double influence: world public opinion and the state policy of the socialist countries, which came out in defence of the legitimate rights of the Egyptian

people and the interests of world peace. Such facts, too, as the prevention of military intervention by the imperialists in Syria, Iraq (1958) and Cuba (1961), and some other countries, speak for themselves.

One can say that in all these cases the aim was to put an end to local centres of con-flagration, that it was a struggle against local wars. That is so, of course. But we are liv-ing at a time when it is possible also to nip in the bud imperialist attempts to unleash a new world war: Have not the imperialists in recent years often tried to test the stability of the socialist system? Have they not repeatedly resorted to brute force, to taking up arms? On each occasion the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries and peace-loving forces throughout the world prevented the imperialists from diverting the compe-tition of the two systems from peaceful lines to the path of armed conflict, to the path of war.

“'The fact that it has been possible to prevent war,” said N. S. Khrushchov in the Report of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. to the Twenty-Second Congress of the Party, “and that Soviet people and the peoples of other countries have been able to en-joy the benefits of peaceful life must be regarded as the chief result of the activities of our Party and its Central Committee in increasing the might of the Soviet state and in implementing a Leninist foreign policy, as a result of the work of the fraternal parties in the socialist states and of greater activity by the peace forces in all countries.”267

After rocket and thermonuclear weapons with practically unlimited range of action and gigantic destructive power have appeared on the scene, the unleashing of a world war would be real madness for an aggressor. In a war with nuclear rockets the factor of distance loses its former importance. All continents, even the most remote, can become a zone of mass annihilation of people and destruction of material wealth.

The founders of Marxism devoted serious attention to the political consequences of the rapid development of new means and instruments of warfare.268 Lenin too acknowl-edged the dialectics of the growth in the destructive power of weapons. As N. K. Krup-skaya (Lenin's wife) testifies in her reminiscences, Lenin foresaw that “a time will come when war will become so destructive that it will become altogether impossible”.269

The fact that modern types of weapons make war fatal for an aggressor impels the most sober-minded representatives of the bourgeoisie to adopt a certain realism and moderation in their policy. And such a demarcation within influential bourgeois circles can be a factor of positive significance. As Lenin pointed out, it is by no means a matter of indifference for the cause of peace which representatives of the bourgeoisie call the tune in a given situation, those who tend towards a decision by war or those who are inclined towards pacifism, even though the latter may be, as Lenin expressed it, “per-haps of the worst type and, from the standpoint of communism, unable to stand the slightest criticism”.270

It is quite clear that modern weapons cannot abolish the danger of war merely on ac-count of their power. It is not the Communists but the militarists who spread lying propaganda in favour of a “balance of terror” which, they say, can by itself prevent war. Actually talk of a “balance of terror” is intended to justify the arms race. And the inces-

sant stock-piling of weapons, if not halted, can lead only to catastrophe.

Marxist-Leninists, by declaring that the new alignment of world forces makes it pos-sible to eliminate war from the life of society, are by no means calling for passivity but for the mobilisation of the peace-loving forces. One must not in the least under-estimate the forces of imperialism. The possibility of preventing war is not at all the same thing as a guarantee against war. The monopolist bourgeoisie, being a class without any future in history, may in the face of all common sense plunge into the adventure of a new war even at the risk of taking whole countries and peoples with it into perdition. The greatest vigilance and unremitting activity are required to prevent a catastrophe from occurring.

The possibility of preventing war is not a gift from heaven but something that can become a reality only as the result of constant vigilance and incessant struggle. Peace cannot be begged from the imperialists, but it can be forced from them by making it ab-solutely clear and indisputable to any aggressor that if war is unleashed he will suffer a crushing defeat and will incur the onslaught of the superior force of the socialist camp and the devastating anger of all mankind.

The World System of Socialism Is a Mighty Bulwark of World Peace

The existence of the world system of socialism, as already mentioned, has created radically new and unprecedentedly favourable conditions for the struggle to preserve peace. Today it is not only moral superiority over the advocates of violence and war that is on the side of the peace-loving peoples. By outstripping capitalism in a number of important branches of science and technology, socialism for the first time in history has put into the hands of the peace-loving peoples powerful material means for curbing im-perialist aggression.

Seeking to misrepresent the nature of the growing beneficent influence of the social-ist system on the world situation, reactionary propaganda tries to deceive the working people of the capitalist countries by talking about the “menace of world communism”, which is alleged to be encroaching on the freedom of the Western world. Special efforts are made to slander the Soviet Union and its Communist Party, to ascribe aggressive intentions to them and to shift on to them responsibility for the arms race and the tension in international relations. The authors of these inventions act according to Hitler’s “big lie” method, assuming that inadequately informed and credulous people will finally be-lieve the calumnies against communism and the Soviet Union.

But ever wider masses all over the world are beginning to understand that the Com-munist Parties and the socialist countries have no reason for wanting war and for prepar-ing a military attack on other states.

In the Soviet Union, as in the other socialist countries, there are no classes or social forces which could profit by war. On its vast territory the socialist camp has everything necessary for the development of its economy and for building communist society, which is its supreme aim. It does not depend for its development on territorial acquisi-tions, new sources of raw materials, new foreign markets, capital investment spheres or colonies. Planned socialist economy does not suffer from over-production crises and

therefore does not need such “stimuli” as militarisation and the arms race.

But it is not merely a question of the material aspect of the matter. Socialism and aggression are wholly incompatible concepts. The Communists’ political aim is to achieve fraternity and friendship of the peoples and eternal peace on earth. The people in power in the socialist countries are workers and peasants who have suffered the greatest losses in all wars. How can they wish for a new war?

Everything is being done in the socialist countries to ensure a continuous rise in the living standards and cultural level of the broad mass of the working people. Can a war help to accomplish these tasks?

The Soviet people are not building new dwelling-houses, industrial enterprises, pal-aces of culture, institutes, gigantic power plants and canals in order that they may some day become bombing targets. War, which inevitably means an interruption of the peace-ful, constructive activity of people, which diverts enormous material values to unproduc-tive purposes and is attended by destruction of what has already been built, is at variance with the fundamental aims of socialism. This is still more true of a thermonuclear war, which could throw the socialist countries back from the levels they have attained in eco-nomic and cultural development. How can it be supposed then that Communists, Marx-ist-Leninists, for whom the construction of socialism and communism is a life-time aim, could stand for aggression and war?

5. Basic Principles of Peace Policy

The peaceful ideas of socialism find full expression in the foreign policy of the So-viet Union and other socialist countries. It is a policy of peace, of sincere international co-operation, of general and complete disarmament and peaceful coexistence of states with different social systems.

In contrast to the relations of domination and subordination under imperialism, so-cialism put forward a new type of international relations based on the principles of peace, equality and the self-determination and independence of peoples. Socialist diplo-macy, which makes use of humane, honest methods, stands in opposition to imperialist diplomacy, which was and is an instrument for blackmailing weaker states, an instru-ment for preparing war. The strength of socialism lies in the noble appeal of its ideas; unlike capitalism it does not need to implant its ideals by means of blood and iron.

“Our policy of peace,” N. S. Khrushchov stated at the 22nd Congress of the C.P.S.U., “is a principled, outspoken socialist policy.”271 It has already borne excellent fruit not only for the Soviet peoples but for all mankind.

For the future too the aims of Soviet foreign policy remain unchanged. The Pro-gramme of the C.P.S.U. states: “The C.P.S.U. considers that the chief aim of its foreign policy activity is to provide peaceful conditions for the building of a communist society in the U.S.S.R. and developing the world socialist system, and together with the other peace-loving peoples to deliver mankind from a world war of extermination.”272

Peaceful Coexistence and Competition of Two Systems

The most important principle underlying the foreign policy of the Soviet Union was and remains the Leninist principle of the peaceful coexistence of states with different so-cial systems. This is the only rational principle for international relations in a world di-vided into two systems. All attempts to base such relations on the imperialist principles of expansion, subjection to diktat, intervention in the affairs of other countries, violation of the sovereignty of peoples, lead only to intensifying international tension and can bring the world to a catastrophic thermonuclear war. The peaceful coexistence between the two sys-tems is today an objective necessity for the development of human society.

The new Programme of the C.P.S.U. gives a full definition of the policy of peaceful coexistence and of the standards of behaviour that it requires:

“Peaceful coexistence implies renunciation of war as a means of settling interna-tional disputes between states, and their solution by negotiation; equality, mutual under-standing and trust between countries, consideration for each other’s interests; non-interference in internal affairs; recognition of the right of every people to solve all the problems of their country by themselves; strict respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries; promotion of economic and cultural co-operation on the basis of complete equality and mutual benefit.”273

This concise enumeration contains the essence of a whole programme for normalis-ing international relations and stabilising world peace, one which would exclude all use of force to settle disputes between states.

But the doctrine of peaceful coexistence does not merely presume the absence of war between states. It implies the establishment of healthy relations, co-operation on a rational, mutually advantageous basis between countries with different social systems. This, incidentally, shows the deceit committed by those who try to put the “cold war” on a par with peaceful coexistence. Indeed, the “cold war”, which precludes normal rela-tions between capitalist and socialist countries, is neither an equivalent of nor a substi-tute for peaceful coexistence, despite being marked by the absence of an open armed conflict between the two systems.

Some of the enemies of socialism assert that Communists put forward the slogan of peaceful coexistence insincerely and only for tactical reasons, since Marxism, they say, starts out from the thesis that war is necessary for the victory of socialism. In reply to such inventions, N. S. Khrushchov said at the Third Session of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. (1959) that “such allegations are nothing but a distortion of the essence of Marxism-Leninism. Marxism has always waged an uncompromising struggle against militarism and has never regarded war between states as essential for the victory of the working class”.274

The idea of peaceful coexistence arose from the profound faith of Marxist-Leninists in the superiority of socialism, in its inner strength and its future. It is the capitalist states that need to cease putting their faith in weapons and learn to live peacefully side by side with the socialist countries. They need to become used to the idea that capitalism, owing to the laws of history, has ceased to be the only possible social system and that alongside

it there can and will arise new socialist states wherever the peoples of these states so desire. All attempts to hinder the peoples from freely choosing the social system they prefer must be abandoned and outlawed, as also attempts to restore capitalism and colo-nialism by force in the liberated countries.

That is how the principle of non-intervention in the affairs of other countries ad-vanced in the Marxist doctrine of peaceful coexistence must be understood. The socialist camp does not recognise any “export of revolution” and has nothing to do with it. On the other hand, it does not recognise any right of the capitalist system to “export of counter-revolution”, i.e., to implant capitalist regimes and institutions by force of arms.

The Moscow Meeting of Representatives of Communist and Workers’ Parties (No-vember 1960) warned that Communists “consider it their international duty to call on all the peoples of all countries to unite, to rally all their internal forces, to act vigorously and, relying on the might of the world socialist system, to prevent or firmly repel impe-rialist interference in the affairs of any country which has risen in revolt”.275

Peaceful coexistence does not mean reconciling the socialist and bourgeois ideolo-gies or that the working people should renounce the class struggle. No one can expect from the Marxist-Leninist parties that they should cease to struggle for the triumph of socialist ideas. The class struggle, and the struggle of ideas, do not depend on any kind of good or bad will, but reflect the objective situation connected with the existence of different classes. As long as there are exploiters and exploited, oppressors and op-pressed, in the world, there will also exist, and therefore come into conflict, different interests and different ideologies. This has occurred in all epochs, long before the advent of Marxism.

Under conditions of the peaceful coexistence of states, the ideological struggle on the part of representatives of the socialist camp is an honest and frank dispute over the merits of two social systems, a dispute in which the proofs consist of the achievements of the states in economic and cultural development, while the masses of the people themselves act as the arbiter. In such a dispute neither armed force, nor threats to em-ploy it, can serve as arguments. As N. S. Khrushchov wrote in his well-known article “Peaceful Coexistence”, “we may argue, we may disagree with one another. The main thing is to keep to the sphere of ideological struggle, without resorting to arms in order to prove that one is right”.276

That is how the question of peaceful competition between socialism and capitalism is posed on an international scale, the peaceful coexistence of the two systems being the basis of the problem. Such peaceful competition between socialism and capitalism—in economic, cultural and social fields—is at the present day the specific form of class struggle between them in the world arena. The special characteristic of this form of the class struggle is that it is conducted solely by peaceful means.

It was from this aspect that Lenin as far back as the early nineteen-twenties devel-oped his conception of peaceful economic competition between the two systems. In his view it should be “a contest of two methods, two formations, two economies—the communist and the capitalist. We shall prove that we are the stronger".277

Peaceful competition of the socialist with the capitalist countries is not the same thing as the competition typical of capitalist practice. In the competitive struggle a gain for one side always means a loss for the other. Peaceful competition, as proposed by a socialist country, is something quite different. It is competition in vigorously developing the various branches of peaceful industry and agriculture, in raising labour productivity and in constantly improving the wellbeing and cultural level of the broad mass of the working people. It is quite evident that such competition cannot harm any people—the peoples of the capitalist countries, too, would gain from it. But the representatives of the big bourgeoisie are obviously afraid that such competition would inevitably reveal the obsolete and anti- popular character of the capitalist system. That is where the shoe pinches!

General and Complete Disarmament Is a Reliable Guarantee of Lasting Peace

The efforts of the socialist countries to strengthen their defensive power do not in any way run counter to the peaceful nature of their whole policy. They simply have no right to be weak and vulnerable to attack as long as the world contains imperialist pow-ers that rely only on force. Under these circumstances, to be weak would mean to invite aggression and hasten the unleashing of war. Hence the Soviet Union regards it as its international duty, together with the other socialist countries, to ensure the reliable de-fence and security of the whole socialist camp. At the same time a high degree of defen-sive preparedness serves as a shield for all the peace-loving peoples.

For the Soviet Union and other socialist countries military power is not an end in it-self, not a weapon for any kind of Great Power policy. The best evidence of this is the unremitting struggle of the Soviet state for general and complete disarmament under strict international control. The Soviet Government has repeatedly declared its readiness to put on the scrap-heap or cast into the sea all its stocks of weapons provided that the capitalist countries are ready to do the same.

General and complete disarmament is described in the Programme of the C.P.S.U. as the fundamental way of ensuring lasting peace. Only by abolishing the means of mak-ing war is it possible for peace to be reliably guaranteed when the world is split into two social systems. The socialist countries sincerely support disarmament, for the latter fully accords with their ideal of peace between nations and with their fundamental social and economic interests. If an end were put to the arms race, gigantic additional means would be made available for creative purposes, for improving the well-being of the people. The advantages of socialism would then be still more fully and clearly apparent. It was this that guided the Soviet Union in putting forward through the United Nations a compre-hensive programme for general and complete disarmament.

The idea of disarmament as voiced by Marxists is not a temporary expedient or a tactical demand. It is indisputable that never in the past did disarmament have such sig-nificance as it has now when the development of the means of mass annihilation threat-ens the lives of millions of people. However, even at the end of the last century Engels pointed out that disarmament was possible and he called it a “guarantee of peace”. It is

well known, too, that Lenin repeatedly advanced the slogan of disarmament as a practi-cal aim of Soviet diplomacy. If this aim could not be accomplished, neither in the twen-ties nor in the thirties, it was not because it was a matter of a “tactical device” which was not intended to succeed, but solely because in those years the international situation had not yet become ripe for the victory of the idea of disarmament. In this respect, too, new conditions have now arisen.

At the present time the idea of general and complete disarmament has acquired tre-mendous attractive and mobilising power. It receives ever increasing support from the mass of the people in all countries. The leaders of the imperialist powers feel the grow-ing pressure that it exerts on them, and fearing to find themselves ideologically and po-litically isolated they are compelled to declare that they are in favour of putting an end to the arms race. It is characteristic that in the United Nations not a single nation dared openly vote against the Soviet Union’s proposal for general and complete disarmament.

6. Ways and Forms of the Struggle Against the War Danger

The unprecedentedly terrible consequences which a new world war would entail make it urgently necessary to strengthen the popular movement against the preparing and unleashing of imperialist aggression and for peaceful coexistence on a rational basis.

The present-day anti-war movement is as diverse in its composition and forms of ac-tivity as are the social groups and classes taking part in it.

The most organised, consistent and determined struggle against the war danger is being waged by the forces grouped round the World Peace Council founded more than ten years ago. The historic service rendered by the peace movement is that it has been able to inspire many millions of people with faith in the power of public opinion and to combat moods of hopelessness and despair. It has shown numerous representatives of the intelligentsia the path from non-acceptance of war to active participation in the struggle for peace. It is not by chance that its ranks contain, side by side with class-conscious workers, a large number of eminent scientists and artists and famous person-alities in the world of culture, who have understood that under present-day conditions they can perform no greater service for their people and all mankind than by helping to disperse the clouds of the war danger. The working people of the whole world are greatly indebted to those who, like the great French scientist Frederic Joliot-Curie, the British scientist John Bernal and their colleagues, boldly came out against the sinister forces of war and devoted no little of their efforts and valuable time to the struggle against the war danger.

In recent years a large number of other anti-war movements and organisations, em-bracing workers, peasants, office workers, women and youth, of various party affilia-tions and political convictions, have come into being and are active alongside the movement of peace supporters. The political creative spirit of the masses continues to produce new forms of struggle against the war danger. They include collections of sig-natures to appeals and petitions, demonstrations and peace marches, “sit-down” protest strikes, mass actions against the seizure of peasant land for military installations, picket-

ing and boycott of foreign war bases, delegations to members of parliament, etc., etc.

It is this diversity of forms and methods of the struggle for peace that has made unity of action of all friends of peace such an urgent task. On this unity more than on anything else depends the effectiveness of their activity, for the ruling classes heed the voice of public opinion only when it is loud and unanimous. Yet certain contingents of the peace movement are sometimes inclined to act separately on their own account. Often they are infected by anti-communist prejudices, which prevent them from uniting their forces with the most consistent supporters of peace. It should be remembered that imperialist propaganda makes intense and not unsuccessful efforts to disunite the participants in the peace movement, to sow discord among them, and make them take the wrong road. For this purpose it systematically misrepresents the peaceful aims of the foreign policy of the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries, and falsifies the views of the Com-munist Parties on questions of war and peace. The task of class-conscious workers is patiently and tactfully to help in overcoming these errors, to put forward slogans com-prehensible and acceptable to all, and to seek the greatest possible co-ordination of - the efforts of all those who stand for peace, irrespective of whether their position is dictated by pacifist, religious or other moral considerations.

At the same time, the friends of peace must not be complacent. The magnitude of the menace involved by a new war is not realised everywhere by everyone, nor to its full extent. Some sections of the population in the capitalist countries are a prey to indiffer-ence, fatalism and lack of faith in the forces of peace. The constant efforts of all progres-sive public opinion are required to combat moods of apathy and passivity, and to rally the broad masses for a selfless and active struggle for peace.

The main directions of the fight against the war danger are: a ban on war propa-ganda and racial hatred, the isolation in public opinion of all advocates of aggression, the insistent demand for general and complete disarmament.

The Statement of the Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties, adopted in 1960, gave a concise definition of the tasks of the struggle for peace that may serve as the ba-sis for the joint action of all sincere fighters against the war danger: “To stop the arms race, ban nuclear weapons and their tests and production, dismantle foreign war bases and withdraw foreign troops from other countries, disband military blocs, conclude a peace treaty with Germany, turn West Berlin into a demilitarised free city, thwart the aggressive designs of the West German revanchists, and prevent the revival of Japanese militarism—these are the tasks which, in the opinion of the Communists, must be ac-complished first of all if peace is to be safeguarded.”278

As a matter of course, the anti-war movements in each country concentrate their main efforts on those tasks which are the most urgent for them in view of the actual po-litical conditions.

In addition to mass demonstrations and other actions of a non-violent character, the peace-loving forces may find themselves compelled under certain conditions to employ also methods of direct action in order actively to hinder the unleashing of war.

The main thing is to wage the struggle against the war danger day by day, without

waiting until the bombs begin to fall. If war is allowed to break out it may turn out that for many peoples it will be too late to begin the struggle. Hence, constant vigilance and activity, constant readiness to repel the warmongers, are required. The prime task of all Marxist-Leninist parties is patiently to seek out, support and develop ever new forms of the anti-war movement capable of being a channel for the energy of the masses and of converting every passive peace supporter into an active fighter against the war danger.

CHAPTER 20

ON VARIOUS FORMS OF TRANSITION TO A  SOCIALIST REVOLUTION

In the final analysis, the ruthless exploitation of workers, the plundering of the peas-antry and the middle classes of the urban population by the monopolies, encroachments upon democracy and the threat of fascism, national oppression and the danger of a new destructive war, all have, as already stated, only one source—capitalism. To deliver the working people from class oppression, to ensure true democracy, freedom and inde-pendence of the peoples, and to put an end to wars for ever, it is necessary to put an end to the capitalist system itself, i.e., to carry out a socialist revolution.

In the broad sense of the word a socialist revolution comprises the aggregate of po-litical and economic transformations that lead to the complete abolition of capitalism and the building of socialism. It begins with a political revolution, i.e., the overthrow of the power of capitalists and the establishment of the power of the working people. In Marxist theory this political revolution is also known as a proletarian revolution.

1. The Development of Class Antagonisms Makes a  Proletarian Revolution Inevitable

A socialist revolution is not an invention of communist theoreticians, as reactionary propaganda tries to make out. The very development of modern capitalism impels the working people towards a revolutionary transformation of society. As shown in Chapter 10, the growing arbitrary power and oppression of state-monopoly capitalism, its attack on the living standards and rights of the working people, and its reactionary policy, in-creasingly accentuate the basic antagonism of capitalist society—the antagonism be-tween the working class and its exploiters. The further intensification of this antagonism, combined with all the other social contradictions of capitalism, makes the socialist revo-lution an objective, law-governed phenomenon of our time.

The Statement of the Moscow Meeting of Representatives of Communist and Work-ers’ Parties (1960) says: “Our time, whose main content is the transition from capitalism to socialism initiated by the Great October Socialist Revolution, is a time of struggle between the two opposing social systems, a time of socialist revolutions and national-liberation revolutions, a time of the break-down of imperialism and of the abolition of the colonial system, a time of the transition of more peoples to the socialist path, of the triumph of socialism and communism on a world-wide scale.”279

However broad and diverse the social forces taking part in overthrowing capitalism may be, the decisive role in a socialist revolution is played by the working class. The working class is its shock force, the advanced detachment of the working people storm-ing the ramparts of the old society.

Even in the countries of weakly developed capitalism, where the working class is a minority of the population, it can, as the best organised and most conscious class of so-ciety, under the leadership of its Marxist-Leninist vanguard, rally around itself all the

sections of the working people for the struggle for socialism. This is still more possible in the countries of developed capitalism.

The probability of a socialist revolution and its success directly depend on the scope of the class struggle waged by the proletariat, and on its class-consciousness and organi-sation. Those who wish to bring the revolution closer and see it triumph will help to de-velop the workers’ class struggle and will work persistently to raise the political con-sciousness and militancy of the workers.

But this idea must not be oversimplified. The level of political maturity and revolu-tionary consciousness of the workers does not always correspond to the historically ma-ture class tasks of the proletariat. The reactionary bourgeoisie and its agents in the work-ing-class movement often succeed, by methods of deceit and violence, in holding back the development of the class-consciousness of the workers or at least in directing their struggle into channels less dangerous to the rule of the monopolies. A particularly harm-ful role is played in this respect by the Right-wing leaders of Social- Democracy, who strive to force the workers to relinquish the struggle against capitalism and to renounce all co-operation with the communist movement.

However, no one can stop the revolutionary development of the working class and the upsurge of its class struggle. The proletariat is maturing in its everyday encounters with capital, in strikes and mass solidarity actions. As a rule, even a simple strike that does not produce immediate results adds to the experience of the working class and en-hances its fighting efficiency. Hence even the struggle for immediate interests shows a more or less clearly pronounced revolutionary trend. It draws the broad masses of the working people into the struggle against capitalism and becomes a school for political enlightenment and organisation, training the masses for the higher forms of the working-class movement.

The attempts of reaction to suppress the class struggle of the proletariat by persecu-tion and open violence cannot succeed. Of course, in some countries the reactionary ter-ror may for a time make the mass struggle against capital extremely difficult and some-times even impossible. But such periods, however difficult and whatever their cost to the working people, prepare a new upsurge and intensification of the class struggle. Nor can it be otherwise, since the violence to which the reactionary bourgeoisie resorts engen-ders a particularly stormy growth of class hatred and leads to an intense accumulation of combustible material, which ignites with the very first spark. The Marxist-Leninist party gives political expression to this spontaneously accumulated class hatred and directs it into the channel of conscious struggle for socialism.

Ways of Approach to the Socialist Revolution

The proletarian revolution is a direct and open clash between the two main antago-nists—the working class and the bourgeoisie. But a social revolution never has the char-acter of a duel between only two adversaries. Lenin wrote: “Whoever expects a ‘pure’ social revolution will never live to see it.”280 Lenin ridiculed the naive; doctrinaire idea of revolution, according to which “in one place an army will line up and say, ‘We are for

socialism,’ and in another place another army will say: ‘We are for imperialism’ and that this will be the social revolution”.281

There can be no “pure” socialist revolution if only because there is no “pure” capi-talism. In actual life the latter is burdened with remnants of pre-capitalist forms of econ-omy, small-scale commodity production, etc. The contradictions between the working class and the bourgeoisie may be interwoven with the contradictions between the peas-antry and the landlords, the landlords and the bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie and the big bourgeoisie, the monopolies and all the remaining sections of the population. The class antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie may be obscured by na-tional, religious and other conflicts.

Such is usually the complex background against which the mass struggle leading to the. socialist revolution unfolds. And when this revolution breaks out it carries along with it, like an avalanche, all types of movements of the oppressed and exploited, merges in a single stream all the actions of the masses against national, imperialist, land-lord and all other forms of oppression.

Lenin wrote: “History generally, and the history of revolutions in particular, is al-ways richer in content, more varied, more many-sided, more lively and ‘subtle’ than even the best parties and the most class-conscious vanguards of the most advanced classes imagine. This is understandable, because even the best vanguards express the class-consciousness, will, passion, and imagination of tens of thousands; whereas revo-lutions are made, at moments of particular upsurge and the exertion of all human capaci-ties, by the class-consciousness, will, passion and imagination of tens of millions, spurred on by a most acute struggle of classes.”282

Hence, Lenin drew two important practical conclusions. Firstly, that in order to fulfil its task the revolutionary class must “be able to master all forms, or aspects, of social activity without any exception” and, secondly, it “must be ready to pass from one form to another in the quickest and most unexpected manner.”283

Why is this important? Why must the Marxist party itself actively participate and draw the workers into participation in the struggle in all fields of social life? Because any of the social movements directed against the ruling reaction may with a certain turn in events become the actual path leading the masses to “the real, last, decisive and great revolutionary struggle”.284

The diverse movements of the oppressed and dissatisfied masses can lead to the pro-letarian revolution only if the class-conscious vanguard of the working class is able to switch these movements over to the line of revolutionary struggle. It is not by chance that Lenin so insistently appealed to the international communist movement to concen-trate all its forces and attention on “seeking the forms of transition or approach to the proletarian revolution”.285

In recent decades extensive new prospects have been opened up in this respect in connection with the unprecedented upsurge of mass democratic movements against mo-nopoly capital and imperialism. Although these movements do not pursue socialist aims, they are objectively connected with the struggle of the working class for socialism and

under certain conditions may merge with it in a single stream that will sweep away the power of capitalism.

2. Democratic Movements of Our Time and the Socialist Revolution

The main types of modern democratic movements were reviewed in the preceding chapters. They are the struggle of the peasant masses against the survivals of feudalism preserved by imperialism, and their anti-monopoly movement, the national-liberation movement of the peoples of the colonial and dependent countries, the patriotic struggle for the preservation of sovereignty, the struggle in defence of democracy, the movement of the peoples for world peace, the humanistic movements of the intelligentsia and its actions in defence of culture. The democratic movements also include the struggle for the nationalisation of the property of the capitalist monopolies, a nationalisation which is in keeping with the interests of the working people, and for extending the rights of women and the youth, as well as other demands of the broad mass of the people that have become urgent under the conditions of monopoly rule.

These movements attained their greatest scope during the recent decades. The period that followed the 1929-33 world economic crisis was the turning-point. The crisis had to an unprecedented extent accentuated the social contradictions in the capitalist world. The ruling groups of the big bourgeoisie sought a way out in fascism and war. In 1933 fascism came to power in Germany; the danger of fascism also threatened Austria, France and Spain. In many capitalist countries the people responded by a powerful anti-fascist movement, vividly manifested in such events as the formation of the Popular Front in France and Spain, and the support given in 1936-39 to the just struggle of the Spanish people by democratically-minded people throughout the world. But the anti-fascist democratic struggle attained its greatest scope during the Second World War. The emancipatory nature of this war was due to the active participation of the popular masses who joined their efforts with the liberation struggle of the Soviet Union.

The Second World War was followed by a new upsurge of the democratic move-ments, which together with the class struggle of the working class became the principal social movements in the capitalist world.

Some Specific Features of Modern Democratic Movements

The above movements are called democratic or general democratic because they wage a struggle for democratic rather than socialist demands. In itself this struggle is nothing fundamentally new. It was waged, and very actively too, as far back as the ep-och of bourgeois revolutions, when the masses fought for freedom and democracy, for the abolition of large landed estates and the privileges of the nobility, for the separation of the Church from the state,, etc. But unlike the present-day movements, those of the past were of a bourgeois-democratic nature, i. e., they demanded reforms that fitted into the framework of bourgeois democracy and were connected with the victory of the bourgeois revolution. They were especially directed against feudalism and its survivals.

The modern general democratic movements retain their anti-feudal nature only in

the economically underdeveloped countries and in those developed bourgeois countries where there are survivals of feudalism. But there, too, they are at the same time anti-imperialist and anti-monopolist (for example, the national-liberation struggle of the peo-ples in the colonies, the struggle for land reform in South Italy).

In our day, there are grounds for democratic movements not only in the underdevel-oped countries or states where there are still strong survivals of feudalism, but also in the most developed capitalist countries. Here these movements were called into existence, above all, by one of the most important contradictions of modern capitalism—the an-tagonism between the monopolies and the overwhelming majority of the people.

The economic basis of this antagonism was examined in Chapter 10. It. lies in the fact that a group of monopolies which has subordinated the state to itself fleeces the whole of society either by exploiting the labour of other classes and strata (this refers not only to workers, but also to working peasants, artisans, office employees and an increas-ing proportion of the creative intelligentsia) or by converting into its own property part of the surplus-product appropriated by other capitalists (this is characteristic of the rela-tions between the monopolies, on the one hand, and the middle and small capitalists and kulaks, on the other).

But besides its economic basis, the antagonism between the monopolies and the overwhelming majority of the people has also an important political basis.

The monopolies can enrich themselves at the expense of the whole of society only by subordinating the entire internal and foreign policy of the state to their interests. For this purpose they pursue the policy of curtailing and abolishing democratic rights, the policy of an arms race, aggressive foreign adventures, colonial plunder, etc. In other words, a virtual dictatorship of the biggest capitalist monopolies is established.

This dictatorship appears under different guises. In Hitler Germany it was estab-lished in the form of unconcealed fascist barbarism and was accompanied by the aboli-tion of parliament and all the institutions of bourgeois democracy. In present-day France, reactionary dictatorship is being introduced by a gradual limitation and emascu-lation of the real content of the traditional parliamentary institutions. In other countries, notably in the United States of America, the parliamentary system is formally retained, although these countries are ruled by a very real dictatorship of the biggest monopolies. The essential elements of the dictatorship of monopoly capital are to some extent also developing in other bourgeois countries.

It is clear that the struggle against this dictatorship is becoming increasingly urgent for all the democratic and progressive forces. This struggle may assume various forms depending on the acuteness of the antagonism between the monopolies and the people and on the internal and international situation.

This does not imply, of course, that such a struggle is of an anti-capitalist nature. The far from complete enumeration of democratic movements given above shows that they may be very diverse both as regards their driving forces and their social and politi-cal content. They may have a socialist tendency or reject socialism, they may be under the leadership of the working class or that of democratic elements of the bourgeoisie,

and so on,

Nevertheless these movements cannot be described as bourgeois-democratic. For ordinary (even the most democratic) bourgeois democracy cannot meet such demands as abolition of the war danger, formal and actual national liberation, nationalisation of the property of the monopolies, restriction of their unlimited political power, etc. These aims can be achieved only by a democracy of a new type representing the interests of the broad mass of the working people and other progressive sections of the population.

Thus, the present democratic movements, although they have had forerunners, are as a rule closely bound up with the present historical stage, in particular with the deepening of the general crisis of capitalism and the growing resistance of the masses to the rule of the capitalist monopolies.

Chief Enemy and Chief Aim of the Democratic Struggle in  Countries Under Monopoly Capitalism

As shown in the preceding chapters, the working class not only cannot remain aloof from the democratic movements but, on the contrary, marches in their vanguard. In this connection the revolutionary parties of the working class are faced with the task of for-mulating precisely the main aims of the democratic struggle at the present stage and of indicating the chief enemy against which the shock forces of the masses have to be con-centrated. This, as mentioned in Chapter 13 (Section 4), is an important condition for correct strategic leadership.

Such precise formulation already began to be made by the Communist International, which at its Seventh Congress (1935) defined fascism as the dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinist and most imperialist elements of finance capital. This showed which was the wing of the bourgeoisie against which in the first place a blow had to be delivered.

Further references to this question can be found in the post-war documents of the in-ternational communist movement. Bearing in mind the tasks of the working-class movement in the developed capitalist countries, the Moscow Meeting of Representatives of Communist and Workers’ Parties (1960) stated: “The main blow under present condi-tions is directed with growing force against the capitalist monopolies, which are chiefly responsible for the arms race and which constitute the bulwark of reaction and aggres-sion. It is directed at the whole system of state-monopoly capitalism, which defends mo-nopoly interests.”286

A similar formulation of the question is given in the Programme of the C.P.S.U.:

“The capitalist monopolies are the chief enemy of the working class. They are also the chief enemy of the peasants, handicraftsmen, and other small urban proprietors, most office workers and intellectuals, and even of a section of the middle capitalists.

“The working class directs its main blow against the capitalist monopolies. All the main sections of the nation have a vital interest in abolishing the unlimited power of the monopolies. This makes it possible to unite all the democratic movements opposing the oppression of the finance oligarchy in a mighty anti-monopoly torrent.”287

This formulation of the question of the chief aim and chief enemy at the present stage differs from that relating to a stage at which the overthrow of the whole capitalist class by means of a proletarian revolution is already an immediate practical task on the order of the day.

The modern bourgeoisie, not only in the underdeveloped but also in the highly de-veloped capitalist countries, cannot be regarded as a homogeneous whole. Previously, too, it was not homogeneous, but at present, as monopoly capitalism develops into state-monopoly capitalism, differentiation within it assumes new forms. A handful of mo-nopolies which has made the state machinery subordinate to itself rises above the whole nation, even over the sections of the non-monopoly bourgeoisie. Instead of one bour-geois group replacing another at the helm of state power, the latter is now in the hands of a virtually unchanging and uncontrolled clique of monopolists who have merged with the bureaucratic and militarist top section of the state apparatus.

By directing the main blow against this ruling group, the working class makes it possible for those bourgeois sections who have grounds for being dissatisfied with the unlimited power of the monopolies but who are inclined to preserve the bourgeois-democratic order, to co-operate with all the forces of democracy and progress or to oc-cupy a neutral position.

In the struggle against the unlimited power of the monopolies the working-class movement puts forward a broad programme of militant demands corresponding to the interests of various sections of the population. This programme has its concrete charac-ter in each country but the most typical demands are formulated in the Statement of the Moscow Meeting of the Communist Parties in 1960.

The Statement emphasises that under present conditions Communists consider that the unity of different sections of the population can be achieved on the basis of the struggle for peace, national independence, protection and extension of democracy, na-tionalisation of key branches of the economy and democratisation of their management, the use of the entire economy for peaceful purposes in order to satisfy the needs of the population, implementation of radical agrarian reforms, improvement of the living con-ditions of the working people, defence of the interests of the peasantry and small and middle urban bourgeoisie against the tyranny of the monopolies."288

All these measures, the Statement points out, are of a democratic nature. They do not abolish the exploitation of man by man. One cannot fail to see, however, that they involve changes that go beyond the framework of the usual bourgeois-democratic re-forms. In particular, by seeking to achieve the nationalisation of key branches of the economy, the working-class movement delivers a blow at the mainstays of monopoly capitalism.*

• For further details on the attitude of the working class to nationalisation in modern bour-geois society, see Chapter 10, Section 2.

The Programme of the C.P.S.U. particularly stresses:

‘The proletariat advances a programme for combating the unlimited power of the

monopolies with due regard to the present as well as the future interests of its allies. It advocates broad nationalisation on terms most favourable to the people. It backs the peasants' demands for radical land reforms and works for the realisation of the slogan ‘The land to those who till it!”289

Consequently, in the countries of state-monopoly capitalism during the present pe-riod, the communist movement without ever losing sight of its main goal—the revolu-tionary overthrow of the whole capitalist system—advances a programme of practical struggle which is directly aimed at overthrowing the rule of the capitalist monopolies.

The reactionary dictatorship of the monopolist clique has become an intolerable ca-lamity for the people and an obstacle to social progress and democracy. There is no rem-edy for this national calamity except by uniting all the workers’ and democratic move-ments opposing the oppression of the financial oligarchy into a single, mighty stream which will sweep away the dictatorship of the monopolies and remove all its agents from key positions in the state and the economy.

At the present stage this constitutes the main aim of the political strategy of the revolutionary workers’ and democratic movements in the countries of monopoly capital-ism.

The Statement of the Moscow Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties has every justification for pointing out: “It is the primary duty of the working class and its Communist vanguard to head the economic and political struggle of the people for de-mocratic reforms and the overthrow of the power of the monopolies, and assure the suc-cess of this struggle.”

On the Development of the Democratic Phase of Revolution into a Socialist Phase

In the era of imperialism, as historical experience has shown, democratic move-ments and revolutions do not confine themselves to solving purely democratic tasks, but tend to develop further, to rise to a higher stage.

This tendency was brilliantly grasped by Lenin, who, during the First Russian Revo-lution (1905), advanced the scientifically substantiated theory of the development of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist revolution.

Lenin based himself on the valuable indications to be found in the works of the founders of Marxism. In the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels noted that the bourgeois revolution in Germany would proceed under conditions of more developed capitalism and with a much better prepared proletariat than the British bourgeois revolu-tion of the seventeenth century and the French revolution of the eighteenth century, and then drew the conclusion that “the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prel-ude to an immediately following proletarian revolution”.290

Later, in a letter to Engels in 1856, Marx expressed the interesting idea of a combi-nation of the proletarian revolution with the peasant movement. He wrote: “The whole thing in Germany will depend on the possibility of backing the proletarian revolution by some second edition of the Peasant War.”291

The opportunists of the Second International attached no importance to these ideas

of Marx. Only Lenin discerned in them a germ of new revolutionary tactics. Basing him-self on an analysis of reality and on Marx’s idea, he elaborated his own theory of the development of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist revolution.

The main thing in this theory is the idea of the hegemony (the leading role) of the working class in the bourgeois-democratic revolution. This was a new idea that ran counter to habitual conceptions. The West European Social-Democrats (and then the Russian Mensheviks) reasoned in the conventional manner, i. e., as long as it is a bour-geois-democratic revolution, it should be led by the bourgeoisie. Since it was thus in Western Europe, they said, it will be thus in all the bourgeois revolutions wherever they may occur. Only after a more or less lengthy interval, when capitalism has fully accom-plished its mission of ruining the middle strata and the proletariat becomes the majority of the population, will the time for the proletarian revolution come and the working class will be able to lead it.

Lenin smashed this petrified scheme which did not meet the requirements of the time and did not correspond to the possibilities of the working-class movement. He showed that in the imperialist era a numerically large and militant working class which has established its own political parties, has arisen not only in the highly developed countries but also in those that are on the eve of an anti-feudal revolution. This is a new factor which did not exist at the time of the bourgeois-democratic revolutions in the West. In a certain sense, Lenin considered, the workers are more interested in a bour-geois-democratic revolution than the bourgeoisie itself, which in its struggle against the proletariat finds it advantageous to rely on some survivals of the past, e.g., the monar-chy. Under such conditions, could the working class surrender leadership in the revolu-tion to the bourgeoisie and wait for the latter to “grant” it freedom? That would be con-trary to the whole nature of the working class which, as Lenin wrote, is “the only thor-oughly revolutionary class in modern society» and therefore, the advanced class in every revolution.”292 The working class, Lenin said, must take advantage of the bourgeois revolution, carry it through to the end and, by winning the sympathy and support of the broad masses of the people, and primarily the peasantry, must advance the revolution further, to the achievement of its main class aims. In that case a period of bourgeois rule between the bourgeois and proletarian revolutions is not obligatory. The bourgeois-democratic revolution can develop into a proletarian revolution. It thereby becomes the first stage or first phase on the way to a socialist revolution, and the development of the revolution becomes a single, continuous process.

The imperialist era gave adequate grounds for this conclusion.

Firstly, the world capitalist system as a whole had matured for the transition to so-cialism. Under those conditions the relative backwardness of the countries of the East could not be an insurmountable obstacle to the transition to socialism.

Secondly, every struggle against the survivals of feudalism in a situation in which imperialism preserves and supports the outdated feudal relations sooner or later develops into a decisive revolutionary struggle against imperialism.

According to Lenin’s theory, the new type of bourgeois-democratic revolution led

by the working class gives rise to a new type of state power—the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. This new power carries out reforms that correspond to the common interests of these classes, viz., it abolishes the monarchy and proclaims a democratic republic, turns the land over to the peasants, in-troduces an eight-hour day, etc.

At the same time, while in power, the working class takes all the necessary measures to ensure that the democratic phase of the revolution develops into a socialist one. Later Lenin wrote that the development of the revolution in Russia had confirmed the theory of the Bolsheviks. The bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia did actually develop into a socialist revolution.

By and large, Lenin’s theory of this development is applicable also to the democ-ratic revolutions of our time. Of course, this does not mean that every democratic revo-lution necessarily grows into a socialist revolution, but merely that it can grow into it if the working class is able to take the leadership in it. This is attested, in particular, by the experience of the anti-fascist popular-democratic revolutions, which occurred in the countries of Central and South- East Europe at the end of the Second World War, as well as the experience of the national-liberation democratic revolutions in such Asian countries as China, Korea and Viet-Nam.

Neither in Europe nor Asia did the revolutions, which began on a general democ-ratic basis, stop at the democratic stage, but developed more or less rapidly and with greater or lesser difficulties into socialist revolutions. This shows once more the impor-tance of Lenin’s theory of this development that gave free rein to the revolutionary ac-tivity of the working class and opened extensive prospects for the transition to socialism in the economically backward, as well as the developed capitalist countries.

It should be borne in mind, of course, that the modern era has brought with it much that is new compared with the time of the First Russian Revolution. At that time a revo-lution of a democratic type was essentially of an anti-feudal nature. In a number of coun-tries today it is directed from the very outset not only and not so much against the sur-vivals of feudalism as against the extremely reactionary, monopolistic wing of the bour-geoisie itself. In other words, a democratic revolution is now essentially directed against the same enemy as is the socialist revolution of the working class. This means that the two types of revolution have drawn still closer. It is this that gives rise to the new char-acteristic features of the revolutionary process.

Firstly, the struggle for the accomplishment of the democratic and socialist tasks does not necessarily take the form of two separate independent revolutions, but in gen-eral merely constitutes two phases of a single revolutionary process. Secondly, in the course of it the elements of the democratic and socialist revolutions are interwoven, as a result of which the fulfilment of a number of tasks of the socialist revolution is possible in the initial, democratic, stage.

This was precisely what happened in the popular-democratic revolutions in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Here the struggle against the survivals of feu-dalism had no independent significance and did not determine the character of the revo-

lution. The revolution was directed mainly against foreign imperialism and the local big bourgeoisie and landlords who had joined forces with it. This gave it a new character from the very outset and created particularly favourable conditions for its development into a socialist revolution. This is why it is possible in some countries clearly to trace the replacement of the democratic stage by the socialist stage, whereas other countries show no such clear distinction. In some countries the development towards socialism pro-ceeded more smoothly and encountered less resistance, in others it was attended with a sharp aggravation of the class struggle.

A democratic power of the people came into being during the first stage and was di-rected against fascism, the national traitors from among the big bourgeoisie, the land-lords and higher officials. The leading force in the people’s power was the working class.

Firstly, the people’s power completely liquidated the consequences of the Hitlerite occupation and abolished the political dominance of the invaders’ accomplices—the landlords and monopoly bourgeoisie. It thus completely liberated these countries from the yoke of imperialism and ensured national independence. Secondly, in a number of countries the people’s power carried out extensive democratic reforms, abolished the survivals of feudalism and carried out a democratic land reform, as a result of which the class of landlords was done away with and the conditions of the working peasants were considerably improved.

Although this phase of the revolution consisted mainly of changes of a general de-mocratic nature, certain measures that went beyond them were carried out in the very first days of the people’s power, for example in regard to extensive nationalisation.

As soon as the democratic tasks had been achieved, the working class and the Communist Parties began the transition from the democratic stage of the revolution to the socialist stage. The transition in those countries was facilitated by the fact that they had strong Communist Parties steeled during many years of underground struggle. In the European People’s Democracies the revolution proceeded uninterruptedly, the democ-ratic and socialist stages constituting two phases of a single revolutionary process led throughout by the working class.

A characteristic feature of the transition to a socialist revolution was that no radical regrouping of the class forces took place. The overwhelming majority of those who ad-vanced side by side with the working class during the democratic stage of the revolu-tion—the majority of the peasantry, the middle urban strata, a considerable part of the intelligentsia and in some countries even certain sections of the bourgeoisie—supported the course taken for building socialism. Here no such political measures as neutralisation of the middle strata of the peasantry were required. Owing to this peculiarity, the transi-tion from the democratic to the socialist stage in the European People’s Democracies in the main proceeded peacefully, without an armed uprising or civil war.

This does not mean there were no differences in the ranks of the general democratic bloc. The bloc consisted of heterogeneous class forces and it was therefore to be ex-pected that class contradictions would reveal themselves after the solution of the general

democratic tasks. As a matter of fact, between the first and second stages, the revolution did not develop as a smooth and placid current, but involved class collisions, which in some countries (Czechoslovakia, 1948) were at times of an acute kind.

The reactionary representatives of the bourgeois parties and the extreme Right-wing leaders of Social-Democracy repeatedly tried to check the development of the revolu-tion, to organise counterrevolutionary putsches with the aid of international reaction. They planned to remove the working class from the leadership of the general democratic bloc and direct the development along a bourgeois-democratic path. But the revolution-ary people swept away the Right-wing elements, and the transition from the democratic to the socialist stage in the countries of Central and South-East Europe was crowned with success.

Lenin’s theory of the transition to a socialist revolution provides a key to under-standing the lines of development also of the democratic revolutions aimed at abolishing the unlimited power of the monopolies as described above.

The prerequisites for the development of revolutionary anti-monopoly movements in the struggle for socialism are now more numerous than ever before.

The overthrow of the dictatorship of the capitalist monopolies would, in the first place, remove the henchmen of the big monopolies from power and turn the power over to the people, i. e., to a coalition of democratic forces which could include the working class, all sections of the peasantry, the middle sections of the urban population, the de-mocratic intelligentsia, and some sections of the middle bourgeoisie. This would mean the isolation and overthrow of the main forces of reaction during the very first, democ-ratic stage.

Secondly, the overthrow of the political rule of the monopolies would make it possi-ble to nationalise the property of the large trusts and concerns, which have directly linked themselves with the policy of reaction and aggression. In the developed capitalist countries this would result in the creation of a powerful state-owned sector of the na-tional economy with about 60-80 per cent of the industrial capacity.

Thus at the very outset of the revolution a firm foundation would be laid for the transition to socialism. This means that the democratic and socialist phases of the revo-lution, which even before were not separated by any Chinese Wall, draw still closer, although previous differences (as regards slogans, alignment of class forces, etc.) be-tween them still remain.

In the countries of developed capitalism this could also be facilitated by other objec-tive and subjective factors, which include the ready-made material basis for socialism, the developed working- class movement, the high level of culture in general among the working people, etc.

In addition, the relationship of forces in the international arena, which is now in-comparably more favourable than ever before, must also be taken into consideration.

Thus, the process of the revolution becomes more continuous than ever before. A second political revolution may become unnecessary if during the first stage the working class already wins general recognition as the vanguard of the whole people; the socialist

changes may be carried out gradually—by co-operation and agreement. This, of course, does not make it unnecessary to suppress individual groups opposing urgent, social and economic reforms.

The existence of strong Marxist-Leninist parties enjoying the broad support of all sections of the population, as well as the flexible and skilful policy of these parties, are of decisive importance for the transition. However close the democratic and socialist phases of the revolution may draw, the transition from the one to the other cannot come about without a conscious leadership, without the active participation of the Marxist-Leninist party.

One should not, however, ignore the specific difficulties which the revolution may encounter in developed capitalist countries. To begin with, it will have a stronger adver-sary than did the former revolutions. The big capitalist monopolies now have a powerful military and police machine at their disposal and numerous means of influencing the masses ideologically. They have accumulated no little experience in political combina-tions and duping the masses. Lenin’s conclusion, that for us (i.e., Russia) it was easier to begin and harder to continue, whereas for them (i.e., the countries of the West) it is harder to begin, but will be easier to continue, therefore still holds good.

An understanding of the general tendencies of development of revolutionary anti-monopoly movements does not provide a basis for a scheme that will apply to all coun-tries and peoples. Revolutionary theory does not tolerate such schemes. Each Commu-nist Party, by studying the specific conditions of its country, and taking into account his-torical experience and the general laws discovered by Marxism-Leninism, determines the concrete prospects of revolutionary development by which the working class should be guided.

A democratic anti-monopoly revolution is a possible but not inevitable phase of the struggle for socialism in all the developed capitalist countries. It is possible that the gen-eral democratic movements will not lead to such revolutions (at any rate, not in all coun-tries) and a socialist revolution may occur at once, skipping the general democratic stage.

In any case, democratic slogans are of tremendous importance for large contingents of the working people to go over to the struggle for socialism, to an alliance with the working class in the socialist revolution.

It is well known, for example, what an enormous role during the transition of the masses of the Russian working people to the socialist revolution was played by the fact that they were longing for peace and land. When the peasantry became convinced that the bourgeois government would give it neither peace nor land, it went over to the Bol-sheviks in October 1917, and this ensured the triumph of the socialist revolution.

It is clear that similar situations are not impossible in the future.

There is no sense in trying to guess in what, way and through what democratic de-mands this may come about. Any of them, depending on the concrete situation, may bring the masses to a decisive struggle for socialism. In the face of an immediate threat of nuclear war prepared by the reactionary bourgeoisie, it may be a mass action for

peace. Under other conditions the working people may be brought onto the path of so-cialism by a broad anti-fascist movement, or the struggle in defence of national sover-eignty, or a number of such movements merging into a single stream of democratic struggle.

At any rate, one thing is important: in our day the general democratic movements of the masses, directed against imperialism and the monopoly bourgeoisie, become more and more closely linked with the struggle for socialism.

While realising this, one must not at the same time regard the democratic move-ments as a mere means of bringing the masses to the socialist revolution.

One must not do so, primarily, because they are of tremendous independent impor-tance to the peoples in general and to the working class in particular. Can the struggle for peace and against atomic and hydrogen annihilation possibly be regarded only as some reserve means? Is it not one of the chief aims of the whole of democratic and pro-gressive mankind? This is also true of the struggle against fascism or against the shame-ful practice of colonialism, from which only recently a large part of the human race was suffering.

At the same time the Marxist-Leninist approach to the general democratic move-ments requires complete clarity as to the class position. However important any particu-lar movement may be, every Communist and every class-conscious worker always keeps in view the final aims of the working-class movement, firmly upholds his socialist con-victions and does not allow the socialist ideology to be merged in that of a general de-mocratic nature. But this does not make him a less conscious and selfless fighter for the immediate interests of the mass of the people and for such demands of theirs as peace, democracy, national independence and sovereignty.

Not every democrat, by far, is a supporter of socialism. But any class-conscious fighter for socialism is a consistent defender of democracy, of all the democratic inter-ests of the working people.

The Programme of the C.P.S.U. emphasises:

“The general democratic struggle against the monopolies does not delay the socialist revolution but brings it nearer. The struggle for democracy is a component part of the struggle for socialism. The more profound the democratic movement, the higher be-comes the level of political consciousness of the masses and the more clearly they see that only socialism clears for them the way to genuine freedom well-being. In the course of this struggle, Right-socialist, reformist illusions are dispelled and a political army of the socialist revolution is brought into being.”293

3. Ripening of the Conditions for the Proletarian Revolution

Even when the revolution has become imminent, when the chief class antagonism in capitalist society has become extremely acute, it cannot, nevertheless, occur at any arbi-trarily chosen moment and under any arbitrarily chosen circumstances. For the proletar-ian revolution to succeed and transfer power to the working people requires a definite combination of conditions.

Revolution Is the Breaking of a Weak Link in the System of Imperialism

In the imperialist era the proletarian revolution in any one country should not be viewed as a separate, isolated phenomenon. Imperialism is a world system with which every capitalist country is to some extent connected. That is why in our time the prereq-uisites and prospects for the proletarian revolution in any country cannot be appraised only from the point of view of that country’s internal situation. Today this question must be considered from the standpoint of the state of the world system of imperialism as a whole.

This was Lenin’s starting-point in elaborating his theory of the possibility of the vic-tory of socialism in one country taken separately. He showed that owing to the law of uneven development the world system of imperialism suffers periodical crises and shocks which make it vulnerable to the proletarian revolution. This offers the working people of individual countries an opportunity to break the front of world imperialism at its weakest point.

What is meant by a weak link in the system of imperialism? It implies a country or group of countries in which the economic and political contradictions of capitalism be-come particularly acute, in which the ruling classes prove incapable of coping with the revolutionary movement, the revolutionary forces being great and organised, and in which therefore the most favourable conditions are present for the overthrow of capital-ism.

So far the world emancipatory movement of the working people has proceeded pre-cisely in this way, by breaking the weak links of imperialism.

There can be no doubt that, however the concrete situation may change in the future in any particular country or throughout the world, the propositions advanced by Lenin on the maturing of the conditions for proletarian revolutions, will retain their full signifi-cance. The transition from capitalism to socialism is not an act of simultaneous libera-tion of all countries from the rule of capitalism, but a gradual process of defection of individual countries from the world capitalist system. This defection is a result of the steady weakening of the world front of imperialism. Especially favourable conditions for such defections are created after imperialism has ceased to be the sole ruling system in the world, when the world system of socialism has come into being alongside it.

As a result of radical changes in the world arena the field for a socialist revolution has become vastly larger. There are no longer countries which, owing to their economic backwardness or some other internal reasons, cannot take the path of socialist revolu-tion. With the economic assistance of the socialist states, these countries too have the opportunity of beginning to move towards socialism.

This by no means implies that the internal conditions of a particular country are of secondary importance from the point of view of the prospects of the revolution. The state of crisis of the world system of imperialism makes easier its breaking at a weak place; but whether such a break will actually take place and precisely where—depends wholly on the internal situation in the given country.

Is Revolution Necessarily Connected with War?

Hitherto historical development has been such that the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and the defection of countries from the capitalist system were always con-nected with world wars. Both the First and Second World wars served as powerful ac-celerators of revolutionary explosion. Lenin said that the First World War was a great, mighty and all-powerful “stage manager, capable, on the one hand, of vastly accelerat-ing the course of world history and, on the other, of engendering world-wide crises of unparalleled intensity—economic, political, national, and international”.294 The weaken-ing of the capitalist system as a result of the First World War made it possible to break the front of imperialism in tsarist Russia in 1917.

In this respect the Second World War was an even mightier “stage manager”. As a result of the routing of the main forces of international reaction—German and Italian fascism and Japanese militarism—it became possible for several more countries in Cen-tral and South-East Europe, as well as great China, North Korea and North Viet-Nam, to liberate themselves from the yoke of capitalism. The same causes facilitated the libera-tion of the peoples of India, Indonesia, Burma, and other colonial and dependent coun-tries from the yoke of imperialism.

These historical facts fully warrant the conclusion that in the era of imperialism world wars, which accentuate to an extreme degree the socio-political contradictions of capitalist society, inevitably lead to revolutions. If the imperialists ignore these lessons of history and risk unleashing a third world war, the latter will not fail to bring about the collapse of the entire system of world imperialism. Humanity will surely refuse to toler-ate any longer a system that exposes to mortal danger the physical existence of whole nations and dooms millions of people to suffering and death.

But all this does not in any way mean that further revolutionary victories over capi-talism presuppose war as a necessary prerequisite. Whereas world wars are unthinkable without revolutions, revolutions are quite possible without wars.

Dealing with the problem of war and revolution, the Programme of the C.P.S.U. adopted at the Twenty-Second Congress says: “Communists have never held that the road to revolution lies necessarily through wars between countries.... The great objec-tives of the working class can be realised without world war. Today the conditions for this are more favourable than ever.”295

War is neither a source of, nor a necessary condition for, revolution. This was dem-onstrated, in particular, by the experience of the recent national-liberation revolutions. In the past such revolutions could hope for success, as a rule, only in the crisis and confu-sion created by imperialist war. Now we know examples of victorious democratic revo-lutions taking place in peace-time. A clear instance is the people’s revolution in Cuba (1959).

Marxism-Leninism teaches that the proletarian revolution is a result of an extreme aggravation of social and political contradictions. Meanwhile, as already mentioned, such an aggravation has become chronic in our time in most of the countries of modern capitalism, which is experiencing a very deep general crisis.

For the internal contradictions of capitalism to break out with enormous power at the surface, we do not now have to wait for wars or any other external shocks. In view of the high level of political consciousness and organisation achieved by the revolutionary working-class movement in our day, under favourable international conditions a revolu-tionary outbreak may occur also in circumstances of world peace—as a result of the processes taking place in the economic and political life of the capitalist countries.

The progressive internal weakening of capitalism is the final and basic reason that the working people under the yoke of capital may hope for more and more successes in their great movement for social emancipation.

What a Revolutionary Situation Is

Any revolution worthy of the name is the action of broad masses of people who have risen to a selfless struggle and are determined to change the social order and the conditions of their existence. But when it is a question of the struggle of whole classes and peoples it would be naive to think that they can be set in motion by anybody’s whim. Nations and classes rise to a struggle, prompted by profound motives which spring from the objective conditions of their life.

Leninism elaborated general criteria for judging whether or not the conditions are ripe for revolution, whether or not the objective situation favours the struggle of the masses for power. In political language such a favourable situation is called a revolu-tionary situation.

Lenin pointed out that a revolutionary situation was characterised by three principal signs: “1) When it is impossible for the ruling classes to maintain their rule in an un-changed form; when there is a crisis, in one form or another, among the ‘upper classes’, a crisis in the policy of the ruling class which causes a fissure, through which the discon-tent and indignation of the oppressed classes burst forth. Usually, for a revolution to break out it is not enough for the ‘lower classes not to want’ to live in the old way; it is necessary also that the ‘upper classes should be unable’ to live in the old way; 2) when the want and suffering of the oppressed classes have become more acute than usual; 3) when, as a consequence of the above causes, there is a considerable increase in the activ-ity of the masses, who in ‘peace’ time quietly allow themselves to be robbed, but who in turbulent times are drawn both by all the circumstances of the crisis and by the 'upper classes’ themselves into independent historical action.

“Without these objective changes which are independent not only of the will of separate groups and parties, but even of separate classes, a revolution, as a general rule, is impossible. The sum total of all these objective changes is called a revolutionary situation.”296

Lenin’s remark that for a revolutionary situation it is not enough that the masses should be discontented and resentful is of particular importance. For a revolution it is additionally necessary that the ruling classes should be unable to live and rule as of old. In other words, a revolution is impossible without a national crisis, i.e., one that affects the lower as well as the upper strata of the people. It follows that the revolutionary party

of the working class cannot base its tactics only on the sentiments of the masses; it must also take into account the behaviour of the ruling classes.

A revolutionary situation arises when the policy of the ruling classes has become bankrupt and has reached a deadlock, when discontent is growing and extending among the masses of the people and confusion, uncertainty, and inability to find a way out of the suddenly aggravated situation reign in the “upper classes", when, as the saying goes, the idea of radical changes is in the air. This usually takes place during turbulent periods in history, when the fate of classes and whole nations not infrequently depends on some particular turn of events. At such a moment the masses have to choose between the al-ternatives: either—or; there is no third course.

Even the most non-class-conscious sections of the working people at such moments sense the general meaning of the events and are inspired with the resolution to act vigor-ously. This is what Marx meant when he wrote about days “concentrating in themselves 20 years each”.

Of the objective causes that serve to inflame the situation, the decisive role is, as a rule, played by economic factors, primarily a serious aggravation of the want and suffer-ing of the oppressed classes. An unusual increase in exploitation, mass unemployment, a rapid rise in the cost of living, an economic slump which robs the masses of their confi-dence in the future—all undoubtedly make an outbreak of revolutionary activity on the part of the masses particularly probable. However, Marxists have never regarded mate-rial causes as the sole factors that revolutionise the consciousness and will of the work-ing masses.

The question of the factors which give rise to a revolutionary situation, especially under present-day conditions, requires a broad view and appraisal of the various proc-esses operating in the capitalist world. For example, the increasing danger of military adventures and of the revival of fascism leads to the accumulation of material for a revo-lutionary outbreak. The danger of the involvement of a country in an atomic catastrophe may fully suffice for rapidly making the masses determined on open action against the power of the political adventurists who do the bidding of a small group of armament monopolies. Unbridled political reaction may also bring about a revolutionary situation. The danger that the country may be occupied by foreign troops, as well as other factors, may have the same effect.

Vain therefore are the hopes of those who think they can buy themselves off from revolution in our time with half-way social reforms and partial improvement of the liv-ing conditions of the working people. Those who labour under such illusions cannot or will not understand that the class contradictions in any country may become aggravated to the point of creating a revolutionary situation not only from economic but also from political causes.

Lenin pointed out, however, that a revolution does not arise out of every revolution-ary situation, but only when subjective conditions are added to the necessary objective conditions. A tremendously important part is played by the ability and readiness of the revolutionary class to carry out decisive action strong enough to smash or impair the

existing power, which will never “fall” of itself, even during a crisis, if it is not “thrown”.

The political maturity and fighting efficiency of the working-class parties are tested precisely during revolutionary crises. A tremendous responsibility devolves on the Party. It must not miss any favourable opportunities, must properly choose the moment when its call for decisive action will be supported by the broadest masses. Lenin repeatedly stated that at such moments the leaders of the working class must not only be able to analyse the situation scientifically, but that they must also have a special revolutionary intuition.

In particular, Lenin warned against one danger that may arise during the periods when events develop stormily. It is the danger of relying only on one’s own forces, of mistaking the moods and resolution of the vanguard for those of the whole people.

A revolution without the guidance of the Party is impossible, but the Party cannot accomplish it only by its own forces. Lenin warned that “victory cannot be won with the vanguard alone. To throw the vanguard alone into the decisive battle, before the whole class, before the broad masses have taken up a position either of direct support of the vanguard, or at least a benevolent neutrality towards it, and one in which they cannot possibly support the enemy, would be not merely folly but a crime. And in order that actually the whole class, that actually the broad masses of the working people and those oppressed by capital may take up such a position, propaganda and agitation alone are not enough. For this the masses must have their own political experience. Such is the fun-damental law of all great revolutions....”297

Such, in brief, are the Marxist-Leninist views of a revolutionary situation, which is brought about by objective causes but can be successfully utilised for revolutionary ac-tion only by a party which understands the requirements of the historical moment, is closely connected with the masses and can lead these masses.

4. The Transfer of Power to the Working Class

The central problem of every revolution is the problem of power. To seize the power from the feudal lords and hand it over to the rising class—the bourgeoisie—was the aim of the bourgeois revolutions in the past. The aim of the proletarian revolution is to take the power away from the reactionary bourgeoisie and its political brokers and to transfer it to the working class and its allies. This revolution deprives the exploiting classes of their political domination and destroys the foundations of their economic might. It ush-ers in a new historical period—the period of transition from capitalism to socialism.

The fact that the socialist revolution has the same political aim in all countries and under all circumstances does not in any way mean, however, that it takes the same form everywhere. Methods of abolishing the rule of the reactionary bourgeoisie may vary. Marxism-Leninism rejects the idea of methods and forms of winning political power established once and for all and applicable to all times and peoples. The methods and forms vary, depending on the general conditions of the era, the concrete situation in the given country and its national peculiarities, the acuteness of the revolutionary situation,

the relationship of the class forces, and the degree of organisation of the working class and its enemies.

Each working-class party, when putting the aim of the proletarian revolution before the masses, is primarily faced with the question of the nature—peaceful or otherwise—that the socialist revolution will assume. This depends, in the first place, on objective conditions—the internal situation in the given country, including the level of develop-ment of the class struggle, its intensity and the resistance offered by the ruling classes, as well as the international situation.

It must also be remembered that in any revolution the choice of the forms of struggle does not depend on one of the contending parties alone. In the socialist revolution the choice depends not only on the working class that sets out to storm capitalism, but also on the bourgeoisie and its hirelings defending the shaken fortress walls of the exploiting system.

The working class does not make it its aim to solve social problems by violence. Lenin always emphasised that “the working class would, of course, prefer to take power peacefully”.298 The bourgeoisie refuses to take account of this preference and whenever possible forces on the revolutionary workers the sharpest, most violent forms and meth-ods of struggle.

Possibility of a Non-Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Power

History teaches that ruling classes do not voluntarily leave the social arena and do not surrender power of their own accord. Supported by the whole machine of their state, they forcibly suppress the slightest revolutionary action, any attempt to deprive them of their class privileges.

That is why an armed uprising of the revolutionary class against the old ruling classes has, since olden times, been the classical form of political revolution. Inciden-tally, nobody knows this better than the bourgeoisie itself, whose representatives now dare to accuse the revolutionary workers of a “predilection” for violence. At the time when the bourgeoisie was striving for power it readily resorted to arms against its class enemies, who tried to bar its way.

Moreover, at that time the bourgeoisie was still historically bold enough openly to proclaim the right of the masses to use violence in the struggle for the establishment of a new and more progressive social system. So important a document of the American bourgeois revolution as the Declaration of Independence (1776) openly states that each nation not only has the right but is even in duty bound not only to alter but also to abol-ish the old form of government if it no longer serves the interests of the people.

Only when so outdated a form of government as the rule of the bourgeoisie, which has degenerated into a dictatorship of a small financial oligarchy and has ceased to serve the interests of society, has found itself in danger of being overthrown, has the bourgeoi-sie begun to condemn “on principle” violence against “legally constituted” authority.

For a number of decades, the enemies of socialism have tried to misrepresent the at-titude of Marxism-Leninism to the armed uprising and its place in the socialist revolu-

tion. Communists are depicted as conspirators and putsch-ists who are trying to take power into their hands behind the backs of the masses. There is not a grain of truth in such allegations.

In expounding the Marxist view of an armed uprising, Lenin untiringly emphasised the seriousness and responsibility of this form of struggle and warned the revolutionary workers against any adventurism or conspiratorial playing with “seizure” of power. He always thought of an uprising as extensive action of the working masses headed by the class-conscious part of the working class. In May 1917, five months before the October Revolution, Lenin said: “We do not want to ‘seize’ power, because all the revolutionary experience teaches that only the power supported by the majority of the population is strong.”299 Precisely such strong power was created as a result of the socialist revolution in Russia in October 1917.

Lenin’s works contain a detailed analysis of such a “special form of political strug-gle”, as he puts it, as an armed uprising. Lenin gave the revolutionaries the following advice:

“1) Never play with insurrection, but when beginning it firmly realise that you must go to the end.

“2) Concentrate a great superiority of forces at the decisive point, at the decisive moment, otherwise the enemy, who has the advantage of better preparation and organi-sation, will destroy the insurgents.

“3) Once the insurrection has begun, you must act with the greatest determination, and by all means, without fail, take the offensive. ‘The defensive is the death of every armed rising.’

“4) You must try to take the enemy by surprise and seize the moment when his forces are scattered.

“5) You must strive for daily successes, even if small (one might say, hourly, if it is the case of one town), and at all costs retain the ‘moral ascendancy'.”300

The skilful application of these Leninist instructions in practice was one of the rea-sons for the success of the October Socialist Revolution in Russia, perhaps the most bloodless revolution in history. During the assault against the Winter Palace, which ended with the overthrow of the Provisional Government and the assumption of power by the Soviets, only a few dozen people were killed on both sides. It was only after-wards, when the capitalists and landlords unleashed civil war, that the revolution took the form of deadly battles.

Of course, nobody can affirm that the proletarian revolutions in other countries will infallibly be similar to the Russian Revolution. Later in explaining the bitter revolution-ary battles in Russia, Lenin noted two factors.

Firstly, the exploiters were defeated in one country only; immediately after the revo-lution they still enjoyed a number of advantages over the working class and therefore offered long and desperate resistance, to the very last minute retaining hope of restora-tion.301

Secondly, the Russian Revolution sprang “out of a great imperialist holocaust” amid

an unprecedented growth of military forces and militarism. Such a revolution could not have been “free of counter-revolutionary conspiracies and attacks carried out by hun-dreds of thousands of officers belonging to the landlord and capitalist class”.302 And this could not fail to evoke counter-measures on the part of the revolutionary people.

Lenin pointed out that for other countries the path to socialism would be easier.

Possibility of a Peaceful Revolutionary Path

A peaceful transition to socialism has great advantages. It makes it possible to bring about a radical transformation of society with the least losses on the part of the working people and minimal destruction of the productive forces of society or interruptions in the production process. In this case, the working class takes over the production machine from the capitalist monopolies almost intact and, after the necessary reorganisation, im-mediately puts it into operation in order that all sections of the population may rapidly convince themselves of the advantages of the new mode of production and distribution.

The peaceful assumption of power is more in keeping with the whole world outlook of the working class. Its great humanistic ideals exclude the use of violence for vio-lence’s sake, especially since the force of historical truth, whose bearer the working class is, is such that the working class can fully count on the support of the vast majority of the population.

The whole question, therefore, is not whether the Marxists and revolutionary work-ers want or do not want a peaceful revolution, but whether there are the objective pre-requisites for it.

Marx and Lenin considered that under certain conditions such prerequisites may be present. For example, in the 1870s Marx admitted such a possibility in the case of Brit-ain and the U.S.A. He based himself primarily on the fact that at that time, which was a period of the greatest prosperity of pre-monopoly capitalism, there was less militarism and less bureaucracy in Britain and the U.S.A. than anywhere else; hence, a revolution could not evoke extensive violence on the part of the bourgeoisie and therefore would not require corresponding counter-measures on the part of the proletariat. At that time the working class was already the majority of the population of Britain, was highly or-ganised and relatively highly educated, while the bourgeoisie was in the habit of settling all controversial problems by compromise. Under these conditions, Marx considered a peaceful victory of socialism possible, for example, by the workers paying compensa-tion to the bourgeoisie for the means of production.

Later Lenin wrote in reference to this: “Marx did not tie his own hands, nor those of the future leaders of the socialist revolution, as to the forms, ways and methods of the revolution, since he very well knew that a mass of new problems would arise, that the entire situation would change in the course of the revolution, and that it would change frequently and greatly.”303

Genuine Marxists were always noted for their flexibility in using different revolu-tionary forms of struggle.

Although the Russian Marxist-Leninists prepared themselves for an armed uprising,

they did not miss the slightest chance of bringing about the political revolution by peace-ful means. When in the course of the Russian Revolution, in April-June 1917, there was a possibility of a peaceful transition to the socialist stage of the revolution, Lenin pro-posed taking immediate advantage of it. For a short time after the February Revolution Russia was the freest country in the world, the people having won such rights as were unknown even in the most democratic states. In his “April Theses”* Lenin therefore put forward the slogan of a peaceful revolution. Only after the July 1917 events, when the Provisional Government shot down a demonstration of workers and soldiers in the streets of Petrograd, was the slogan of a peaceful revolution revoked. The violence of the bourgeois power had to be met by an armed uprising.

• “April Theses” are Lenin’s theses “On the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolu-tion” which he discussed in his speech at the meeting of the Bolshevik Delegates to the All-Russian Conference of Soviets on April 4 (17), 1917. In these Theses Lenin outlined the plan of the struggle for the transition from the bourgeois-democratic revolution to the socialist revolu-tion.—Ed.

It was not the fault of the Bolsheviks that a peaceful transition to the socialist stage of the revolution did not take place in Russia. As far as the Bolsheviks were concerned, there was no need for civil war. On behalf of the Soviet power, Lenin offered to con-clude an agreement with the Russian and foreign capitalists, to grant them concessions and to create state-capitalist enterprises. But the capitalists would not agree and with the support of international imperialism they unleashed a bloody internecine war in the country.

During the period between the First and Second World wars the reactionary bour-geoisie in many European countries, which continuously expanded and developed its police and bureaucratic machine, savagely suppressed the mass movements of the work-ing people and left no chance of the socialist revolution being accomplished peacefully. Such a chance came about only in recent years as a result of the historic changes that occurred after the Second World War.

These changes, which have left their imprint on the life of all peoples and all social classes, and the experience of the struggle of the fraternal Communist Parties, were summed up by N. S, Khrushchov in his report to the Twentieth Congress of the Com-munist Party of the Soviet Union. The Congress came to the conclusion that in our day the possibility has arisen of the transition of individual countries to socialism without an armed uprising and civil war. This conclusion was later fully confirmed in the docu-ments of the Meetings of Representatives of Communist and Workers’ Parties (1957 and 1960) and has thus become the common property of the world communist movement.

A peaceful development of the revolution has become possible because of a number of new factors.

Firstly, the relation of forces between socialism and capitalism has changed on an international scale. The imperialists no longer exercise undivided rule in the world arena. They are opposed by the powerful camp of socialist states, the strengthened inter-

national working-class movement and the democratic forces of the whole world. This means that a more favourable external situation for the revolution has been created. In particular, it has become possible to paralyse intervention on the part of international reaction in the affairs of a people that has risen in revolution, and so prevent imperialist export of counter-revolution.

Secondly, the attractive power of the ideas of socialism is constantly growing and the number of its supporters is rapidly increasing all over the world. The greater the achievements of the socialist countries in developing their economy, culture and social-ist democracy, the stronger is the gravitation of the working people of the capitalist and colonial countries towards socialism and the more numerous are the forces pressing for transition to the new social system.

Thirdly, in many capitalist countries real prospects arose for rallying the majority of the population on an anti-monopoly, general democratic basis and for thus creating a decisive superiority of forces over the ruling groups of the bourgeoisie.

Thus, a peaceful revolution has become feasible not because the ruling classes have somehow changed their nature and are now inclined to surrender their power voluntar-ily, but because in a number of countries it is now possible to achieve a decisive superi-ority over reaction since a new relation of forces has come into being in the world arena. In such a situation, realising the hopelessness of resistance, the reactionary classes will have no alternative but to capitulate before the revolutionary people. It follows that in this case, too, the outcome of the revolution is decided by the actual relation of forces.

Recognition of the possibility of a peaceful revolution does not in any way mean that the Marxist-Leninists have shifted to positions of reformism.

Reformists preach peaceful methods because in general they reject the class struggle and revolution. According to their view, a society of “social justice” comes into being through the spontaneous evolution of capitalist society itself and not as a result of the revolutionary actions of the working people. Marxist-Leninists reject this view because it has no justification from either social science or experience of life itself. They know that any revolution, peaceful or non-peaceful, is a result of class struggle. This is espe-cially true of the socialist revolution, which—whether peaceful or not—remains a revo-lution, since it decides the question of the passage of power from the hands of the reac-tionary classes into the hands of the people.

Furthermore, reformists believe the peaceful way to be the only way to socialism. While noting that a real possibility of a peaceful revolution has appeared, Marxist-Leninists are at the same time aware of the fact that in a number of cases a sharp accen-tuation of the class struggle is inevitable. Wherever the reactionary bourgeoisie has a strong army and police force at its disposal, the working class will encounter fierce re-sistance. There can be no doubt that in a number of capitalist countries the overthrow of the bourgeois dictatorship will inevitably take place through an armed class struggle.

Lenin repeatedly warned us that in the last, desperate fight the reactionary forces may try to make use of all their advantages. Not to take such a possibility into account and not to prepare a strong repulse to reaction would be the greatest folly.

On Utilising Parliament in the Revolution

The assumption of power by the working class through winning a majority in par-liament is one of the possible forms of peaceful transition to socialism.

The Communists have for decades persistently exposed the parliamentary illusions which the reformists sowed among the workers. This does not mean that the Communist Parties wholly rejected the parliamentary struggle. They recognised its significance for the defence of the day-to-day interests and democratic rights of the people. At the same time, however, they pointed out that by means of the parliamentary struggle the working class could not achieve its fundamental aims, could not wrest power from the hands of the bourgeoisie.

This position was correct for its time because it was dictated by the historical condi-tions which then prevailed.

But the situation has now changed and the revolutionary parties have a different atti-tude to the parliamentary struggle. Analysing the conditions of the working-class strug-gle in our day, the Twentieth Congress of the C.P.S.U. arrived at the conclusion that the working class can now make use of the machinery of parliamentary democracy to win power.

The resolution of the Congress reads:

“In a number of capitalist countries the working class, headed its vanguard, has, in present conditions, a real opportunity to unite the overwhelming majority of the people under its leadership and ensure the transfer of the basic means of production into the hands of the people. The Right-wing bourgeois parties and the governments formed by them are suffering bankruptcy more frequently. In these conditions the working class, uniting around itself the toiling peasantry, big sections of the intelligentsia, all the patriotic forces, and resolutely rebuffing the opportunist elements, who are incapable of giving up the pol-icy of compromise with the capitalists and landlords, is in a position to defeat the reaction-ary, anti-popular forces, to win a solid majority in parliament and turn it from an organ of bourgeois democracy into a genuine instrument of the people's will.”304

This thesis of the Twentieth Congress of the C.P.S.U. took into consideration the opinions of a number of other Communist Parties who arrived at the same conclusions on the basis of their own experience.

It is quite clear why Marxism has tackled this problem. Broad anti-monopoly, anti-imperialist coalitions, uniting the majority of the nations, are now in process of forma-tion in the capitalist world. These coalitions may give rise to new types of popular power, and parliament—as a nation-wide representative institution—may serve as their organisational form and as a means of developing a wide struggle against monopoly rule.

The parliamentary method would give the working class a number of advantages. The formation of a new power by so traditional an institution as parliament is for many countries, would at once endow it with the necessary authority, facilitating the subse-quent socialist transformations. Any resistance to the socialist revolution would in this case be illegal, not only de facto but also de jure, and aimed against the will of the na-

tion expressed by parliament.

Of course, it would be wrong to think that power can be won by parliamentary means on any election day. Only reformists can sow illusions that profound social changes can be achieved by a mere vote. Marxist-Leninists do not have so primitive a conception of the coming of the working class to power through parliament. The funda-mental issues of social life are always decided by a struggle of the popular masses and by the actual relation of class forces. The parliamentary struggle ensures transition to socialism only if it is supported by the mass revolutionary movement of the working class, and of broad sections of the population.

To reduce the whole thing to the “free play” of forces in parliament, to parliamen-tary combinations, would mean to succumb to just that incurable “parliamentary cretin-ism” from which the Right-wing Social-Democratic leaders suffer. Constant contact with the broad masses, with the people’s revolutionary movement outside the parlia-ment, is the chief condition for success in carrying out socialist transformations by par-liamentary means.

When general discontent is rapidly increasing in a country, when a real coalition of the democratic forces has been formed and the masses are demanding that the Left-wing parties should form a revolutionary government, only then will the reactionary classes be forced to give in to the will of the people.

The revolutionary Workers’ Parties will not use a majority in parliament in order to get soft jobs. They will make use of the power vested in them to legislate democratic and socialist changes—nationalisation of the property of the big monopolies, etc. Par-liament itself will then be turned into a real instrument of the people’s will. The new revolutionary power will not only preserve the existing democratic rights of the people, but will extend them in every possible way.

It is impossible to foresee the concrete details of the parliamentary way to socialism in a particular country, although one possibility should be taken into consideration from the very outset. It is not impossible that where a coalition of the democratic parties wins a majority in the elections the ruling reactionary classes will refuse to submit to the will of the nation and try by force to prevent the Left-wing parties from assuming power. In this case the democratic parties will be compelled to accept the challenge. The peaceful course of the revolution may become non-peaceful. The sharpness and forms of the sub-sequent struggle will be determined by the relation of the class forces and the interna-tional situation.

Experience shows that the capitalist class is skilful enough to make it difficult for the Left-wing parties to win a majority some time before the question of their coming to power arises. When the ruling parties find their positions endangered, they introduce crafty electoral systems, curtail the rights of the parliament, etc.

Taking all this into consideration the revolutionary parties of the working class strive to master all forms of struggle, peaceful and non-peaceful, parliamentary and non-parliamentary, so that they may be ready at need to resort to the one most in accordance with the situation and the interests of the working people.

5. Basic Regularities of the Socialist Revolution and Their  Specific Manifestations in Different Countries

The question of the interrelation between the general regularities of the revolution and the national peculiarities of the latter has a prominent place in the Marxist-Leninist theory of the socialist revolution. The success of the revolution largely depends on the correct solution of this question. Small wonder that it is the subject of a sharp ideologi-cal struggle.

Revisionists are opposed to recognising any general regularities of the revolution and exaggerate the national peculiarities. Since an attempt is made to impose this point of view on the parties in those countries where the revolution has not yet taken place, this standpoint is equivalent in fact to rejecting revolution.

The dogmatists, on the other hand, ignore the need to take national conditions into account in the course of the revolution. They demand that the socialist revolution should be carried out everywhere according to schemes established once and for all. This posi-tion, too, can do considerable harm to the revolutionary movement. The great power of socialism lies in the fact that it becomes established as a result of the creative revolu-tionary activities of the masses and enters the life of every nation in forms closely con-nected with and intelligible to the people and organically bound up with the whole char-acter of their national life. The dogmatists, however, by ignoring national peculiarities and mechanically duplicating the experience of other countries, fetter the creative activi-ties of the masses, weaken the attractive power of socialism and put additional obstacles in its way.

Taking into consideration the danger of both revisionism and dogmatism, the Meet-ing of Representatives of Communist and Workers’ Parties emphasised the necessity of simultaneously waging a struggle against both these tendencies,

Marxism-Leninism takes as its starting-point the fact that, despite differences in concrete conditions and national traditions, socialist revolutions in different countries must have certain fundamentally important features and regularities in common. This stands to reason since the replacement of capitalism by socialism is basically the same process in all countries. It begins with two fundamental transformations: 1) the exploit-ing classes are removed from political power, and the power of the working people headed by the working class—a dictatorship of the proletariat—is established; 2) the property rights of the capitalists and landlords are abolished and public ownership of the basic means of production is established.

These two transformations may, as already mentioned, take different forms. But in all cases when the working class effects the transition to socialism it must bring them about. Without this there is not and cannot be any socialism.

The fullest formulation of the principles which must be observed for the socialist revolution to triumph is given in the Declaration of the Meeting of Representatives of Communist and Workers’ Parties (1957). This Declaration enumerates the following principles and chief regularities embracing the whole period of transition from capital-ism to socialism:  

the working class with the Marxist-Leninist party as its core leads the masses of working people in carrying out the proletarian revolution in one form or another and in establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat in one form or another;

alliance of the working class with the bulk of the peasantry and the other sections of the working people;

abolition of capitalist property and establishment of public ownership of the basic means of production; gradual socialist transformation of agriculture; planned develop-ment of the national economy aimed at building socialism and communism and at rais-ing the living standards of the working people;

carrying out the socialist revolution in ideology and culture and creating a numerous intelligentsia devoted to the working class, the working people and the cause of socialism;

abolition of national oppression and establishment of equality and fraternal friend-ship among the peoples;

defence of the gains of socialism from the encroachments of internal and external enemies;

solidarity of the working class of the given country with the working class of the other countries, i. e., proletarian internationalism.

The Marxist-Leninist parties in no way seek to carry their principles into effect eve-rywhere in the same form and by the same methods. They take into account the concrete conditions and national peculiarities of their countries. Leninism teaches that the key to the success of socialist policy is the creative application of general principles to the con-crete conditions of the country in accordance with the specific features of its economy, policies and culture, the traditions of its working-class movement, the .customs and psy-chology of its people, etc.

Lenin pointed out that as long as there are national and political differences between peoples and countries, the unity of the international tactics of the communist working-class movement demands not the elimination of the diversity or the destruction of na-tional differences, but such an application of the basic principles of communism as would “correctly modify these principles in certain particulars, correctly adapt and ap-ply them to national and national-state differences”.305

To find, investigate and master the specific national features in the concrete ap-proach of every country to the solution of the common international problem, is one of the most important tasks of Communists.

The development of human society from capitalism to socialism is a universal his-torical process. But the socialist revolution in individual countries, when the social de-velopment puts it on the agenda, is an independent creative activity of the working masses who live in a definite environment and have gone through their own school of life.

The aggregate of forms and methods by which a given country effects the revolu-tionary transformations common to all countries constitutes the special character of its transition to socialism.

The features that the different capitalist countries have in common on their way to

socialism predominate over the national peculiarities. The specific conditions of a par-ticular country may modify the concrete manifestations of the basic regularities, but they cannot wipe out these regularities. Consequently, the path along which a particular coun-try moves towards socialism cannot be fundamentally different from the path to social-ism in other countries. There is only one genuine socialism—the scientific socialism of Marx and Lenin, which has established for all countries and peoples the general princi-ples of building the new social order, principles derived from a profound study of the laws of social development.

The accumulation of experience in carrying out socialist transformations enriches the Marxist-Leninist theory of the proletarian revolution. The creative application of the gen-eral principles of Marxism-Leninism to concrete conditions in different countries serves at the same time for the further development of these principles. Every country, large and small, can enrich with its experience the Marxist theory of the socialist revolution.

PART FIVE

SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM

CHAPTER 21

DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT AND  PROLETARIAN DEMOCRACY

The socialist revolution brings the working people, led by the working class, to power. The exploiting classes—the capitalists and landlords—are deprived of political power but as yet do not disappear from the arena of class struggle. The revolution ushers in the period of transition from capitalism to socialism, the period of the revolutionary transformation of capitalist society into socialist society.

The instrument of this transformation of society, as the founders of Marxism-Leninism taught, is the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

What is the dictatorship of the proletariat? It is power in the hands of the working people, led by the working class and having as its aim the building of socialism.

“If we translate this Latin, scientific, historical-philosophical term ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ into more simple language,” Lenin wrote, “it means just the following:

“Only a definite class, namely, that of the urban and industrial workers in general, is able to lead the whole mass of the toilers and exploited in the struggle for the overthrow of the yoke of capital, in the process of this overthrow, in the struggle to maintain and consolidate the victory, in the work of creating the new, socialist, social system, in the whole struggle for the complete abolition of classes.”306

1. The Historical Necessity for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat  in the Transition Period

The socialist revolution puts an end to the class rule of the bourgeoisie. Therefore, the advent of the working class to power and its policy of socialist construction meet with fierce resistance from the overthrown exploiters. What is more, while they remain, and the economic conditions for their existence continue, there is always the danger of a restoration of the old, capitalist regime.

The Inevitability of Resistance by the Reactionary Bourgeoisie

All revolutions have been compelled to overcome the resistance of the reactionary classes. The rising classes have generally broken free from the clutches of the old soci-ety by establishing their revolutionary dictatorship. The French bourgeois revolution of 1789 carried out deep-going anti-feudal transformations and vastly influenced the devel-opment of many countries, primarily because it did not shrink from resolutely suppress-ing the aristocrats and the other supporters of the royal regime.

The socialist revolution is the most thorough-going of all social transformations; it eliminates all exploitation of man by man, and that is why it has to overcome particu-larly furious resistance. After all, the ruling bourgeoisie has so long and freely enjoyed

the privileges that come with power, wealth and education, it has become so accustomed to its position and so convinced of the indestructibility of the system under which it commands and others obey! That is the reason why the wrath of the reactionary classes knows no bounds when power is assumed by working people, whom they have become accustomed to order about and whom they have haughtily regarded as incapable of mas-tering the art of government. And so, when the ordinary working people encroach on what the exploiters hold most sacred—their private property, when the very possibility of their parasitic existence is imperilled, the overthrown oppressors increase their resis-tance tenfold.

While the transition period continues, Lenin said, “the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope is converted into attempts at restoration. And after their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters—who had not expected their over-throw, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it—throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the ‘paradise’, of which they have been deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the ‘common herd’ is condemning to ruin and poverty (or to 'common’ labour...)”.307

Workers, peasants and intellectuals are proud of their labour, which maintains the whole of society. But the exploiters, who are accustomed to appropriating the fruit of other people’s labour, consider work the greatest of misfortunes and a humiliation.

The reactionary bourgeoisie’s hopes of restoration are kept alive by the fact that, de-spite the loss of political power, it still enjoys a number of advantages over the victori-ous working class.

The big bourgeoisie is in a position to rely on the support of international capital. The armed intervention of fourteen capitalist countries against the young Soviet Repub-lic, the military support given by the imperialists to the Kuomintang regime in China and to the puppets in South Viet-Nam and South Korea, the counter-revolutionary revolt in Hungary in October 1956, the armed provocative actions against Cuba, the huge sums allocated by the United States for subversive activities in the socialist countries—all this shows that the working class, having overthrown the capitalists and landlords in its country, has to repulse the furious onslaught of international reaction.

One of the duties of any government is to ensure its country’s defence against an at-tack from without. But when power passes into the hands of the working people, defence acquires a new meaning— it becomes the continuation of the class struggle that the pro-letariat has to wage against the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie inside the country. Today, with the emergence of the mighty socialist camp and the growth of democratic forces all over the world, real possibilities exist for preventing international imperialism from armed intervention in the domestic affairs of any country carrying out a democratic or socialist revolution. However, so long as the imperialist camp exists there will always be a danger of an armed attack on the socialist states and of support by the imperialists for the forces that are discontented with the new system.

Further, so long as the overthrown exploiting classes are not fully dispossessed of

the means of production, they retain some of their economic positions, and they try to make use of them to sabotage and disorganise the economy. Having lost political power, the bourgeoisie seeks revenge in the economic field, striving to create insuperable diffi-culties for the new government. The overthrown bourgeoisie finds support in small-scale commodity production, which constantly engenders capitalism, and if this is not resisted it may lead to the restoration of capitalism. The bourgeoisie tries to make use of the peasantry’s inevitable waverings.

In the early phase after the revolution, the representatives of the former ruling classes enjoy such advantages as superior education, experience in the organisation of production and management, and connections with the engineering and technical per-sonnel and military experts. For a while the bourgeoisie is capable of influencing the masses ideologically and politically. This influence is all the more dangerous because working people do not at once break with the centuries-old habits engendered by ex-ploiting society. Moreover, imperialism leaves behind a mass of déclassé and criminal elements, and they can be recruited into mercenary counter-revolutionary detachments.

There is no socialist country where the reactionary classes have not resisted revolu-tionary transformations. The nature of this resistance differs, depending on the relation-ship of the class forces. In Russia, assisted by foreign imperialists, the reactionary classes imposed a bitter civil war on the people, a civil war that lasted several years and exacted a great many sacrifices from the workers and peasants. In some European Peo-ple’s Democracies, the resistance of reaction took the form of a putsch.

Consequently, to consolidate the victory of the revolution and paralyse the resis-tance of the deposed classes, it was necessary everywhere to set up powerful and reso-lute governments which would not stop short of applying methods of coercion if need be. This confirmed the Marxist-Leninist thesis that the dictatorship of the proletariat is inevitable in any transition from capitalism to socialism. It is necessary for crushing the resistance of the exploiters and suppressing the activities of criminal elements which, like scum, rise to the surface in this period.

Therefore, the class struggle of the proletariat against the exploiters does not end with its seizure of power. It continues in the transition period too, at times becoming very embittered. But it takes place in new conditions and assumes new forms. The new element is that the working classes now, for the first time, have the state power which previously was wielded only by the exploiters. “The dictatorship of the proletariat,” Lenin wrote, “is the class struggle of the proletariat, which has emerged victorious and has assumed political power, against the bourgeoisie, which, although vanquished, has not been annihilated, has not disappeared, has not stopped resisting, against the bour-geoisie which has intensified its resistance.”308

The Attitude of the Working Class to Force

There is no question about which the enemies of communism have concocted so many lies and malicious inventions as that of the dictatorship of the proletariat. In their effort to intimidate the working people and take advantage of the latter’s democratic as-

pirations, they depict the dictatorship of the proletariat as the negation of democracy, as the dictatorship of individual groups or persons, as “totalitarianism”, as political tyranny, and so on and so forth. They direct especially violent attacks against the fact that Com-munists admit the necessity of force in certain circumstances. On this basis, they try to represent the dictatorship of the proletariat as being nothing but violence, which is al-leged to follow necessarily from the communist world outlook.

And yet, as Lenin said, “in our ideal there is no place for violence against people”.309 The class that had itself for centuries been the object of suppression, fierce reprisals and persecution, deeply hates the system which makes possible violence against people, their oppression and humiliation. Nor does the working class cherish a desire to avenge itself on those who had exploited it. It does not take power into its hands to avenge itself, but to build a new society and to free people from exploitation and all forms of oppression.

In achieving its humane, lofty aims, the working class seeks appropriate means of struggle. “The end justifies the means” is the slogan of Jesuits, not Communists. The latter take advantage of every opportunity of avoiding the use of force both in the strug-gle for power and in the period of building socialism. And if the working class is com-pelled to resort to force, it is because the outgoing classes are as a rule the first to take up arms—consequently, the responsibility lies not with the new, socialist society, but with the old, capitalist society.

Those people make a mistake who think that the dictatorship of the proletariat and the use of force against oppressors are contrary to humanism. It is the other way round. The more resolute the new government is, the less ground is there for the reactionaries’ hopes of restoration, the less need is there to use force. And, conversely, the weaker and the more irresolute the working-class government is, the more furious are the bourgeoi-sie's counter-revolutionary attacks, and the more severe the consequences of the class struggle. There will be less bloodshed in the future if the handful of counter-revolutionary plotters are suppressed in time.

Bourgeois propaganda seeks to represent political suppression as consisting only in terror, reprisals and unconcealed restriction of democratic rights. But such extreme measures are applied only in response to the active resistance of the bourgeoisie itself. If the overthrown reactionary classes resort to arms, they encounter resolute action on the part of the working-class government, which deprives them of their capacity to resist. In other cases, however, the action taken can be confined to non-violent measures leading to the gradual elimination of the conditions under which exploiting classes exist: nation-alisation of capitalist industry with compensation, drawing into labour and re-educating the loyal part of the bourgeoisie, etc. But, whatever the conditions, the dictatorship of the proletariat is not based on tyranny and lawlessness; on the contrary, it establishes firm revolutionary legality and law and order in the country, demanding absolute obser-vance of the laws both by the citizens and by the officials of the new government.

As far as the working class is concerned, it always prefers non-violent methods. For the broader the stratum of the bourgeoisie ready to co-operate with the working class, the easier are the socialist transformations to carry out, the less are human and material

sacrifices they entail, and the faster will application be found for the knowledge and or-ganisational abilities of the loyal part of the former capitalists and the groups of the in-telligentsia formerly close to them.

By unleashing the civil war, the Russian capitalists and landowners compelled the Soviet government to take repressive measures against them, and these measures were only the legitimate answer to violence. Lenin wrote: “If we are sometimes condemned for it (the struggle against the exploiters—Ed.), we can say: ‘You capitalist gentlemen are to blame for this. If you had not offered such savage, such senseless, insolent and desperate resistance, if you had not entered into an alliance with the bourgeoisie of the whole world--the revolution would have taken more peaceful forms.”310

The compulsory nature of the revolutionary violence was admitted by many unbi-ased observers. H. G, Wells, who visited Russia in 1920, wrote: “It was not communism that plunged this huge, creaking bankrupt empire into six years of exhausting war. (It was European imperialism.) Nor is it communism that has pestered this suffering and perhaps dying Russia with a series of subsidised raids, invasions, and insurrections, and inflicted upon it an atrocious blockade. The vindictive French creditor, the journalistic British oaf, are far more responsible for these deathbed miseries than any Commu-nist.”311

As soon as the situation permitted, the Soviet government altered its policy towards the bourgeoisie. It is well known, for instance, that after the capture of Rostov in January 1920 Lenin announced that it was now possible to abolish the death penalty. The ex-ploiters, however, frustrated all these efforts by repeatedly attacking the gains of the revolution.

What proved to be inevitable in Russia, where the overthrown classes hoped for a restoration until the very last, is not at all a general law of socialist revolution. In this respect, something new has been provided by the experience of the People’s Democra-cies, and especially that of China, where it proved possible to apply methods of re-education among fairly large strata of the bourgeoisie. In some countries dictatorial measures may possibly be required only against small groups of monopoly capital and their abettors. After the advent of the working class to power in these countries, applying methods of re-education to the bulk of the bourgeoisie may prove quite realistic. Of course, methods of persuasion and re-education will prevail only if the balance of strength is overwhelmingly in favour of the working class and the people, only if the deposed classes realise that all attempts at restoration will be firmly and resolutely re-pulsed by the workers’ government. The function of suppressing the exploiting classes will not disappear in this case either—it will remain, but it will be exercised by different methods and for shorter periods.

However, whatever its methods may be, the dictatorship of the proletariat will al-ways be, as Lenin stressed, a persistent struggle against the forces and traditions of the old society.312

Even when the workers’ government is compelled to resort to force, its measures are fundamentally different from the methods of domination of the exploiting classes, which

is based on coercion. The strength of the dictatorship of the proletariat lies in its broad social basis, in the fact that it expresses the people’s will and is applied by the people itself. Lenin wrote that the power on which working-class government rests is not the power of the bayonet in the hands of a few military men, not the power of a police sta-tion, not the power of money. It is a power resting on the popular masses. Hence the fundamental difference between the new power and all the old forms of power. Refer-ring to the early years of the Soviets, Lenin said: “The new power, as the dictatorship of the vast majority, could survive and did survive exclusively because it enjoyed the con-fidence of the vast masses, exclusively because it drew the masses, most freely, most widely and most decisively, into participation in administration.”313

Furthermore, while suppression is the main function of the exploiting state and the one that determines all its activity, it is by no means the main function of the working-class state. The chief task of the latter is the reorganisation of the economy and the whole of social and political life along socialist lines. “The essence of proletarian dicta-torship,” Lenin wrote, “does not lie in force alone, or even mainly in force. Its quintes-sence is the organisation and discipline of the advanced detachment of the working peo-ple, of their vanguard, their sole leader, the proletariat, whose object is to build social-ism, abolish the division of society into classes, make all members of society working people, remove the basis for any kind of exploitation of man by man.”314

Finally, the working class does not at all seek to perpetuate its dictatorship. As soon as the dictatorship of the working class has fulfilled its historic mission and the new so-cial system is firmly established, the dictatorship ceases to be necessary. That is what happened in the Soviet Union.

To Be a Marxist Is to Admit the Need for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat

The dictatorship of the proletariat is the central issue of the ideological differences between the Marxist-Leninists and the Social-Democrats. The theory of the proletarian dictatorship as the only means capable of putting an end to all the evil and cruelty of the exploiting society has always been and remains the touchstone of the sincerity and seri-ousness of the socialist aspirations of the Workers’ Parties and their leaders.

He who limits himself to a simple recognition of the class struggle is not yet a Marx-ist, “Only he is a Marxist,” Lenin wrote, “who extends the recognition of the class strug-gle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is what constitutes the most profound difference between the Marxist and the ordinary petty (as well as big) bourgeois. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested.”315

That the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat should occupy a special place in Marxism-Leninism is quite understandable: without seizure of political power, without the dictatorship of the proletariat, there can be no victory for socialism. The Marxist-Leninist theory of the establishment of a society without classes and exploitation would remain wishful thinking if the working class and its Marxist-Leninist parties did not concentrate their efforts on what is most decisive—on making full use of their seizure of

power to reorganise society along socialist lines.

Historically too, the dictatorship of the proletariat has become the main issue in the ideological struggle that has been and is being waged in the international working-class movement. It was on just this issue that the leaders of the Second International revised Marxism most of all, virtually renouncing the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Instead, they put forward the opportunist theory of “pure”, “above-class” democracy which, they alleged, could serve as a bridge to socialism. In actual fact, the so-called pure democracy of the opportunists is bourgeois democracy.

Lenin branded the leaders of the Second International, notably Karl Kautsky, as renegades of Marxism, and proved that in the conditions of the embittered struggle be-tween the imperialist bourgeoisie and the proletariat the theory of the Right-wing Social-Democrats meant repudiation of socialism.

Almost half a century has passed since then. What has historical experience shown?

In alliance with the peasantry, the working class has captured power in one of the biggest countries of the world, Russia, and built a socialist society there. Led by the revolutionary, Communist Parties, the working class has come to power in great China and in a number of other countries in Europe and Asia, and is successfully building so-cialism.

And what have the Social-Democrats achieved in this time? Have they carried out a socialist transformation in any country, or at least set out to do so? No, they have not. More, in seeking to adapt the working-class movement to bourgeois democracy, to rec-oncile the working class and the bourgeoisie, they have actually renounced socialism, and not a few of them have degenerated into open exponents of bourgeois ideology among the working people.

Social-Democratic Parties won elections in a number of countries and formed gov-ernments. In Britain, the Labour Party was in office in 1924, 1929-31, and 1945-51, The Swedish Social-Democratic Party has been in power since 1932. There have been So-cial-Democratic Premiers on various occasions in other West European countries. But no serious economic and political changes of a socialist nature have ever taken place in any of these countries. The Social-Democratic governments have acted within the framework of capitalism, without making it their aim to abolish this system and replace it by a socialist system. At best they have effected only partial reforms that do not affect the rule of the monopolist bourgeoisie.

Acceptance of the principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat is still today the cri-terion of genuine revolutionary ideology. It not accidental that the revisionists of to-day—without exception—have come out against the idea of the dictatorship of the pro-letariat, excising or distorting its essence and counterposing to it bourgeois “universal” democracy.

But now that the successes of the ruling working class in the U.S.S.R., and the other socialist countries have become obvious, many opportunists are resorting to more subtle methods of “refuting” the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat. They assert, for instance, that the dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary only in the countries of the

East, formerly ruled by despotic feudal and semi-feudal regimes. In the Western coun-tries with their highly developed parliamentary traditions, the bourgeoisie, they claim, will submit to the people’s will without a dictatorship of the proletariat.

These claims are groundless. The bourgeoisie in the highly developed capitalist countries is many times stronger and more experienced than the ruling classes were, say, in old Russia or China. It is better organised, has long been in power, and has behind it a century of experience in governing the state and deceiving the masses. The process of monopolisation has advanced very far in the countries of the West, and monopoly capi-tal is accustomed to settle all issues by force. It is ready to go to any lengths for the sake of its selfish interests, even to unleash a world war. Are there any reasons to think that the Western monopolists will hold on to power with less ferocity and be less dangerous enemies than the bourgeoisie and the landlords In the countries of the East?!

The historical experience of the proletarian revolutions in a number of European countries (France, Germany, Hungary, Finland) has shown that the exploiting classes there resort to the most extreme forms of violence in order to maintain themselves in power. The working class pays dearly when it underestimates this and does not take steps to curb the bourgeoisie.

One of the reasons for the fall of the Paris Commune in 1871 was that the proletar-iat, unfortunately, gave the bourgeoisie a chance to muster its forces and drown the workers’ revolution in blood. It was largely for the same reason that the bourgeoisie was able to crush the Hungarian revolution in 1919 and the revolutionary actions of the German proletariat after the First World War. Savage reprisals were meted out by the “democratic” bourgeoisie in the West. In little Finland, where the revolution was crushed with the help of the German interventionists, some 20,000 people, according to official statistics, were either shot or done to death in the concentration camps, and tens of thousands, women included, were sent to prison or sentenced to hard labour.

In admitting that it is possible to assume power peacefully, the Marxist-Leninist par-ties have by no means come to this conclusion because they expect the reactionary bour-geoisie of the West to be submissive and mild. There is a real possibility of the revolu-tion taking such a course only because there is now a prospect of mustering forces far superior to those of monopoly capital. But even in these conditions the Communists know that it is inevitable that the overthrown bourgeoisie will resist and that there is danger of it restoring its rule unless the working people’s power is firm and resolute, unless the dictatorship of the proletariat is set up in one form or another.

2. Proletarian Democracy Is a New Type of Democracy

The victory of the working class marks the end of the era of domination of a privi-leged minority and ushers in an era of genuine democracy. The workers, peasants, arti-sans and working intellectuals, who for centuries have been prevented from taking part in political life and government, begin to administer the state as its masters. This makes the proletarian democracy a new type of democracy, one that is superior to bourgeois democracy.

Democracy for the Working People

In its time, bourgeois democracy was a major step forward. But with the advent of the era of socialist revolutions it is being replaced by a new political system. In Lenin’s words, this system provides “the maximum of democracy for the workers and peasants; at the same time it marks a break with bourgeois democracy and the rise of a new type of democracy of world-historic importance, viz., proletarian democracy, or the dictatorship of the proletariat”.316

Influenced by bourgeois propaganda and Social-Democratic pronouncements, some people in the capitalist countries think that dictatorship and democracy are mutually ex-clusive. Either there is democracy, they reason, which applies equally to all, and then there is no dictatorship, or there is the dictatorship of one class and then there is no de-mocracy.

Such arguments can only be advanced by those who are under the delusion that there is such a thing as “above-class”, “universal” or, as it is sometimes called, “inte-gral” democracy. In actual fact, in every society with opposing classes political power, however democratic it may look, is always of a class nature and serves the ruling class. In bourgeois-democratic countries power is often disguised by a democratic appearance: there are regular general elections, the government is responsible to parliament, etc. But the real face of this power is revealed as soon as the working masses become conscious of their class interests and begin to present demands to the capitalists. Then even the most “democratic” power sides with the employers and does not shrink from sending troops and police against the workers, opening fire on peaceful demonstrations, arresting workers’ leaders, etc. And when the struggle of the working people attains such dimen-sions that it begins to threaten the rule of big capital, the ruling power completely dis-cards its democratic mask and resorts to openly terroristic methods. It means that de-mocracy in the imperialist countries is a screen for the very real dictatorship of the big capitalist monopolies, directed against the working class, against the working people.

Such revelation of the class essence of the state occurred in all the eras when the ex-ploiting classes were in power. “Everyone knows,” Lenin wrote, “that rebellions, or even strong unrest, among the slaves in ancient times at once revealed the fact that the ancient state was essentially a dictatorship of the slave-owners. Did this dictatorship abolish democracy among, and for, the slave-owners? Everybody knows that it did not.”317

In other words, history confirms that dictatorship and democracy could very well go together. Being a dictatorship in relation to certain classes, the state can at the same time be a democracy in relation to others.

The whole question is, what sort of dictatorship it is and what sort of democracy it is. Speaking of the state in the period of transition, Lenin said it should be “a state that is democratic in a new way (for the proletariat and the propertyless in general) and dictato-rial in a new way (against the bourgeoisie)”.318 The very nature of the dictatorship of the working class makes it a profoundly democratic power because it means the rule of the majority over the minority, while the dictatorship of the big bourgeoisie is the rule of the

minority over the majority.

Therefore, there is no contradiction in saying that the dictatorship of the proletariat is at the same time a new type of democracy. One and the same power (the power of the working class) is a dictatorship as regards the enemies of socialism, and employs “dicta-torial measures” (Lenin), and genuine democracy as regards the working people, and employs democratic methods. The dictatorship of the proletariat and proletarian democ-racy are thus the two sides of one medal. Lenin regarded the concepts “proletarian de-mocracy” and “dictatorship of the proletariat” as synonymous.

It is very important for the proletarian state to observe the correct relationship of dictatorial and democratic methods in its policy, applying the former to the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie and the latter to the working people. Giving freedom of action to the reactionary forces and narrowing down democracy for the toilers are both equally inadmissible. The 1956 events in Hungary give an idea of the consequences that may result from a violation of this principle. Reactionary onslaughts there were not sup-pressed resolutely enough, while at the same time the democratic rights of the working people were seriously infringed.

Not infrequently, bourgeois scientists and publicists put forward the following ar-gument. Democracy, they declare, definitely presupposes the struggle of parties, a par-liamentary opposition, etc. Having enumerated these formal signs of bourgeois democ-racy and failed to find one or the other of them in the socialist states, they triumphantly proclaim that the system of the proletarian dictatorship is an undemocratic system.

The Marxists judge the democratic character of a political system in a different way. The criterion that must be applied is: whose interests does the state power defend, whom does it serve, what policy does it pursue? From this—the only scientific—angle, it is impossible to find any genuine democracy in the bourgeois states. There are rival parties in the United States and opposition in Congress, yet the whole policy of the government serves the interests of an insignificant handful of multi-millionaires.

Proletarian democracy is the sole genuine democracy because it serves the interests of the working people, that is, the majority of society. The policy of the proletarian state aims at eliminating exploitation, raising the living standards and cultural level of the masses, defending universal peace and strengthening international friendship. That ac-cords with the most vital aspirations of the popular masses, of all progressive people.

At the same time it would be wrong to think that the proletarian state regards the question of the methods and forms of government as having no importance. The strength of the dictatorship of the proletariat fundamentally lies in its connection with the masses, with the people. And these connections are strong only when government is democratic both in essence and in form. That is why the republic of a socialist type is a form of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Enhancing democracy for the working people on an unprecedented scale, proletarian democracy, however, cannot be extended to include the overthrown reactionary bour-geoisie and all the other elements fighting for the restoration of capitalism. That is where proletarian democracy draws the line. The socialist revolution would suffer very great

harm if the proletariat granted political freedom to the organisation of the big capitalists. Is it not obvious that the dissolution of the parties and unions of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie and the prohibition of fascist and other anti-popular propa-ganda not only do not restrict freedom and democracy, but on the contrary are necessary in order to defend democracy and freedom?

Special Form of the Alliance Between the Working Class and All Working People

The democratic essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat is particularly clearly seen in the fact that it represents the alliance between the working class and all the work-ing people and other democratic forces devoted to the cause of socialism.

The working class cannot build socialist society by itself, by its own efforts alone. To build socialism it is not enough to socialise large-scale property. It is also necessary gradually to reorganise small production in town and country along socialist lines, change all social relationships, rebuild on a socialist pattern the activities of cultural in-stitutions—press, theatres, schools. In short, it is necessary to rebuild the whole of social life from top to bottom. This is an extremely complicated task, and its fulfilment is pos-sible only if the broadest strata of the population consciously participate in the construc-tion of the new society.

That is why the alliance of the working class with the peasantry, and with all the working people and other democratic sections of the people, is the supreme principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat. “The dictatorship of the proletariat,” Lenin wrote, “is a special form of class alliance between the proletariat, the vanguard of the toilers, and the numerous non-proletarian strata of toilers (the petty bourgeoisie, the small proprie-tors, the peasantry, the intelligentsia, etc., or the majority of these; it is an alliance against capital, an alliance aiming at the complete overthrow of capital, at the complete suppression of the resistance of the bourgeoisie and of any attempt on its part at restora-tion, an alliance aiming at the final establishment and consolidation of socialism.”319

The special feature of such an alliance is the fact that the guiding role in it belongs to the working class. The proletariat rightfully assumes the role of the leader of all the working people, for it is the most consistent and conscious champion of socialism.

There is a firm objective basis for the alliance between the working class and the peasantry and other sections of the working people. All the working people are pro-foundly interested in liberation from exploitation, in material security, in the promotion of peace and friendship among the nations. Socialism alone ensures them such a pros-pect. Later on, with the building of socialist society, the alliance between the working class and the peasantry and other sections of the people provides the basis for converting the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat into a socialist state of the entire people.

While applying dictatorial measures to the reactionary bourgeoisie when necessary, the proletariat can by no means use the same methods in relation to the peasant masses and its other democratic allies. It leads them to socialism with the aid of democratic methods—by persuasion, encouragement, force of example, organisation. The peas-antry, the urban petty bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia must become convinced by their

own experience of the necessity of socialist changes.

That, of course, does not exclude measures of coercion against those who violate the laws of the socialist state. But here coercion, when it becomes necessary, is not applied against any one class, but merely against individual offenders; in the final analysis, it expresses the will and interests of all the working people.

Ensuring the Rights and Freedoms of the Working People

Proletarian democracy means transition from the formal democracy of the bourgeois republic to the actual participation of the toiling masses in the government, that is, to what constitutes the real essence of democracy. “The dictatorship of the proletariat,” Lenin wrote, “inevitably brings with it not only changes in the forms and institutions of democracy, generally speaking, but precisely those changes that lead to an unprece-dented extension of the actual utilisation of democracy by those oppressed by capital-ism, by the toiling classes."320

Proletarian democracy not only entirely abolishes all restrictions of rights for racial, national, sex, religious or educational reasons. It lays emphasis on ensuring the working people a real opportunity of making use of their rights. For that purpose, the state trans-fers to possession of the working people’s organisations the best buildings and premises for meetings and congresses, as well as printing-plants, film studios, radio stations, etc. In other words, it guarantees democratic rights by providing appropriate material facili-ties, and these guarantees increase along with public wealth in the process of socialist construction.

Universal suffrage is the utmost that bourgeois democracy can give. The masses ob-tain the right to vote, but actually they continue to be debarred from participation in government. After the proletarian revolution the broad popular masses have every op-portunity for daily practical participation in state affairs, both directly through govern-ment bodies and through their public organisations and numerous departments and committees set up under the organs of power.

Another important distinctive feature of proletarian democracy is the extension of the sphere of democratic government, the application of democracy not only to the po-litical sphere but to that of economic management and culture as well. Under capitalism, even formal, restricted democracy cannot reach beyond political institutions. Economic and cultural fields—factories, press organs, cinema, television and radio—are com-pletely in the hands of the capitalist owners, who are in no way controlled by the masses. The absence of democracy for the working people in the economic sphere nullifies their political rights, for in present-day society with its highly developed economy the rule “he who commands property commands everything” predominates more than ever be-fore.

The socialisation of the instruments and means of production and the taking-over by the people of the press and cultural and educational institutions immeasurably extend the sphere of democracy. In these conditions, production and cultural institutions are man-aged not by private owners, but by the people—directly or through their representatives.

Democracy is thus diffused through all political, economic and cultural life.

The System of Democratic Government

The working class creates a new, democratic government apparatus which accords with the needs of the society building socialism. The new power resolutely repudiates the bourgeois state’s principle of bureaucratic centralism, which is hated by the people. But the working class by no means denies the need for centralisation; on the contrary, it stands for centralisation because it is necessary for socialised production. The petty-bourgeois strata of the population—whose ideal is isolated, private enterprise—and sometimes a certain section of the workers, influenced by the petty bourgeoisie, enter-tain the illusion that it is possible to do without any centralism. These are anarchical ideas, and they run counter to the real needs of present-day productive forces.

The working class is for centralism, but for democratic centralism. That means ad-ministration of affairs relating to the whole state by one centre and subordination of lo-cal bodies to this centre, coupled with election of all the organs of power and their ac-countability to the people, and with the largest possible drawing of the popular masses into the work of administration and the granting of independence to local bodies.

Giving grounds for this main principle of socialist government, Lenin wrote: “We stand for democratic centralism. And it should be clearly understood how much democ-ratic centralism differs from bureaucratic centralism, on the one hand, and from anar-chism, on the other... Taken in a really democratic sense, centralism presupposes the possibility, created for the first time in history, of full and unhampered development not only of local peculiarities, but also of local independent activity, local initiative, a diver-sity of ways, means and methods of advancing towards a common goal.”321

The state machinery of the working people's power is based on the principle of de-mocratic centralism.

The suppression of resistance on the part of the reactionary bourgeoisie, the punish-ment and re-education of anti-social elements, and the organisation of defence require the establishment of an appropriate administrative apparatus, courts, army, militia, and organs of state security.

One of the fundamental differences between the organs of coercion under the dicta-torship of the working class and the analogous institutions of a bourgeois state is that the former are truly popular in character. The army in this instance is not opposed to the people—it is its child. The spirit of discipline by flogging, bureaucratism and the caste system is alien to it. It is strong by its ideology, by its conscious discipline. The officers and other ranks are of the same class origin—they are workers, peasants, intellectuals. In the Soviet Union, where the first army of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Red Army, was established, the military units from the very first day of their existence main-tained regular ties with factories, trade unions and the poor peasants’ organisations.

The courts are profoundly democratic. They are so constructed as to ensure the par-ticipation of the broad working masses in their activities. The judges are elected, may be recalled and are accountable to the people. People’s assessors participate in the court

hearings. The courts enjoy complete independence. The court becomes mainly an in-strument of education, the character of punishment alters; whenever possible, suspended sentences are given, public censure is made use of, and so on. Militia activities, too, are based on democratic principles.

The working people’s state creates organs that are not possible under any other sys-tem. They include the machinery for national economic planning and management, which is necessary for socialist reorganisation of the economy. They include, further, the machinery to guide the citizens’ cultural activities and education. A very characteristic feature of this machinery is its broad democracy and reliance on the independent activi-ties of the working people.

All the state bodies of the dictatorship of the proletariat rely on the popular masses, maintain constant contact with them, heed their opinion, and are under their control. Per-sons holding office are subject to election, are accountable to the people and can be re-called. Most of the officials of the machinery set up by the proletarian dictatorship come from the working people. In Russia, the decisive role in establishing the government bodies was played by the working class. Thousands upon thousands of workers were assigned by the Soviets, trade unions and factory committees to the People’s Commis-sariats, and key posts in the army and industrial management bodies. Thus, the first staff of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs was made up of workers of the Sie-mens-Schuckert Works (now Elektrosila) and Baltic sailors; that of the People’s Com-missariat for Internal Affairs—of workers of the Putilov Works; and that of the People’s Commissariat for Education—of workers from the Vyborg District of Petrograd, Many thousands of workers and representatives of other sections of the working people have been appointed to leading government posts in the People’s Democracies too.

The Marxist-Leninist Party Under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat

The conquest of power by the working class fundamentally alters the position of its militant vanguard, the Marxist-Leninist party. Before that, it is the party of a class fight-ing for power; after that it is the party of the ruling class.

Experience has shown that after the revolution the role of the Marxist party as leader of the working class and all the working people not only does not decrease but, on the contrary, becomes immeasurably greater. It now becomes responsible for everything that goes on in society, for the policy of the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat, for the development of productive forces and culture, for the improvement of the people’s wel-fare.

The revolutionary transformations that the working-class power is called upon to carry out are so complex and the forces opposing the building of a new society are so strong that success can be achieved only if the proletariat displays unanimous will and profound understanding of the laws of social development; in short, only if it has a clear-cut programme of action. The working class gets all this from its vanguard, from its most politically conscious and staunch section, which is able consistently to express the interests of the proletariat and all the working people. That is why Lenin said that with-

out a party steeled in the struggle, without a party enjoying the confidence of all that is honest in the given class, without a party capable of watching and influencing the mood of the masses, it is impossible to conduct a successful struggle for socialism.

In the period of the struggle for power several working-class parties may exist side by side. The struggle of the working class, however, is seriously hampered by this if there is no unity of action among them. After the victory of the working class, consoli-dation of the new power and unanimity of will in the government of society require, as a rule, the establishment of a single Marxist-Leninist party. That, for instance, was the path taken by the Communist and the Social- Democratic Parties in Czechoslovakia, Poland, the German Democratic Republic and other People’s Democracies, where united Workers’ Parties were founded on the basis of Marxist-Leninist ideology and organisa-tional principles at the beginning of the transition period.

The role of the Marxist party in the system of the dictatorship of the working class is not the usual role of a ruling-class party. Its position in the state is determined not only by elections, but by the historic mission of the working class as the natural leader of so-ciety in its advance to communism.

That is exactly why the enemies of the working class, in their struggle against its power, seek to undermine the guiding, directing role of the Communist Party. Since it is the Party which has to guide all the activities of the state and determine its policy, they allege that the dictatorship of the proletariat is the dictatorship of the Party. This is the type of falsification, that the Zinovievists, for instance, resorted to in the U.S.S.R.

Some revisionists today deny the Party’s leading role; others, while not denying it in words, undermine it in practice. At any rate, they narrow down this role so much that they in fact push the Party towards complete renunciation of its leadership in building socialism. The revisionists affirm that the Party ought to be merely an “ideological fac-tor”, a “factor in the development of socialist consciousness”, and not a political force. They speak with scorn of the work the Party does in the economic sphere, of its efforts to promote new economic relations, and they do not recognise the need for it to exert a decisive influence on the state’s internal and foreign policy. The party of the ruling class is thus reduced to the status of an educational organisation standing aloof from the ex-tremely important tasks that the class accomplishes. In practice, this can only enhance the influence in society and in the state of the political forces that are hostile to the working people.

One of the greatest sources of the strength of the proletarian dictatorship lies in the very fact that all its activity shows its unanimous will and is directed by the Party ac-cording to a single plan. The Party bases itself on Marxist-Leninist theory and a study of the concrete conditions in working out a political programme in all the spheres of social-ist construction—economic, administrative, military, educational and foreign—and guides its implementation in practice.

When the resistance of the deposed classes has been smashed and power has been consolidated, organisational work, especially in the sphere of economic construction, becomes the main task of the Party. “There is a job we must do,” Lenin said as soon as

the Party found it possible to turn to peaceful construction; “our economic job is our common job. That is the policy which interests us most.”322

How does the Party play its leading role in the conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat? It acts through the government and mass public organisations, guiding their efforts towards one single goal. But, in guiding all the state and public organisations, it does not supplant them. Party leadership may be compared with the art of the conductor, who strives for harmony in the orchestra but, of course, does not try to play for every musician. The Party ensures the implementation of its policy, acting through its mem-bers working in the state apparatus and public organisations.

The principles of the relations between Party and government bodies were worked out by Lenin, and found expression in the decisions of Party congresses. The Eighth Congress in 1919 pointed out: “The functions of Party collectives and the functions of state organs, such as the Soviets, should never be confused. ... The Party should imple-ment its decisions through Soviet organs, within the framework of the Soviet Constitu-tion. The Party tries to guide the activity of the Soviets, not to be a substitute for them.” The Party follows this principle with regard to public organisations too, without allow-ing itself to command them or exercising petty tutelage.

The Party relies on the working masses in all its activities. The Communists are few compared with the people, and the Party can lead the people only if it correctly ex-presses what they are conscious of, if it is able to persuade them. That is why Lenin said the Party should “be able unerringly, on any question, and at any time, to judge the mood, the real aspirations, needs and thoughts of the masses; it should be able without a shadow of false idealisation to define the degree of their class-consciousness and the extent to which they are influenced by various prejudices and survivals of the past; and it should be able to win the boundless confidence of the masses by comradeship and concern for their needs”.323

The Marxist-Leninist parties in power enjoy the undivided support of the people. That gives them vast strength and prestige, but is also fraught with the danger of the rul-ing party becoming conceited, thinking that it is infallible, which could lead to it becom-ing divorced from the masses. That is the reason why, after the victory of the revolution, the Communist Parties attach particular importance to criticism and self-criticism, re-garding them as an unfailing weapon against ossification and stagnation, and why they promote inner-Party democracy and are concerned to enhance the vanguard role of the Communists.

A highly important condition for the successful activity of the Marxist-Leninist party is strict observance of Leninist standards of Party life and of the principles of Party democracy and collective leadership. The cult of the personality of individual leaders cannot be tolerated in Party activity. This cult is inevitably linked with belittling the role of the masses, substitution of one-man management for collective leadership, violation of revolutionary legality, and arbitrary behaviour—all of which is absolutely alien to the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat as Marxism-Leninism understands it.

When the Communist Parties come to power, the danger arises of an influx of ca-

reerist elements, who join the Party in the hope of securing advantages for themselves and not because of ideological motives. The composition of the Party cannot but influ-ence its work; hence the parties in the countries taking the socialist path regulate their composition, introduce probationary periods for new members and take other measures to protect their ranks against unworthy people. To regulate its composition in the transi-tion years, the C.P.S.U. established various rules of admission that facilitated the entry of workers and rendered it difficult for people of petty-bourgeois origin. That helped the Party to resist petty-bourgeois influences. Moreover, there were periodical purges that enabled the Party to rid itself of alien elements that had penetrated into it. In most Euro-pean People’s Democracies admission to the Party was temporarily restricted, starting with 1947-48.

By taking care of the purity of their ranks, the Communist Parties create the condi-tions necessary for strengthening their unity. In the conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Party unity plays a still greater role. Since the class struggle does not cease but assumes more complicated forms, the Party constantly experiences not only the pressure of the remnants of the capitalist classes, but also the waverings of the unstable elements among the working people. In the conditions where the Party acts as the guid-ing, cementing force of the proletarian dictatorship, violation of its unity may undermine the dictatorship and split the class alliance on which the Party relies. “Whoever weakens even to the smallest degree the iron discipline of the party of the proletariat (especially during the time of its dictatorship), actually aids the bourgeoisie against the proletariat” (Lenin).324

In the U.S.S.R., the acute class struggle in the transition period from capitalism to socialism was also reflected in the inner-Party struggle. The Trotskyists, Right-wing op-portunists and other anti-Leninist groups, championing the ideology of the overthrown exploiting classes, did their utmost to shatter the Party’s unity and achieve factional freedom. Had they succeeded, it would have meant the beginning of the end of the dicta-torship of the proletariat.

The Role of Public Organisations

The trade unions occupy an important place in the state of the proletarian dictator-ship. From organs of struggle against capital they become the most active assistants of the state power of the working class, a reserve which supplies leading cadres and a source of practical proposals for improving things. Defining their role after the seizure of power, Lenin said the trade unions were a school of administration, a school of man-agement, a school of communism.

In the U.S.S.R., the participation of the trade unions in government and production assumed manifold forms immediately after the October Revolution. They helped to es-tablish economic bodies, took part in elaborating economic plans and supervised the ac-tivities of the economic leaders. Later, with the development of socialist construction, there appeared such forms of public activity as production meetings, technical confer-ences and various societies—scientific and technical, inventors’, rationalisers’, etc.

The participation of the trade unions in government does not mean, however, that they are endowed with administrative functions. Such an anarcho-syndicalist demand, Lenin stressed, is theoretically wrong and practically harmful. After the revolution, state power becomes the most all-embracing working-class organisation and, in the name of the working class and all the labouring people, it alone can control the instruments of production which have been turned into public property. Moreover, the replacement of state authority by that of the trade unions or its transfer into the hands of the working people at the enterprises would undermine the single planning system and disorganise the economy.

In the conditions of working-class power, the trade unions by no means cease exer-cising their function of protecting the economic interests of the working people. The trade unions, Lenin said, “have lost such a basis as class economic struggle, but have by no means lost and for many years to come, unfortunately, cannot lose such a basis as non-class ‘economic struggle’ in the sense of a struggle against bureaucratic distortions of the Soviet apparatus, in the sense of protection of the material and spiritual interests of the working masses by means and ways inaccessible to this apparatus, etc…”325

Apart from the trade unions, there are other mass organisations in all the countries of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Diverse forms of co-operation, uniting peasants and artisans, make it possible to draw huge masses of the population into the democratic administration of the economy and to develop their social, socialist consciousness. An important part in state, economic and cultural affairs is played by the women’s and youth organisations. The establishment of working-class power gives wide scope to the creative unions of writers, artists, composers, etc.

The dictatorship of the proletariat thus creates a whole system of democratic gov-ernment based on the activity and independent initiative of the broad masses. For the first time the government apparatus ceases to be divorced from the people, a feature in-herent in the exploiting state and which inevitably engenders such a social phenomenon as bureaucracy.

The bourgeois state is bureaucratic by its very nature. Under capitalist conditions, bureaucracy is a system of government in which power is in the hands of an official ad-ministration divorced from the people, in effect uncontrolled by them and serving the interests of the exploiting classes. It is obvious that bureaucracy is not an inherent fea-ture of the working-class state, for this state is established by the people, serves its inter-ests and is under its control. Nevertheless, for a long time after its victory, the working class has to wage a struggle against bureaucracy, and especially against such manifesta-tions of it as formalism and callousness, separation from the masses and red tape. Bu-reaucratic distortions under the proletarian dictatorship are survivals of the capitalist sys-tem. Moreover, it should be borne in mind that in the transition period from capitalism to socialism, bureaucracy is engendered by the cultural backwardness of the petty-bourgeois strata of the population. Bureaucratic phenomena may remain and at times even grow stronger if control of the state apparatus by the people is weakened, if suffi-cient attention is not devoted to elaborating and consistently implementing diverse forms

of such control. The inner democracy of the dictatorship of the proletariat creates all the necessary conditions for overcoming bureaucratic trends by drawing the masses into government on a growing scale and applying various forms of control from below. The paramount duty of working-class power is to make use of all these conditions. Bureauc-racy, Lenin said, was the worst internal enemy of a society building socialism.326

3. Diverse Forms of the Proletarian Dictatorship

Working-class power arises out of the liberation struggle of each nation and is or-ganically connected with the special features and conditions of this struggle. That is why it acquires different forms in different countries.

It is one thing when the dictatorship of the proletariat triumphs in an underdeveloped country with a small working class and a predominantly peasant population; it is quite another when it triumphs in highly developed countries where the workers constitute the majority of the population. Dictatorship of the proletariat in a country which had a mon-archical regime is one thing; in a country with century-old traditions of parliamentary democracy it is another. It is one thing when the working class has come to power in circumstances of world war, its triumph in time of peace is another.

The forms of the dictatorship of the proletariat depend on the relationship of class forces in the revolution and the sharpness of their struggle. If the ruling classes resist bitterly and the revolution assumes a violent character, the working class is compelled to smash and destroy completely the old state machinery on which the bourgeoisie relies. If, on the other hand, in the course of the revolution the superiority of the forces over reaction is such that power passes into the hands of the working class peacefully, it is possible to make use of some of the old organs of power—parliament, for instance— reorganising them to conform to the interests of socialist construction.

The forms of political democracy established after victory depend on the nature of the driving forces of the revolution. The broader the front of the allies of the working class, i.e., the broader the social base of the revolution, the narrower is the stratum against which coercion is applied and the broader is the development of proletarian de-mocracy.

But, however important these objective factors may be, the revolutionary creative activity of the masses and the class-conscious activity of the Marxist-Leninist parties play a very big part. Remaining faithful to the principle of the proletarian dictatorship, these parties do not make a fetish of any of its concrete forms. They do not regard any of them as something that can be mechanically applied in other conditions. In working out the forms of working people’s political power, the revolutionary working-class parties carefully take into consideration both the conditions and national peculiarities of their own countries and the experience of the international working-class movement.

Soviet Power

The world’s first victorious dictatorship of the proletariat was established in Russia in the form of the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies.

This form of state organisation arose out of the needs of the working-class struggle and was created by the masses themselves. Soviets came into being during the First Rus-sian Revolution of 1905-07. They were reborn immediately after the victory of the Feb-ruary bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1917, this time not in a few towns, but throughout the country and not only as Soviets of Workers’ Deputies, but as Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies. After the October Revolution in 1917 they took all power into their hands.

Soviet power was the first to implement the general principles of the dictatorship of the working class elaborated by Marxism-Leninism and to reveal the typical features that distinguish the proletarian state from the bourgeois state. At the same time it re-flected a number of special features due to the concrete historical conditions of socialist construction in the U.S.S.R. in circumstances of hostile capitalist encirclement.

The activity of Soviet power could not fail to be influenced by the fact that it came into existence in an economically backward country, a country for many centuries dominated by a feudal-monarchical regime. The Russian working class, the first to over-throw the rule of capitalism, was confronted with especially bitter resistance from the classes that had been overthrown. For a long time, the Soviet Union faced the hostile capitalist world alone. That was why, as Lenin said, the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia had to be established “in its most rigid form”. Certain restrictions of democracy in the Soviet Union, to which the working class was compelled to resort in the transition period from capitalism to socialism, notably, depriving exploiters of the franchise, were also due to specific conditions. It should be pointed out, however, that the number of people deprived of the franchise was quite insignificant.

What were the distinguishing features of the Soviets? They were avowed class or-ganisations, which gave only the workers, the peasants and the strata of the toiling intel-ligentsia that had joined them a real opportunity to elect and to be elected. In the transi-tion period, the Soviets were not elected on the territorial principle, but on the industrial principle—in the factories, armed forces and villages.

In a petty-bourgeois country as Russia was, where the population was predomi-nantly peasant, the quota of urban representation in the Soviets was different from that of the rural. For a certain period it was necessary for the working class, which was in the minority, to have political advantages in order to guide the peasantry.

Millions of toilers went through a practical school of statesmanship in the Soviets. In the first ten years of the existence of the Soviets approximately 12.5 million people took part in them as deputies, executive committee members and congress delegates.

Soviet power did more than proclaim the right of nations to self-determination, in-cluding secession and formation of independent states. It ensured this freedom in actual fact by a free and equal federation of all the peoples. The Union of Soviet Socialist Re-publics, founded in 1922, is built on the basis of genuine freedom and equality of na-tions.

The development of the class struggle in the country led to the formation of a one-party system of political guidance of the Soviets. The Communist Party had already won

a majority in the Soviets and other mass organisations in the period between February and October 1917. The working people became convinced that it was the only party which had a realistic programme of struggle for peace, land and freedom, for deep-going social changes and that it alone was capable of implementing this programme. All the other parties lost the support of the masses.

Nevertheless, even though they had the support of the overwhelming majority of the population, the Communists had no intention whatever of ejecting the other parties from the organs of power and of banning them. “...We wanted a Soviet coalition govern-ment,” Lenin said in November 1917. “We did not expel anyone from the Soviet.”327

The exceedingly bitter Civil War which broke out in the country confronted the po-litical forces with the choice of joining the bourgeoisie against the proletariat or the pro-letariat against the bourgeoisie. One after another, the petty-bourgeois parties went over to the counter-revolutionary camp. The ones to hesitate the longest were the Left wing of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. The Communists tried to draw them into participa-tion in the government. Seven representatives of this party entered the Soviet Govern-ment in December 1917. However, in July 1918 the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries rose in a counter-revolutionary revolt. The Communist Party became the only party in the country fighting for aims which accorded with the interests of the working people. The one-party character of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the U.S.S.R. was thus the re-sult of the concrete conditions of class struggle.

Soviet power is a typical example of the class dictatorship of the proletariat. It was only thanks to this dictatorship that it was possible to come through the Civil War, de-feat the interventionists, eliminate economic dislocation, build socialism in one country and raise the “lowest of the low” to the level of contemporary culture.

Appraising the historical role of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the U.S.S.R., the Programme of the C.P.S.U., adopted by the Twenty-Second Congress stresses: “So-viet experience has shown that the peoples are able to achieve socialism only as a result of the socialist revolution and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.”328

People’s Democracy

The development of the international liberation movement has given rise to another form of working people’s power—people’s democracy. After the Second World War this form became established in a number of countries in Central and South-East Europe and Asia. Though its basic traits are similar to those of the Soviet form, people’s democ-racy has a number of special features of its own.

People’s democracy came into being in conditions in which the alignment of class forces differed from that in Russia at the time the Soviets appeared. In Poland, Czecho-slovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, during the liberation war against fascism, the anti-fascist, democratic forces formed a united front. It included the work-ing class, which played the leading role from the outset, all the strata of the peasantry, the middle strata of the urban population, as well as the patriotic intellectuals and a fairly considerable part of the middle bourgeoisie.

The broader social basis of the revolution brought into being a new state form. That form was people’s democracy as a special form of democracy fulfilling the functions of proletarian dictatorship. Its emergence is deep-rooted in the conditions of the general crisis of capitalism and reflects the class changes taking place in the capitalist world: the growing isolation of big capital, the rallying of the popular masses under the leadership of the working class, and the further convergence of democratic and socialist tasks. At the same time it reflects the specific historical and national features of the individual countries.

Unlike Soviet power, people’s democracy did not begin to fulfil the functions of the proletarian dictatorship right from the start. In some countries, the Communist and Workers’ Parties did not have a firm majority in parliaments and coalition governments in the early phase of the revolution. Although they exerted a big influence on the masses, a considerable part of the peasantry, intelligentsia and middle strata gave their support to other parties.

The people’s state in the early phase was not yet a state of the proletarian dictator-ship. It was a people’s democratic power, directed against fascism and its accomplices within the country. By its class essence, this power was nothing but the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, of which Lenin wrote in his book Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, although this dictatorship emerged here on a somewhat broader social basis and in a new form which reflected the peculiarities of historical conditions. The working class played a leading role in the democratic coalition from the very start, though in the period immediately after the people’s democratic revolution it shared power with other classes. It was a state of an intermediate, transition type, whose further fate depended on the relationship of class forces within the democratic bloc, and on the results of the class struggle between the working people and the Right-wing bourgeois elements.

When the national-liberation aims were achieved, the Right-wing groups of the bourgeoisie, hitherto co-operating with the working class, tried to elbow it out of the government and turn the country back on to the capitalist path of development. In some countries, where the bourgeoisie was stronger—in Czechoslovakia, for instance, it made an open attempt to carry out a coup d’état and seize power. But the working class, rely-ing on the support of the broad masses, paralysed these attempts and assumed the lead-ership of the popular movement for socialism. Basic reforms along socialist lines were carried out on the initiative of the working-class parties, the Communists were given practically undivided support by all the strata of the population; the working class and its parties assumed complete leadership within the democratic bloc and the state of people’s democracy began to fulfil the functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The broader alliance of class forces, on which people’s democracy relies, made it possible to extend political democracy. Political rights were restricted only in the case of an insignificant number of fascist occupationists’ servitors, national traitors. From the very first, democracy was extended to all strata of the peasantry, the urban petty bour-geoisie, the intelligentsia and other democratic forces.

In China, people’s power had an even broader social basis. With the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the bulk of the democratic allies of the working class gradually gave their support to socialism.

The Chinese Communists have gathered interesting experience in pursuing the pol-icy of alliance with the bourgeoisie while simultaneously combating its vacillations. Methods such as the formation of mixed joint-stock companies with the participation of the state and private capital were used in order to convert its property into socialist prop-erty. The state bought part of the means of production from the bourgeoisie and fol-lowed a policy of restricting private enterprise and gradually converting the capitalist sector into a socialist one. At the same time it drew the bourgeoisie into socially-useful labour, making wide use of the experience of the bourgeois sections of the population and of their technical knowledge and skill in economic management.

Although the Soviets and people’s democracy, as two forms of the power of the working people led by the working class, are basically similar, there are differences be-tween them due to the special features of the historical conditions in which they arose.

In a number of People’s Democracies a multi-party system was retained, with the leading role played by the Marxist parties. Whereas in Russia the proletarian revolution was opposed not only by the bourgeois and landlords’ parties but by the petty-bourgeois parties as well, in China and in a number of other People’s Democracies many of these parties have supported the advance to the socialist phase of the revolution. They recog-nise the leadership of the working class and its Marxist-Leninist party, and are working jointly with it in furthering social development along socialist lines. Such parties, for instance, are the Socialist, People’s, Slovak Freedom and Slovak Reconstruction parties in Czechoslovakia, and the United Peasants’ and Democratic parties in Poland. In the German Democratic Republic the National Front includes not only the working-class parties but several bourgeois-democratic parties too. In a number of countries represen-tatives of these parties are members of coalition governments.

Further, the Communist and Workers’ Parties in the People’s Democracies perform their leading role not only through the organs of power, the trade unions and other public organisations, as in the U.S.S.R., but also through the Popular Front as a new organisa-tional form of the alliance of the working class, peasantry, petty bourgeoisie and intelli-gentsia.

Finally, people’s democracy is distinguished by certain features of the organisation of the government apparatus. In creating a new machinery of state power a number of countries used some of the old forms of national representation. In some cases these were re-organised traditional parliamentary institutions: the National Assembly in Czechoslovakia, the Sejm in Poland, etc.

In the People’s Democracies the demolition of the old state apparatus, too, was ef-fected in a different way. In some of them, the most reactionary part of the old state ma-chine, which served the fascists (the army, police, etc.), was abolished already during the democratic transformations, and a new, democratic apparatus was set up. Subsequently, the entire government apparatus was gradually reorganised in accordance with the re-

quirements of socialist construction.

Thus, the experience of the People’s Democracies has shown that the transition to socialism is possible while making use of national representative institutions and pre-serving a multi-party system, including the existence of bourgeois-democratic parties, provided that the Marxist party of the working class occupies the leading position.

It would be wrong to claim that socialist transformations in the People’s Democra-cies took place in an idyllic atmosphere of class peace and co-operation. The struggle between the forces and traditions of the old, bourgeois society and the forces of the new, socialist society went on here in all the spheres of life. The sallies of the Right-wing elements in China, the open counter-revolutionary revolt in Hungary, the increased ac-tivity of clericals and revisionist elements in Poland in 1956-57—all vividly confirms this.

However, the experience of the Soviet Union and the People’s Democracies has by no means confirmed Stalin’s thesis that the class struggle is bound to become sharper as progress is made towards socialism. On the contrary, during the successful building of socialism the general trend of the class struggle results in the positions of the socialist forces becoming consolidated and the resistance of the remnants of the hostile classes becoming weaker. But development does not always proceed in a straight line. Owing to particular alterations of the internal and external situation, the class struggle may be-come sharper during some periods, just as in the international arena, too, the struggle between the two opposed social systems may become accentuated.

The Possibility of Other Forms of Working-Class Power

The experience of the Soviet Union and the People’s Democracies, as well as the experience of the working-class movement in the capitalist countries, makes it possible to assume that new forms of working-class dictatorship or of a democracy performing the same functions may arise in the future.

Soviet power and people’s democracy confirm that the basic features of the work-ing-class state are everywhere the same. But history repeats itself in essential, funda-mental features and not in detail, and the transition of other nations to socialism may give rise to other forms of working-class power.

“All nations will arrive at socialism,” wrote Lenin, “that is inevitable, but they will not all arrive at it in exactly the same way, each will introduce something specific into one or other form of democracy, into one or other variety of the dictatorship of the pro-letariat, into one or another rate of socialist transformation of various aspects of social life.”329

What is it that gives rise to the possibility of new forms of working-class power ap-pearing?

Firstly, the fact that in our day there is a basis for broader social and political alli-ances than before, because the monopoly bourgeoisie is in opposition to the entire soci-ety, including certain sections not only of the petty but also of the middle bourgeoisie. The working-class power which will arise in the future socialist revolutions may, there-

fore, have an even broader social basis. Accordingly, the use of coercion may be re-stricted to a narrower field. In this case, democracy would embrace broader sections of the population already in the transition period. It is quite possible that power arising in one form or another from broad political alliances will be capable of isolating and sup-pressing reactionary elements without resorting to measures of coercion to any consider-able extent. Much will depend here on the international situation, on the external condi-tions under which the revolutionary processes in the given country will develop.

The new forms of democracy which may develop on the basis of broader class alli-ances will inevitably have certain new features. Moreover, it is not at all necessary that all these states should exercise the functions of proletarian dictatorship right from the start. The dictatorship of the proletariat as a programmatic proposition is one thing, as an immediate demand of the day it is quite another thing. While always remaining advo-cates of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the revolutionary parties of the working class nevertheless set themselves the task of establishing this dictatorship as a slogan of action only when conditions for it have matured, when all the conditions necessary for the so-cialist revolution have been created. In the People’s Democracies a demand for people’s democratic power was put forward in the phase of the revolution directed against foreign imperialism. This course of action has fully justified itself there.

Generalising the vast historical experience accumulated by the Marxist-Leninist par-ties in the struggle to establish working-class power, the Programme of the C.P.S.U. draws the following fundamental conclusion: “While the principal law-governed proc-esses of the socialist revolution are common to all countries, the diversity of the national peculiarities and traditions that have arisen in the course of history creates specific con-ditions for the revolutionary process, the variety of forms and rates of the proletariat’s advent to power. This predetermines the possibility and necessity, in a number of coun-tries, of transition stages in the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat, and a va-riety of forms of political organisation of the society building socialism.”330

In countries with centuries of democratic traditions behind them, the dictatorship of the working class or corresponding democracy may be in the form of a parliamentary republic. If, in alliance with all the democratic and patriotic forces, the working class succeeds in winning a majority in parliament prepared to nationalise the property of the big capitalist monopolies and effect other socialist transformations, then this traditional organ of bourgeois democracy can be turned into a real instrument of popular will. The winning of a solid parliamentary majority relying on the mass revolutionary movement of the working class and all the toilers will create conditions for carrying out radical so-cialist transformations.

Revisionists claim that parliamentarism presupposes a multi-party system and an opposition and that working-class dictatorship completely precludes them. This is their pretext for denying the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat in countries with strong parliamentary traditions.

The revisionists’ reference to the multi-party system and opposition is nothing but a subterfuge. The experience of the People’s Democracies has already shown that it is

possible to retain a multi-party system during the period of socialist construction. And although it has revealed that it is expedient to amalgamate the parties of the working class, it nevertheless should not be thought that this is the only path of development for the political parties under the conditions of the socialist revolution. Other political par-ties can exist side by side with the Marxist-Leninist party during the transition period, provided that they stand for the abolition of monopoly capital rule and support the policy of socialist construction. In that case the task of the working-class party is to draw all the parties and the sections of the population they represent into active participation in so-cialist construction, and to pursue a flexible policy of co-operation with them. It is quite possible of course, that, despite their unanimity on basic issues, the parties may develop political differences, but these can be settled by democratic means.

There is no doubt that the liberation movement in the countries of Asia, South America, Africa and the Middle East, which differ considerably from one another in their special features and national traditions, will give rise to new forms of working peo-ple’s political power. Lenin wrote that “the subsequent revolutions in Oriental countries, which possess much vaster populations and a much vaster diversity of social conditions, will undoubtedly display even greater peculiarities than the Russian Revolution”.331

Carefully studying the possible new path of the revolution and new forms of work-ing-class state, the Marxists-Leninists never forget that the march of history may compel the proletariat to apply more rigid methods of class struggle, to which it would prefer not to resort but which it must always be prepared to use.

But whatever form transition from capitalism to socialism may assume in one or an-other country, it is subject to certain general laws formulated in the Declaration of the Meeting of Representatives of Communist and Workers’ Parties (1957).

CHAPTER 22

THE MAIN ECONOMIC TASKS IN THE TRANSITION PERIOD FROM CAPITALISM TO SOCIALISM

The working class captures power in order to use its political supremacy to abolish capitalism and build socialism. And socialism cannot be built without a radical re-organisation of the economy.

The tasks arising in the course of such reorganisation are extremely complex. Unlike the revolutions of the past, the socialist revolution is not carried out to replace one form of exploiting system by another, but to abolish the exploitation of man by man. That is the reason why the socialist mode of production cannot arise by itself, spontaneously, in the womb of the old society, as did those before it. Its creation requires conscious and purposeful efforts on the part of the ruling working class and its allies.

The socialist reorganisation of the economy demands a special, transition period in any country. It cannot be skipped over or evaded even if all the material prerequisites for socialism have fully matured, and even if the internal and external conditions for build-ing socialism are most favourable. This is because socialism cannot issue in a ready-made form from the womb of capitalist society.

But while the necessity of a transition period is a general law holding good for all countries, its special features may differ considerably in different countries.

In highly developed countries, for instance, socialist industrialisation, which, as we shall see, constitutes one of the main conditions for achieving the economic tasks of the transition period, requires much less effort. The form and rate of the socialist reorganisa-tion of agriculture, as well as of the medium and small capitalist enterprises, etc., may be different too. Lastly, there are also essential differences during the transition period in the well-being of the working people. That is understandable. The dictatorship of the proletariat is capable of ensuring economic development in the fastest and most eco-nomical manner. It abolishes social injustice in the distribution of wealth. But it cannot create abundance with a wave of the hand. The starting-point has always to be the his-torically formed level of production of material wealth.

The legacy of differences among countries that is inherited from the past remains for a long time. And it is clear that these differences are bound to result in special features of socialist construction and, to a certain extent, of the young socialist society in a par-ticular country.

Historical experience shows, however, that from the very first socialism is every-where vastly superior to capitalism. True, history developed in such a way that the coun-tries that were the first to take the path of socialism were in the main moderately devel-oped and underdeveloped countries. Reactionary theoreticians and propagandists hasten to make use of this for their own ends. What can be easier than “discrediting” socialism by comparing, say, the living standard of Poland, for years ravaged by war and relatively backward in the past, with that of industrially highly developed Sweden, which escaped the hardships of war. Arguments of this sort, however, cannot long prevail, all the more

since the rapid development of the socialist countries is bringing nearer the hour when socialism will begin competing with capitalism on its own basis and not on that inherited from the old society.

But how is socialism’s own basis created? Or, in other words, what are the main economic (and therefore social) tasks the dictatorship of the proletariat seeks to accom-plish in the transition period?

1. What Working-Class Power Starts With

In the economic sphere the main thing in the transition period is the socialisation of the basic means of production, rapid development of the socialist sector and the organi-sation on this basis of new socialist relations of production. The first act in the transfor-mation of the economy is the nationalisation of big capitalist property.

Nationalisation of Big Industry, Transport and Banks

The bourgeoisie, of course, depicts socialist nationalisation as lawlessness and “rob-bery"’. In actual fact, however, it is an absolutely fair measure which Marx rightfully called “expropriation of the expropriators”.

Big capitalist property arose as a result of the most ruthless plunder of millions of people, dispossession of peasants of their land, ruin of artisans, colonial pillage, embez-zlement of state funds. Capitalist wealth always grows at the expense of the labour of the working class and the ruin of small producers. That is why the socialist revolution merely rights a wrong by converting into public property what has been created by the people’s labour and rightly belongs to the working people.

The aim of socialist nationalisation is to lay the basis for a new mode of production by undermining the economic might of the bourgeoisie and putting the key positions in the national economy in the hands of the proletarian state.

As history has already confirmed, the forms and methods of nationalisation in dif-ferent countries may be substantially different.

The Russian working class was the first to achieve the socialist nationalisation of the basic means of production. Before proceeding to nationalisation, the Soviet power intro-duced workers’ control. Production, trade and finance were put under the control of staffs of workers and office employees at enterprises. The bourgeoisie retaliated to the establishment of workers’ control and economic management measures by sabotage and embittered resistance. This compelled the Soviet Government to accelerate nationalisa-tion. The banks were nationalised in December 1917, and then the railways, communi-cation services, marine and inland water transport, as well as some of the industrial es-tablishments. The nationalisation of all large industrial establishments and private rail-ways was proclaimed in June 1918. Nationalisation was carried out by confiscation, without any compensation.

In the European People’s Democracies, the same process took place in a somewhat different way. At first the people’s democratic governments nationalised only enter-prises belonging to war criminals, traitors who had collaborated with German fascism.

The other enterprises were nationalised later, in reply to the bourgeoisie’s anti-socialist intrigues.

Nationalisation in the People’s Republic of China had important distinguishing fea-tures of its own. There the People’s Government at first restricted nationalisation to the heavy industries of the comprador and bureaucratic top section of the bourgeoisie; it took over the bigger banks and railways, and established control over foreign trade and currency operations. The property of a considerable section of the national bourgeoisie which had co-operated with the working class in the liberation war and people’s revolu-tion was not affected by nationalisation.

No matter how socialist nationalisation is carried out, it always infringes the inter-ests of a negligible minority of society and at the same time accords with the interests of the overwhelming majority. Capitalist development, concentrating the ownership of the means of production in the hands of an ever diminishing handful of big capitalists, itself paves the way to a painless transfer of the means of production to their lawful owner, the people.

Present-day conditions render probable the use of new forms and methods of nation-alisation. Examining this problem theoretically, the Programme of the C.P.S.U. points out: “It may well be that as the forces of socialism grow, as the working-class movement gains strength and the positions of capitalism are weakened, there will arise in certain countries a situation in which it will be preferable for the bourgeoisie, as Marx and Lenin foresaw, to agree to the basic means of production being purchased from it and for the proletariat to ‘pay off’ the bourgeoisie.”332

In all cases, however, socialist nationalisation in no way affects the property of small industrialists, tradesmen and artisans. On the contrary, the state of the victorious working class at first even helps them with raw materials, credits and orders, and in the course of further transformation creates conditions enabling them to occupy a worthy place in the new society. In a letter to Georgian Communists in March 1921, immedi-ately after the establishment of Soviet power in Georgia, Lenin wrote the following about small traders: “It should be realised that it is not only imprudent to nationalise them, but that we must even make certain sacrifices in order to improve their position and enable them to continue their small trade.”333

The interests of small shareholders will undoubtedly be taken into consideration when big capitalist establishments are nationalised in the countries of advanced capital-ism. This also applies to small rentiers, holders of insurance policies, etc.

Socialist nationalisation is thus one of the general, absolutely essential tasks of the socialist revolution, in whatever country it takes place. Nationalisation by the working people’s state can alone convert large-scale capitalist production into socialist. It is thus that the foundation of the socialist sector of the national economy, of the new mode of production, is laid. Relying on this sector, the working class is enabled to undertake the reorganisation of the entire economy of the society.

Confiscation of Big Estates

Capitalist relationships are not the only thing the working class has to abolish after capturing power in alliance with the working people; in many countries it is also faced with feudal survivals.

That applies, first and foremost, to underdeveloped countries, particularly colonial and dependent ones, where a considerable part of the land tilled by the peasants belongs to big landowners. Feudal survivals, however, have been retained in one way or another in many developed capitalist countries as well. The bourgeoisie of these countries itself acquires land and does not dare eliminate such an immense obstacle on the path of social progress as the big landowners’ monopoly. Therefore, in all the countries where there is big landownership, whether feudal or capitalist, the first task is to confiscate the big es-tates.

In Russia, where the landlords constituted one of the ruling classes right up to 1917, this was an especially acute issue. That is why one of the first important acts of the pro-letarian power was to confiscate the landlords’ land without any compensation. The De-cree on Land, adopted by the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets on October 26 (November 8), 1917, turned all the land into public property. This not only put an end to the existence of the landlord class, but also seriously undermined the economic might of the bourgeoisie. At the same time it strengthened the alliance between the working class and the peasantry; the mass of the working people in the countryside cast in their lot with Soviet power.

The abolition of private ownership of all land in Russia was called for by concrete historical conditions. The tradition of private ownership of land was weaker among the peasants in Russia than in Western Europe. Communal landownership with periodical redistribution of peasant allotments had long prevailed in the Russian countryside. The majority of peasants supported the demand for abolishing private ownership of land.

Matters were different in most of the European People’s Democracies. The tradition of private landownership there was strong; the peasants distrusted the slogan of nation-alisation. The nationalisation of all the land would only have made the relations between the working class and the peasantry more difficult. For that reason the people’s state confined itself to the nationalisation of big landed estates.

The greater part of the confiscated land was turned over to farm-labourers, poor peasants and, in part, to middle peasants at low prices in instalments extended over 10-20 years, but mostly gratis. The land remained private property, but its disposal was re-stricted: its sale (except in special cases), lease, partition, endowment—that is, anything which might serve to turn the land into a means of exploitation and speculative enrich-ment, was prohibited. The size of the allotments was calculated for cultivation by the peasant’s own labour. The area of the farms set up as a result of agrarian reform gener-ally did not exceed five hectares and only rarely reached 10-15 hectares.

Both in Russia and in the People’s Democracies, the confiscation of big landed es-tates contributed enormously to the political consolidation of the new power. Historical experience shows that big landed estates are everywhere the mainstay of reaction and

that the landlord class is the backbone of counter-revolution.

The confiscation of big landed estates is not by itself a socialist measure, since it does not destroy the basis of capitalist relationships. In a number of countries, landown-ers’ estates were confiscated during the bourgeois revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and this only hastened the development of capitalism in agricul-ture. But when power is in the hands of the working people, the abolition of big land-ownership becomes an important precondition for further socialist transformations.

What the Working People Receive Immediately After Assuming Power

The socialist revolution not only ushers in an era of the tempestuous development of productive forces, but also leads to the redistribution of society’s material wealth in fa-vour of the working people. This by itself immediately gives tangible gains to the work-ers and peasants. The volume of wealth they receive does not depend, of course, on the wishes of the revolutionary power, but on concrete possibilities. The richer the country and the higher the level of its productive forces, the more wealth do the working people receive immediately after the revolution.

On the eve of the October Socialist Revolution Russia was a ruined country. Never-theless, despite the extremely difficult conditions, the working class and the peasantry re-ceived material advantages immediately after the revolution. One of them was the intro-duction of the eight-hour day, for which the working class had fought for many decades. The working day for juvenile workers was limited to six hours, labour protection was in-troduced, and it was forbidden to employ women in arduous work. For Russia, which until then had had the longest working day in Europe, that was a major achievement.

The eight-hour working day was introduced after the revolution in all the European People’s Democracies too.

In the capitalist countries which have reached a higher level of productive forces there is not only every possibility of switching to a still shorter working day immediately after the overthrow of monopoly capital rule, but also of considerably raising the living standard of all the working people.

The working-class state immediately establishes paid annual holidays. The people take over the health centres and resorts, where toilers can spend their holidays free of charge or at reduced prices. No fees are charged by medical institutions. Physical culture and sports cease to be the privilege of the well-to-do and the idle rich, and are turned into a mass health-building instrument.

The socialist revolution paves the way for a great cultural revolution. Education is gradually made compulsory and universal not only at primary but also at secondary schools. Tuition in higher educational establishments becomes free. What is more, most of the students receive state stipends.

An end is put to the inequality of women. Not only are they paid the same wages as men for the same work, but they are also accorded equal rights in all spheres of eco-nomic, cultural and political activity. The workers’ state immediately begins to create a widespread network of child institutions and public catering establishments in order

gradually to free women from household drudgery.

The working-class state takes resolute and effective measures to do away with un-employment, to achieve full employment in the briefest possible historical span. The feeling of uncertainty about the morrow, which haunts the worker of a capitalist country all his life, vanishes at last. The working people are freed from having to contribute to the unemployment fund and from the necessity of saving for a rainy day.

In these conditions, the social insurance system acquires a different meaning. In the working-class state it ensures pensions to the aged and benefits to temporarily disabled workers. The required funds are made up of contributions from enterprises and state budget allocations.

The working people are no longer humiliated and insulted. They lose the “freedom” of being subject to dismissal at the capitalist’s will. For the first time society respects and appreciates the human rights of the worker.

The socialist revolution changes the housing conditions of the working people. In Russia, millions of workers were moved from cellars and garrets into flats and houses formerly occupied by the bourgeoisie. There was a redistribution of housing as a result of the people’s democratic revolutions in the European and Asian countries too. After the revolution, rents are greatly reduced and their increase prohibited by law. Instead of the former 15-30 per cent of the working family’s budget, the rent now amounts to only 4-5 per cent of wages.

The working family’s budget increases also as a result of the rise of real wages.

The peasantry, too, immediately sees the beneficial results of the revolution. The October Revolution gave the peasants, free of charge, more than 150,000,000 hectares of land that previously belonged to the landowners, capitalists, the tsar’s family, monaster-ies and the Church. Moreover, the peasants were released from paying debts for land acquired from the landlords prior to the revolution, from having to pay high rents and from having to spend enormous sums on the purchase of land.

Agrarian reform in the People’s Democracies likewise gave additional land to the peasants and released them from the fetters of debt. The centuries-old dream of farm-labourers and landless peasants came true: they began to till their own land and not that of kulaks and landlords.

Moreover, the countries building socialism are sharply reducing the taxes paid by the working people and redistributing the tax burden.

2. Ways of Abolishing Multiplicity of Economic Forms

A distinguishing feature of the economy of the transition period is the multiplicity of its forms. Such multiformity inevitably confronts the working class wherever it comes to power. Therefore, a very important economic and political task of the Party and the workers’ state in the transition period is the gradual elimination of this multiplicity.

Three Basic Forms of Economic Structure in the Transition Period

In the initial period after the victory of the revolution there are usually three forms

of economic structure: socialist, small commodity production and private capitalism. Corresponding to these economic forms are the following classes: the working class, the peasantry, and the bourgeoisie that has been overthrown but has not yet disappeared.

The share of the socialist sector is at first determined by the degree to which big capitalist production, nationalised in the given country, has been developed. In the So-viet Union, for instance, the output of the socialised sector in 1923-24 constituted 38.5 per cent of the total. In China in 1949 it was 34.7 percent. In such an industrially devel-oped country as Czechoslovakia, the nationalisation of large-scale industry made the state sector predominant from the very first. Some 60 per cent of the industrial estab-lishments and all the banks were already concentrated in the hands of the state in Octo-ber 1945. It is quite understandable, therefore, that the conditions for subsequent social-ist transformations in Czechoslovakia were more favourable.

Small commodity production is represented chiefly by peasant farms, as well as by craftsmen, artisans and other small producers who do not employ hired labour. In the Soviet Union this economic form predominated in 1923-24 and accounted for 51 per cent of total output. It played an even bigger role in China’s economy. In the highly de-veloped capitalist countries the share of small commodity production is relatively low.

Private capitalism as one of the economic forms in the transition period is made up mainly of small and medium-sized industrial enterprises owned by the urban bourgeoisie and of kulak farms. In the U.S.S.R. in 1923-24 private capitalism accounted for 8.9 per cent of gross output. In China and some of the European People’s Democracies, the capitalist sector was at first relatively large, for the property of the patriotically-minded bourgeoisie was not nationalised.

The roots of capitalism within the country and conditions for its restoration remain as long as capitalism and small commodity production—economic forms based on pri-vate ownership of the means of production—continue to exist. In that case there is a ba-sis for class struggle, for the resistance of the propertied classes and elements to the pol-icy of socialist reforms. And if these classes and elements are supported from without a danger arises of the restoration of capitalist relationships.

This danger cannot be eliminated by political measures alone (consolidation of the proletarian state, dissolution of counter-revolutionary parties, etc.). To settle the issue of “who will win?” definitely in favour of socialism, it is necessary to take radical eco-nomic steps: to convert the private-ownership forms of economy into socialist forms.

The elimination of the multiplicity of economic forms is, however, a very compli-cated matter and it cannot be done by snap measures, by a decree or an order. The rela-tionship of class forces and the sharpness of the struggle between them primarily decide the path taken in abolishing this multiplicity and how long it will be before the process is completed.

The first, and the main, thing by which the proletarian state is guided is the strength-ening of the positions of the new power, the consolidation of the new system. It is clear, for instance, that in conditions of embittered class struggle and active resistance by the capitalist elements the dictatorship of the proletariat will be compelled to accelerate this

process of eliminating multiformity in order to undermine more speedily the economic positions of its class enemies.

At the same time, economic considerations play a big part in this. After all, to a large extent the situation in the transition period is such that the proletarian state cannot for a while satisfy all the requirements of society without making use of the private-ownership forms of economic structure. The small peasant farms account for a consider-able share of agricultural output, while numerous establishments of the light industry, trading establishments and services are in private hands. Generally speaking, at its in-ception the state cannot assume the role played, whether badly or well, by the small commodity producers. Hence, to avoid economic and political difficulties it is necessary to create, in one degree or another, economic conditions for the abolition of the other economic sectors. The victory of the socialist sector can be made secure, and conse-quently the positions of the new system properly strengthened, when socialism ousts the other economic forms by economic means.

But whatever the conditions, the proletarian state is always faced in the transition period with having to choose methods and means of subordinating small commodity production and private capitalism to the interests of socialist construction, and of gradu-ally reorganising them into the socialist sector.

Such methods and means were found and tested in practice in the process of social-ist construction in the Soviet Union and the People’s Democracies. The experience thus accumulated is of permanent and universal importance. Its main feature is skilful utilisa-tion of market relationships with the aim of consolidating and enlarging the socialist sec-tor and of economically ousting private capitalist elements. The proletarian state devel-ops such relationships because small commodity production does not admit of other, forms of economic ties.

Experience has shown that the state of the proletarian dictatorship can safely risk developing market relations, for it has in its lands all the decisive branches of the na-tional economy (heavy industry, large enterprises of light industry, transport facilities, banks, foreign trade). All the other forms of economy depend in one way or another on the state sector, from which they receive machinery, raw materials and power and to which they sell their output. This allows the workers’ state by using economic levers to control the situation in the other sectors and to ensure their development in the direction it desires.

It is clear that the more powerful the industrial basis inherited by the proletarian state, the more opportunities it has to control and regulate the market and the bolder it can be in allowing market connections.

That does not mean that in the conditions of embittered class struggle the dictator-ship of the proletariat renounces administrative and control measures. In practice, lead-ership of the national economy by the proletarian dictatorship usually Includes both eco-nomic and political measures, which complement one another and add up to what is called the economic policy of the proletarian state.

Economic Bond Between Town and Country

The most difficult economic task of the transition period is the socialisation of scat-tered, dispersed small commodity economy. The difficulties of the socialist transforma-tion of this sector of the economy are due to the fact that small commodity production is the least amenable to direct control by the proletarian state. The chief point, however, is that the peasantry is the main ally of the working class, and the working people’s state not only cannot apply expropriation measures against it, but on the contrary is interested in establishing strong economic ties with it. Without such ties there can be no strength-ening the political alliance of the working class and the peasantry, which constitutes, as is known, the basis of the new order.

As Lenin time and again pointed out, the most correct policy is to give the country-side all the products of socialist industry that it needs in return for grain and raw materi-als. It is not a surplus appropriation system, not a tax, he said, but “the exchange of products of the big (‘socialised’) industry for peasant products that is the economic es-sence of socialism, its base”.334

In Russia—a peasant, economically backward country, which was forced to build socialism single-handed—the economic policy of the dictatorship of the proletariat had distinguishing features of its own. Although Lenin had worked out the principles of eco-nomic policy based on the establishment of market ties with the peasant economy as far back as the spring of 1918, the Civil War and foreign intervention, which put the coun-try in the position of a besieged fortress, compelled the Soviet government to switch to the policy of “War Communism”.

Free trade was forbidden. The basic foodstuffs and manufactures were strictly ra-tioned, according to the class principle. All surplus produce in the countryside was taken under the “surplus appropriation system”, also according to the class principle: nothing from the poor peasant, a moderate amount from the middle peasant, and much from the kulak. Industry was fully centralised and wholly subordinated to the needs of the battle fronts. The industrial enterprises received raw materials, equipment, etc., from govern-ment bodies and turned in all they produced to them, getting coupons instead of cash in return. Money ceased to play any important role. Economic life was regulated by purely administrative methods.

“War Communism” was a policy imposed by the exceptionally difficult conditions of the Civil War. It helped to mobilise the then scanty resources of Russia for victory over the enemy, and therein lay its indisputable significance. As Lenin wrote, this policy accomplished its historical task. But “War Communism” was not and could not be a pol-icy making for a closer economic bond with the peasantry. As soon as the conditions changed, the dictatorship of the proletariat switched to the “New Economic Policy” (NEP). It was under this name that it went down in history, although it was new only with regard to “War Communism” and was in essence the same policy which Lenin had already outlined early in 1918.

The ban on private trade was lifted after the introduction of the New Economic Pol-icy. The peasants began to sell their surplus produce in the market. Capitalists were

given access to both retail and wholesale trade; they were allowed to open small indus-trial enterprises. What is more, part of the state enterprises were denationalised and leased to the capitalists. The enterprises in the socialist sector were put on a self-supporting basis: henceforth they bought their raw materials and sold their products. The rationing of foodstuffs was replaced by open sales. Lenin urged the Communists to “learn to trade” in order to oust private traders and replace private trade by state and co-operative trade.

The re-establishment of market relations, of course, could not but temporarily revive the capitalist elements. The kulaks began to increase their holdings by renting land and to employ farm-labourers. Considerable stocks of grain began to accumulate in the hands of the village rich. Differentiation in the countryside, which in the early period after the revolution had given way to the establishment of a “middle-peasant” level throughout the rural areas, revived.

The proletarian state could not be indifferent to all these processes. If the kulak ele-ment became powerful, it would be a serious danger to socialist construction. That is why the policy of an economic bond with the peasantry was accompanied by measures aimed at curbing the capitalist elements in the village. The state strove to help the poor and middle peasants to rehabilitate their farms; it granted them credits on favourable terms, assisted with machines and tools through hire agencies, etc. The policy towards the kulaks was one of restriction: rigid limits were fixed with regard to leasing land and hiring labour, the labour of farm workers was regulated by law, and higher taxes were established for kulak farms.

In a country like Russia, the question of alliance between the working class and the peasantry was of decisive importance for the fate of socialism. Little wonder, then, that an acute class struggle went on around this issue and that this struggle found reflection within the Party too. The Trotskyists denied the dual nature of the peasantry and claimed it was a wholly reactionary mass incapable of taking part in building socialism. They tried to foist upon the Party a policy that meant deliberately ruining the peasantry and exploiting it for the sake of industrial development. Such a policy would have meant the downfall of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The Right-wing opportunists, followers of Bukharin, also in effect denied the dual nature of the peasants asserting that the peasantry, the kulak element included, would “grow into socialism” of itself. Their policy meant renunciation of the struggle with the capitalist elements, a policy of drift—in other words, it paved the way for the restoration of capitalism.

Without the ideological and organisational defeat of the Trotskyists and Buk-harinists it would have been impossible to solve the contradictions of the transition pe-riod in favour of socialism. Hence the Communist Party resolutely fought every attempt to undermine the worker-peasant alliance or to deprive this alliance of its socialist con-tent. It was in the course of this struggle that correct political methods, which can be a potent tool also in the hands of other Communist and Workers’ Parties, were forged and tested.

When NEP was introduced, Lenin stressed its universal importance. “The task that we are now tackling, for the time being—temporarily—alone,” he wrote, ‘looks like a purely Russian task, but in actual fact it is a task that will confront all the socialists…. The new society, built on the basis of the alliance of workers and peasants, is inevitable. Sooner or later, twenty years earlier or twenty years later, it will come, and it is for it, for this society, that we are helping to elaborate forms of alliance between workers and peasants when we work to implement our New Economic Policy.”335

Lenin’s prophecy came true. The experience of NEP has fully retained its interna-tional significance. The People’s Democracies in their economic policy have widely ap-plied the Leninist principles regarding the use of market and value relationships in the interests of socialist economic construction.

A different relationship of class forces will arise in the transition period in the highly developed capitalist countries, where the peasants or farmers constitute an insignificant part of the population. There a big role as the allies of the working class will be played not only by the working farmers, but also by the urban petty bourgeoisie (artisans, craftsmen, petty traders, and so on), as well as by office workers and intellectuals. After the nationalisation of monopoly property, a powerful socialist sector will immediately arise and the conditions for drawing the urban and rural petty bourgeoisie into socialist construction will undoubtedly be more favourable. After the victory over the monopoly bourgeoisie, the problem of “who will win?” may not be so acute in these countries, since the socialist sector will from the very first be much stronger economically than all the non-socialist elements in the national economy.

Producer Co-operatives Among the Peasantry

The policy of the proletarian state towards the poor and middle peasants is not lim-ited to economic assistance. Sooner or later it becomes necessary to help the bulk of the peasants to pass gradually from small-scale individual farming to large-scale farming in order to effect a marked increase in the productivity of agricultural labour, equip the farms with machinery, familiarise them with scientific achievements, and bring prosper-ity and culture into the lives of all the peasants. Similarly, the policy of the proletarian dictatorship towards the kulaks must sooner or later change from measures of restraint to measures aimed at the elimination of this exploiting class as well.

Even after the overthrow of the capitalist and landlord yoke, tilling a small plot gives the peasant a very limited opportunity of improving his living and working condi-tions. The peasants learn by experience that small farming offers no way out of poverty, no way to prosperity. However much the socialist state may help, small commodity economy cannot ensure extended reproduction. That can be seen from the Soviet exam-ple. In 1928, the Soviet Union’s industry was producing 32 per cent more than before the war and the rate of increase was gathering momentum, but the production of grain was only approaching the pre-war level and the marketable output of agricultural pro-duce stood at only 50 per cent of the pre-war level. Consequently, there was only one way out for the peasantry and for the country’s economy as a whole: to convert the

backward, scattered peasant economy into large-scale, mechanised one.

Under capitalism, large-scale agricultural production is built at the expense of small producers. Its organisers are bourgeoisified landlords, big capitalists, kulaks and mer-chants. This capitalist method of promoting large-scale agricultural production is natu-rally inadmissible in the conditions of proletarian democracy.

The socialist method of establishing large-scale production in agriculture is by vol-untary co-operation of the peasants. It was clearly foreseen by the founders of Marxism. “When we are in possession of state power,” Engels wrote, “we shall not even think of forcibly expropriating the small peasants (regardless of whether with or without com-pensation), as we shall have to do in the case of the big landowners. Our task relative to the small peasant consists, in the first place, in effecting a transition of his private enter-prise and private possession to co-operative ones, not forcibly but by dint of example and the proffer of social assistance for this purpose.”336

There are diverse forms of agricultural co-operation in the capitalist countries too. A rather important role is played by co-operative trade in agricultural produce in Denmark, Holland and Finland. But although such co-operation can to a certain extent protect the toiling peasantry from the tyranny of monopoly capital, it does not alter the production relations in the countryside. Under capitalist conditions, co-operation serves individual peasants and capitalist farmers chiefly in regard to marketing and supplies. More often than not it is dominated by capitalist elements. Under these circumstances a co-operative is a collective capitalist institution.

When the land, industry and banks become public property, cooperative develop-ment of agriculture follows a totally different path and has a very different social signifi-cance. “A system of civilised co- operators under the social ownership of the means of production, with the class victory of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie, is the system of socialism” (Lenin).337

For the peasants, co-operation is the simplest, the most intelligible and advantageous form of association. That was Lenin’s starting-point in putting forward his famous “co-operative plan”. Although this plan was elaborated to conform to the conditions in Rus-sia, it retains its universal value as a programme for directing the millions-strong peasant masses to the path of socialism.

Lenin proposed to start with the organisation of the simplest forms of co-operation, first of all in the sphere of marketing peasant produce and supplying the countryside with goods, as well as in regard to the organisation of agricultural credit. These very simple forms of co-operation accustom peasants to social, co-operative forms of farming and open their eyes to the advantages offered not only by collective marketing and sup-ply methods, but by collective production too. The peasants, Lenin suggested, should convince themselves in practice of the advantages of collective farming. Only after that would it be possible to pass gradually to co-operation in agricultural production — first by organising simple associations for joint cultivation of land and then by passing to higher forms of agricultural cooperation. Any attempt to disrupt this natural process and especially to violate the Leninist principle of complete voluntariness in co-operation is

apt to do enormous harm to the cause of co-operation and discredit it in the eyes of the peasants.

That does not mean that the system of producer co-operatives in the countryside can develop of its own accord. No, it requires constant and all-round assistance from the Party and the state—financial, scientific-technological and organisational (especially with cadres capable of helping the peasants to organise collective farms). The working peasantry needs also political assistance, for its transition to collective farming is at-tended, as a rule, by a class struggle that at times becomes extremely acute.

The reason is that the process of agricultural co-operation decides the fate of the last exploiting class—the kulaks. Their economic positions are undermined by co-operative farming becoming the chief purveyor of agricultural produce and successfully ousting the kulak speculators from the market. The kulaks' political positions collapse as soon as the bulk of the peasants firmly and irrevocably adopt the path of socialism. That creates the prerequisites for eliminating the kulaks as a class. It is not a question, of course, of the physical destruction of the representatives of this class, but of the abolition of the social and economic conditions that permit the rural bourgeoisie to exploit poor peasants and farm-labourers.

As for the former kulaks themselves, their fate depends on their attitude to the social changes taking place. In the Soviet Union, where they bitterly opposed collectivisation, agitated against the collective farms and at times rose in arms against them, the peasant masses and the proletarian government were compelled to take measures to suppress them. Under different conditions such drastic measures may not be necessary—if the representatives of the kulak class are sensible and prove ready to live by their own la-bour. In this case, they have the prospect of becoming equal members of socialist soci-ety. In the Chinese People’s Republic, Czechoslovakia, and the German Democratic Re-public, during the last stage of the mass organisation of co-operatives, the latter began gradually to accept kulaks and to undertake their political and labour re-education.

One of the most important factors in the successful reorganisation of the countryside is the development of large-scale socialist industry, capable of assisting co-operative farms with machinery, mineral fertilisers and technicians.

Socialist industrialisation makes it possible to mechanise agriculture most success-fully and effectively. In the period after collective farms were organised in the U.S.S.R., when they were economically weak, the state undertook responsibility for the mechani-sation of agriculture. It set up special machine and tractor stations and trained machine-operators. Later, when the collective farms became stronger, the MTS equipment was sold to them and the stations themselves were re-organised into maintenance and repair stations.

The experience of the U.S.S.R. and the People’s Democracies shows that organisa-tion of producer co-operatives (collectivisation) is objectively essential for the socialist transformation of the countryside. It implies a great revolution in economic relations and in the whole way of life of the peasantry.

At the same time practice shows that the concrete forms of such cooperation may

vary. In the Soviet Union, the agricultural artel rapidly became the basic form of collec-tive farming. In a number of People’s Democracies, on the other hand, co-operative or-ganisation of the bulk of the peasant farms went through a series of intermediate stages. There were formed everywhere co-operatives of a lower type (of various grades) and co-operatives of a higher type, differing in the degree of socialisation of the means of pro-duction. In the co-operatives of the lower type, income is distributed not only in accor-dance with the work done, but also in accordance with the resources pooled (land and implements).

The bulk of the peasantry gradually rose from the elementary forms of associations for mutual aid to producer co-operatives of the higher type. This gave the peasants time and opportunity to convince themselves of the advantages of collective farming. After China, the Korean People’s Democratic Republic was the next country to complete the socialist reorganisation of agriculture. The first European People’s Democracy to achieve this was Bulgaria. Subsequently, the organisation of the peasantry into producer co-operatives was completed in the majority of the People’s Democracies.

Although the forms of agricultural co-operation vary in the different socialist coun-tries, they have one thing in common—their socialist type of economy. The agricultural artel in- the U.S.S.R., the farm labour co-operatives in Bulgaria and the agricultural pro-ducer co-operatives in other countries are all organised in such a way as to combine the private and public interests of the peasants, helping to re-educate the individual farmers of yesterday into class-conscious collectivists.

In the process of co-operation, as a rule, only the basic means of production (agri-cultural machines and tools, draught animals, seed and farm buildings necessary for co-operative farming) and the labour of the co-operative members are pooled. In a number of People’s Democracies even the land remains the private property of the peasants join-ing the co-operative, although it becomes part of the common fund. All the rest (dwell-ing-houses, part of the cattle, poultry and small agricultural tools) is not socialised and remains the personal property of the members of the co-operative. Their income comes chiefly from the socialised farm, although subsidiary occupation on their personal plots, too, plays a certain role in the budgets of the co-operative members. Work is organised and paid for in accordance with the socialist principle: “From each according to his abil-ity, to each according to his work.”

In the process of mass co-operation and in the subsequent organisation of co-operative production, experience has shown that the Communist Parties are often con-fronted with the danger of Leftist deviations, with attempts to solve the problem without taking into account the degree of the peasants’ preparedness, with attempts to hasten matters where there is still need for persuasion.

The source of these Leftist errors is doctrinarism and divorce from actual economic conditions, the effort to solve complicated economic problems by administrative meas-ures without painstaking, conscientious organisational and economic work. The Com-munist Parties have to fight against these dangerous methods, against the disregard of the Leninist principle of voluntariness, not only in the early phase of mass formation of

co-operatives, but in the latter stages as well.

A great danger, too, is presented by the Right-wing deviation—the tendency to postpone the formation of producer co-operatives indefinitely or to effect it at snail’s pace, adapting oneself to the kulaks’ interests, to the conservatism and sluggishness of the backward sections of the peasantry. The Right-wing deviation objectively reflects the capitalistic aspirations of the kulak class and consequently presents the greatest men-ace to the interests of socialist construction.

The successful organisation of agricultural producer co-operatives is impossible without a resolute struggle against both the Right-wing and the Left-wing deviation.

The experience accumulated in the course of the socialist transformation of agricul-ture cannot, of course, supply answers to all the questions that may arise in the future. Each country taking the socialist path will undoubtedly contribute much that is new to the forms and methods of co-operation. This is particularly to be expected from the highly developed capitalist countries, where farming is mechanised and where there are large capitalist agricultural enterprises.

But whatever the peculiarities of certain countries, the principles of Lenin’s co-operative plan form a reliable and well-tested basis for the policy of the working class towards the peasantry, a policy which makes it possible to overcome the multiplicity of economic forms in the transition period.

Elimination of Capitalist Elements in Industry

The development of market connections and trade usually leads to the revival of capitalist elements in the towns as well. As already mentioned, the proletarian state in the U.S.S.R. temporarily allowed economic activity by the bourgeoisie in certain indus-tries within the framework determined by the New Economic Policy (NEP). In the coun-tries where a democratic bloc of various classes and sections of the population has come to power, the national bourgeoisie retains fairly important economic positions. In fact, these positions may even become stronger at first.

The proletarian state’s subsequent policy towards the bourgeoisie depends largely on the latter’s behaviour.

It is one thing if the bourgeoisie loyally supports the new system and is prepared to take part in economic construction. In that case it can count on the state’s assistance: certain privileges, credits, guaranteed sales, etc. But it is a different matter if the capital-ist elements actively resist the power of the working people, engage in economic sabo-tage and resort to corruption and fraud to undermine socialist enterprises, grab their raw materials, labour-power and buyers, and enrich themselves at their expense. In that case, the bourgeoisie brings reprisals upon itself, for the state resolutely repulses all anti-socialist attacks,

Under all circumstances, however, the proletarian state pursues a policy of restrict-ing the growth of capitalist elements. The capitalists are kept within definite limits that prevent them from becoming an economic and political force capable of endangering the revolution and socialist transformations. For that purpose the state applies tax restric-

tions and other measures preventing excessive concentration of wealth in the hands of any of them. It also regulates the size of production, purchase of raw materials, prices, conditions of hiring labour-power, etc.

At the same time, all these measures protect the young socialist sector against com-petition and the corrupting influence of private capitalism. Moreover, in restricting pri-vate capitalism, the workers’ state protects the interests of the working people employed in capitalist enterprises.

The dictatorship of the proletariat sets itself the task of defeating private capital pri-marily in open economic competition with it. The proletarian state is not afraid of such competition, for it controls a mighty industry and holds the key economic positions. Sooner or later, the advantages of large-scale, highly organised and concentrated social-ist production enable it to be victorious against private capital in all the spheres of the national economy. The sphere of activity of private capital diminishes and there remains nothing for it but economic capitulation. It is usually in this period that a favourable situation arises for effecting broad socialist transformations in private industry and trade. These transformations may be carried out by different methods.

Experience shows that among these methods an important role is played by the vari-ous forms of state capitalism. The possibility of using this economic form in the inter-ests of socialist construction was first pointed out by Lenin. In a number of his works (Report on Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government, The Tax in Kind, etc.), he theo-retically proved the possibility of using state capitalism in the conditions of proletarian dictatorship and revealed its role as a special stage in the transition from private capital to socialism.

State capitalism under the dictatorship of the proletariat should not be confused with state capitalism in the developed bourgeois countries. There state capitalism is a means of accelerating the accumulation of capital of private corporations through the use of the state’s financial resources, a method of state economic control in the interests of big capitalists and monopolists, a form of interference by the state in the class struggle be-tween labour and capital in the interests of the latter. Under the dictatorship of the prole-tariat, state capitalism is capitalism controlled by the state of the working people in their interests, it is a form of using private capital for building socialism, a form of restricting the exploiting tendencies of capital, a method of making the capitalist sector of the economy socialist.

Guided by Lenin’s teachings, the Soviet state in the transition period followed a pol-icy of enlisting the assistance of Russian and foreign capital for the economic rehabilita-tion of the country. Some enterprises and mines were turned over to foreign capitalists on a concession basis or leased to other private persons. Thus there arose a state-capitalist sector of the economy which, however, failed to expand because the bourgeoi-sie, expecting an early downfall of the Soviet power, would not co-operate with the pro-letarian state. In 1923-24, the state-capitalist sector accounted for only one per cent of the gross national output.

The experience of the subsequent socialist revolutions threw fresh light on the ques-

tion of the place and role of state capitalism in the system of economic measures of the transition period. Lenin’s ideas were applied in practice in the People’s Republic of China and in the German Democratic Republic, where joint state-private enterprises were set up.

There are even better prospects in this respect for the highly developed capitalist countries. After the establishment of popular rule under the leadership of the working class, state-capitalist enterprises there may become an important form of economic co-operation between the state and the part of the bourgeoisie that is prepared to accept the socialist transformations. A special form of state capitalism may be created by joint con-cerns, established on the basis of the nationalised monopolies and the small capitalist enterprises formerly under their influence.

Employers co-operating honestly with the state may often gain by the establishment of joint state-private enterprises and associations, for they are guaranteed a ready market and are freed from the danger of being crushed by stronger rivals and from fear of eco-nomic crises. As for the prospects ahead, experience has shown that the proletarian state is in a position to make the transition of loyal capitalists to a life of work as easy and painless as possible. Materially, this transition is facilitated by the fact that for a certain period the capitalists are paid compensation for the alienated property, and morally by the fact that the state makes use of their skill and knowledge, appoints them to appropri-ate positions at the enterprises and grants them political rights within the framework of proletarian democracy.

3. Socialist Industrialisation

The socialist mode of production (like any other) has its own material and technical basis, that is, a definite level of development of the productive forces. Lenin said: “Only a large-scale machine industry capable of re-organising agriculture too can be the mate-rial basis of socialism.”338

The material prerequisites for socialism arise in one degree or another in the womb of capitalism. But that does not mean at all that in this field there are no new tasks facing working-class power after the revolution.

Firstly, even in the developed capitalist countries, along with large-scale machine production there are quite often branches of industry where a big role is played by small establishments and even by primitive technique and the manual labour of the artisan, craftsman, etc. Secondly, the path of socialism may be taken also by countries with weak productive forces or by countries where side by side with a developed industry there exists a backward agriculture in which millions of small producers are engaged. That makes the question of what the working-class power should do when it does not inherit a sufficiently developed material and technical basis from capitalism all the more urgent.

The Right-wing socialists claim that the seizure of power should not be contem-plated until the national economy as a whole has attained the highest level characteristic of developed state-monopoly capitalism. Without that, in their opinion, the working

class should not even dream of building socialism. When the October Socialist Revolu-tion was accomplished, the social-democratic leaders proclaimed it “illegitimate” on the grounds that Russia had not reached a sufficiently high level of the productive forces and culture and that she lacked the necessary cadres for economic administration. The Russian working class, however, paid no heed to these pedants. It first captured power and then proceeded resolutely to eliminate the country’s economic and cultural back-wardness and to train economic cadres.

The Civil War was still going on when the state plan of the electrification of Russia (GOELRO) was worked out under Lenin’s guidance. It was the first scientifically-based plan for the development of the national economy during 10-15 years. It envisaged the development, on the basis of the most advanced technique, of such decisive branches of heavy industry as the power industry, metallurgy, engineering, chemical industry and transport. Lenin’s ideas embodied in the GOELRO plan were made the basis of the so-cialist industrialisation policy, which enabled the Soviet state to create the material and technical basis essential for socialist society.

Economic and technical backwardness, therefore, did not become an insuperable ob-stacle to building socialism. But the working class was confronted by a tremendous and difficult task—that of creating by its own forces, without any outside help, the material and technical basis of socialism and developing all the branches of industry, first and foremost the production of the means of production. This task confronts all the countries taking the path of socialism, and particularly those which did not have a sufficiently de-veloped industry in the past. In other words, they are faced with the necessity of carrying out socialist industrialisation.

Socialist industrialisation is the development of large-scale industry, and primarily heavy industry, to a level where it becomes the key to the reorganisation of the entire national economy on the basis of advanced machine technology, ensures the victory of socialism, and strengthens the country’s technical and economic independence and de-fence capacity in face of the capitalist world.

The creation of modern industry requires huge material and financial outlays. In the capitalist countries the means for industrialisation were derived from colonial plunder, war indemnities and foreign loans. The first two sources are impossible in principle for a socialist country. As for foreign loans, the capitalist states refuse to grant them to coun-tries building socialism if they cannot bring political pressure to bear on them by means of these loans. At least, that is how matters have stood so far. More than that, in their effort to disrupt the building of socialism, the capitalist countries raise all sorts of obsta-cles to the normal development of trade and cultural and technical exchanges capable of facilitating industrialisation, especially obstacles to the purchase of equipment, technical consultation, etc.

The only source of funds for socialist industrialisation is the internal resources cre-ated by the labour of the workers, peasants and intellectuals. That naturally may require certain sacrifices and cause difficulties and privation, especially in the early stages of industrialisation. Such was the case in the Soviet Union, where the working people, the

first to tackle the job of building socialism, had to economise on everything and deny themselves very much.

At the same time, after abolition of the capitalist and landlord classes, new sources for financing industry appear. The share of the national income previously devoted to the parasitical consumption of the exploiting classes is used for socialist accumulation. In Russia, China and a number of other countries building socialism, huge sums were paid out in the past to foreign capitalists. The socialist revolution puts an end to this bondage. The peasantry is released from paying mortgage debts and land rents. That en-hances the possibility of enlisting the financial assistance of the countryside for indus-trial development. The revenue of state enterprises, foreign and domestic trade, and banks is also used for industrialisation.

Having mobilised all the internal resources, Soviet power succeeded in effecting in-dustrialisation at a pace unknown to any capitalist country. More than 1,500 new plants and factories were built and put into operation in the first five-year-plan period (1929-32), and 4,500 in the second (1933-37). During this time the volume of industrial output, increased 4.5-fold. Such expansion of industry within one decade is a leap unexampled in the economic history of the world. To achieve that it took the United States almost forty years—approximately from 1890 to 1929.

For the Soviet Union—the first socialist state in the world—the rate of industrial growth was a question of life or death. And it was only because the U.S.S.R. had suc-ceeded in building up a powerful industrial basis before 1941 that the Soviet people were able to rout fascist Germany. In some 13-15 years the Soviet Union was changed from an agrarian into an industrial country and became one of the leading industrial powers of the world. It was a great historical feat, accomplished by the Soviet people under the guidance of the Communist Party.

The possibility of high rates of industrial growth is clear proof of the advantages of-fered by the new, socialist system. Such rates are displayed also by the People's Democ-racies.

These countries are laying the material and technical foundations of socialism in dif-ferent, more favourable conditions. Unlike the U.S.S.R., which had to rely only on its own strength, they can depend on the large-scale mutual assistance of all the countries of the socialist camp. The industrially developed socialist states help the less developed countries to establish modern industries. Much assistance—in credits, loans, technical documentation, equipment and raw materials—is rendered the People’s Democracies by the Soviet Union. Now that a world socialist system exists, its member-countries do not necessarily have to establish all branches of industry, as the U.S.S.R., had to do.

Thus, the tasks different countries have to solve in establishing the material and technical basis of socialism, are not identical. In agrarian countries, the primary task is intensified industrial development; in the countries that had already attained a high level of industry under capitalism, the main task is the reorganisation of the industrial struc-ture, establishing new economic relations and eliminating the disproportions inherited from the past.

4. The Results of the Transition Period

The entire economic policy of the proletarian state in the transition period has in view the struggle of the socialist against the capitalist elements with the aim of restrict-ing and ousting the latter and of achieving the complete victory of socialist forms in all the spheres of the national economy. The methods and means applied in this struggle are mainly economic and it culminates in ending the multiplicity of economic forms and eliminating the bourgeoisie and kulaks.

The main result of the transition period is the victory of the socialist mode of pro-duction. The socialist sector, which is already the leading sector at the beginning of this period, becomes predominant and eventually the only sector. The sector of small com-modity production becomes converted into a socialist sector through the development of agricultural co-operation, as well as co-operatives of artisans and craftsmen. The capital-ist sector disappears completely as a result of the restriction and ousting of the capitalist elements in the economy, or by its transformation.

It is in this way that the basic contradiction of the transition period—the contradic-tion between the newly-born and developing socialist economic structure and capitalism, overthrown but not yet completely eliminated—is solved.

What the transition period can yield is vividly illustrated by the Soviet Union, the first country in the world to build socialist society.

The socialist reorganisation of the Soviet economy was in the main completed in the mid-thirties. By 1937, 98.7 per cent of the production facilities were public property, that is, belonged to the socialist state or to the collective farms and co-operatives. By that time the socialist enterprises accounted for 99.8 per cent of the total industrial out-put. The share of the socialist sector in the total volume of agricultural production came to 98.5 per cent and in retail trade to 100 per cent. It indicated that the whole of the na-tional economy was developing on a single socialist basis.

The class composition of Soviet society changed radically. The proportion of the capitalist elements had already dropped to 4.6 per cent by 1928; in 1937 this class group disappeared completely.

“Socialism, which Marx and Engels scientifically predicted as inevitable and the plan for the construction of which was mapped out by Lenin, has become a reality in the Soviet Union.”339

The building of socialism is being completed, too, in the People’s Democracies. In most of them the multiplicity of economic forms has been ended, the organisation of agricultural co-operatives has been carried through, the class structure of society has been transformed, the alliance of the working class and the peasantry has been consoli-dated, and the economic basis of the exploitation of man by man eliminated. By now, the social and economic conditions that would make a restoration of capitalism possible have been done away with not only in the Soviet Union, but in all the socialist countries as well.

The historical experience not only of the Soviet Union, but also of the People’s De-mocracies, has fully confirmed the Marxist-Leninist thesis that socialism cannot arise

spontaneously, of itself, either before or after the proletarian revolution. It must be built, and is built, by the hands of the workers, peasants, and all the working people organised in a state and led by a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist party. Recognition of this, i.e., recognition of the objective need for actively building socialism, is precisely what dis-tinguishes Communists from Social-Democrats, from reformists and revisionists of every shade, who allege that capitalism will develop spontaneously into socialism and deny the organising and guiding role of the state and public bodies of the proletarian dictatorship.

Some of the leaders of the Yugoslav League of Communists, for instance, claim that the basic contradiction of the transition period is not the struggle between growing so-cialism and the remnants of capitalism, but the contradiction between centralised state administration and the needs of localities and enterprises. They see the way out of this imaginary contradiction in speeding up the “withering away” of the state already in the transition period. And yet the working class can successfully cope with its gigantic or-ganisational, creative tasks only if it learns to use its state power as a most powerful economic force. The workers’ and peasants’ state, Lenin pointed out, has a special eco-nomic role to play. Whatever form the socialist state may assume in one country or an-other, it must actively carry out economic transformations, manage the national econ-omy, plan it, and direct the entire process of extended reproduction in the interests of socialism. The role of the socialist state is particularly important as long as the imperial-ist camp exists.

The duration of the transition period from capitalism to socialism, and therefore the historical period during which the dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary, is bound to vary in different countries. Much depends here on the internal and international condi-tions. It is natural that society as a whole and all the working people individually should be interested in the socialist transformations being completed as soon as possible. Hence, one of the most urgent tasks facing the Party and the state is to discover and util-ise all the reserves capable of accelerating the transition to socialism. But there should be no skipping essential phases, no undue haste. Unjustified haste in building socialism is harmful, as in any big undertaking affecting the interests of the broad masses. “The Commune, i.e., Soviets of Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies,” Lenin wrote, “does not ‘introduce’, does not intend to ‘introduce’, and must not introduce any reforms which have not absolutely matured both in reality and in the consciousness of the overwhelm-ing majority of the people.”340 In their organisational and explanatory work the Marxist-Leninist parties are guided by this behest of Lenin’s.

CHAPTER 23

MAIN FEATURES OF THE SOCIALIST MODE  OF PRODUCTION

The establishment of social ownership in all branches of the national economy com-pletes the transition from capitalism to socialism. Socialism now develops on the basis of large-scale industry and highly mechanised collective farming.

Society itself, the working people themselves, have the opportunity of planning and controlling the production process of the entire national economy on a country-wide scale. Under capitalism the organisation of production in a more or less planned way can be achieved only within the limits of an individual enterprise or at most within a single monopoly. But even such planning is constantly upset by the anarchy of production that prevails throughout the national economy. Socialism makes possible planned direction of the entire social production mechanism taken as a whole.

A new era in the history of mankind begins, the era of planned economy. The vol-ume of social production and its structure, the distribution of labour and means of pro-duction among various tranches of the national economy, commodity prices and wage rates—all those no longer come into existence spontaneously. They are planned by soci-ety itself, which aims at achieving the greatest possible satisfaction of the needs of its members.

This does not mean, however, that objective laws cease to operate in the economic sphere.

On the contrary, if conscious management of economy is to be most effective, so-cialist society must be guided by the objective laws and must organise its economy in accordance with these laws.

The laws of the new economic formation cannot be mastered at once. Socialist soci-ety needs time and experience to comprehend the laws that determine its own develop-ment, and to learn to utilise them in its own interest.

The responsibility which under these circumstances rests on the heading bodies in society—both Party and state bodies—is obvious. It is their duty to become proficient in the art of directing the complicated economic organism and to plan all social production in a way which will ensure its uninterrupted growth and a steadily rising living standard for the whole people.

1. Social Property and Its Forms

Marx considered that the manner in which the main elements of the production process—labour-power and means of production—combine forms the basis of any so-cial system. In socialist society these elements are combined in such a way that those taking part in the production process collectively own the means of labour which they employ. This totally excludes the possibility of the means of production being converted by one part of society into a means of exploitation of the other part of society. The pro-duction relations between people are established as relations of comradely co-operation

and mutual assistance.

Social property in socialist society exists in two forms—public (state) property and co-operative and collective-farm property.

State Property in Socialist Society

As already mentioned, state socialist property comes into being as a result of the na-tionalisation of large-scale industry, transport, and banking, and the confiscation of the landlords’ estates. But only a small, often even an insignificant, part of the means of production subsequently at the disposal of socialist society consists of property national-ised when the working class comes to power. All the rest is created by the people in the course of building socialism. In the Soviet Union, for example, the fixed productive stock of industry and building increased nearly 33 times between 1913 and 1956. The property nationalised in 1917-18 thus constituted only a little more than 3 per cent of the publicly-owned means of production in 1956.

At the time when the socialist system in the U.S.S.R. was only coming into being, Lenin pointed out that the most difficult task was not the confiscation of the means of production held by the bourgeoisie. He said: “The organisation of accounting, the con-trol of large enterprises, the transformation of the whole of the state: economic mecha-nism into a single huge machine, into an economic organism that will work in such a way as to enable hundreds of millions of people to be guided by a single plan—such was the enormous organisational problem that rested on our shoulders.”341

When nationalisation takes place, industry, transport and banking are still separate, unco-ordinated enterprises. It requires time and much effort to unite them into a single whole and organise work in accordance with a common plan. Large-scale socialist pre-diction, operating on a country-wide scale and directed from one centre, possesses ad-vantages of a kind capitalism cannot even dream of.

In socialist society, public property is state property, sine at this stage of develop-ment the people, society as a whole, to whom the means of production belong, is repre-sented by the state. On behalf of society, the state directs the whole of social production as a single process. While the state remains the owner of the means of production, it places them at the disposal of various collective bodies for their use. In saying that under socialism people consciously direct their own social development, one has in mind that they do this through the Party and state, whose function it is to lead and organise social-ist economy.

Distortions of the Nature of Social Property by Reformists and Revisionists

Lately it has become the fashion among revisionists to represent the growth of state property and the state sector in socialist countries as a manifestation of bureaucratic cen-tralism. According to them state property is merely a source of bureaucratic distortions.

What do they suggest instead of state property? First and foremost they propose to replace it by various forms of group property— municipal, co-operative and communal.

At first glance it may seem to some people that this is also socialism. In fact how-

ever it is petty-bourgeois anarcho-syndicalism, the bankruptcy of which was already proved by the founders of Marxism-Leninism and has been confirmed by all historical experience.

State property as a necessary form of social ownership is not the product of some-one’s idle fancy, but is the direct result of the trend of development of modern produc-tive forces. The Communists have merely consciously expressed what has been inherent in these objective trends, namely that the productive forces in our day require that the national economy be transformed into a single integrated organism controlled from one centre. Only socialism, however, can satisfy this cardinal requirement of the modern productive forces.

The forerunners of the present-day anarcho-syndicalists derived their ideas from the past. They idealised labour carried on by isolated groups which, in its most primitive form, can be found in the self-contained natural economy of the peasant household and the petty commodity production of the artisan. Their theories were reactionary utopias, directed against scientific socialism. The revival of these ideas, even though in a reno-vated and modernised form, still the same reactionary utopia.

The working class cannot possibly agree with such ideas. Socialism is a product of large-scale production. Salvation from monopolist oppression cannot be found in the return to scattered small-scale production, but on the contrary in transition to centralised social production on an even larger scale, under the rule of the working people.

Under conditions of modern large-scale machine production, it is clearly impossible to build socialism on the basis of individual isolated co-operatives, communities or communes without undermining the very foundations of the production process which rests on the latest techniques. When group ownership is the rule, it is inevitable that lo-cal interests will prevail over public interests. The work of the separate enterprises is, in that case, carried on blindly, without taking into account the needs of the national econ-omy as a whole. Usually there is but one result—anarchy of production will be re-established, despite the fact that capitalist private ownership has been abolished. Once again, disproportions will continually arise, which have to be “balanced” on the specula-tive market, and capitalist elements will be inevitably revived in the troubled waters of speculation and the blind forces of the market.

Closely connected with efforts to belittle the role of state property are revisionist at-tacks against the economic and organisational functions of the socialist state, and in par-ticular state planning. The revisionists try to depict the socialist state as an unnecessary bureaucratic excrescence on the social body, which, they allege, impedes free economic development. But this distorted picture of the role of the socialist state merely proves their unwillingness to understand that the new function of the state is organically related to the predominance of social ownership and the specific way in which the economic laws in socialist society operate. When the state acts as representative of society as a whole, it must obviously be the state and its central agencies which, on behalf of society, determine the direction, the proportions and rates of development of the national econ-omy. All the objectively existing possibilities and advantages of socialism become real-

ity only through the economic and organisational activity of the state.

The revisionists’ approach to this problem reveals once again their petty-bourgeois nature. While socialism has at last enabled society consciously to control economic life and thereby achieve a rapid rise in the well-being of the people, the revisionists are at-tempting to return to the times of the “free play” of economic forces which, incidentally, vanished long ago even in capitalist countries.  

The revisionists are moving backwards, from Marx to Proudhon and the other pre-cursors of anarcho-syndicalism. Their face is turned to the past and not to the future. Hence it is not surprising that every advance in the development of large-scale socialist production refutes all their arguments.

The attempts to apply anarcho-syndicalist dogmas in economic practice result from a failure to grasp the advantages of the state form of social property and the inability to utilise these advantages. Public ownership as a form of social property in no way fetters the creative activity of individual producer collectives. On the contrary, the fruitful work of these collectives can be properly developed only within the framework of a well-organised national economy all the components of which are properly integrated. The state form of social property, and this is particularly important, causes people to be guided by public interests and not by local or group interests. Thereby it raises the con-sciousness of the producers to a realisation of national tasks, compelling them to be pri-marily concerned with public interests and not merely with those of their own collective.

For this reason Lenin said that state or public property was consistently socialist property, i.e., the most perfect form of socialist property, representing the highest level of socialised production.

Co-operative and Collective-Farm Property

Side by side with state property Marxist-Leninists recognise cooperative property as entirely legitimate in socialist society, and they are developing and improving it in every way. But they do not think that socialism comes into existence by merely setting-up co-operatives. The utopian socialists of the last century, who were hoping to reach social-ism merely by organising co-operatives, could hold this view. They did not understand that co-operatives as such do not determine the mode of production. On the contrary, the prevailing mode of production determines the nature of the co-operatives. Historical ex-perience shows that under capitalism co-operation of small producers, in most cases, assumes a bourgeois character. In socialist society, when the working class and peas-antry are in power and the state sector predominates in the country’s economy, the co-operatives become socialist in character.

In socialist society, co-operative property develops historically as a result of the par-ticular path along which the peasantry and other sections of the population, connected in the past with small commodity production, move towards new, collective forms of economy. As a result of the organisation of co-operatives, collective property arises, which is the co-operative and collective-farm form of socialist property. It is the group property of the agricultural artels (collective farms), producer co-operatives, and other

co-operative associations.

In the majority of socialist countries, agricultural producer cooperatives begin with simple pooling of the means of production by the peasants—draught animals, agricul-tural implements, and certain buildings used for productive purposes. But co-operative property is subsequently augmented by the joint labour of the peasants with technical assistance from state industry. The co-operatives become owners of modern technical equipment. By uniting \their forces they build electric power stations, irrigation canals, water reservoirs, roads, schools and hospitals, i.e., structures which are essentially of public importance. The commonly-owned (non-distributable) assets of the co-operatives, i.e., that part of co-operative property and income which is not distributed among the members of the artel, rapidly increase. Particularly rapid is the growth of that part of these assets which consists of modern agricultural machines, and complex technical equipment.

Compared with public or state property, co-operative property is a less mature form of socialist ownership. For in its case the means of production and the finished product belong to an individual collective body and not to the whole of society. There are how-ever no basic differences between co-operative and collective-farm property on the one hand and public or state property on the other. Both exclude the exploitation of man by man, and presuppose collective labour performed in the public interest. Co-operative as well as state property offers wide scope for a steady growth of socialist production and the raising of the living standard of the working people.

Furthermore, co-operative property is not something immutable or rigid. It passes through various stages of evolution, rising from lower to higher forms. The scale of co-operative production is constantly increasing as a result of the amalgamation of collec-tive farms into larger units, of their technical re-equipment, and the establishment of en-terprises jointly run by a number of co-operatives. In their level of socialisation, the character of labour, its form of organisation, and the implements used, the producer co-operatives are gradually approaching public or state enterprises.

Co-operative property can develop and grow stronger only because it exists side by side with public or state property. The socialist state is doing everything to provide the peasants and other co-operative strata of the population with still greater opportunities to expand and improve production and to raise their living standard.

2. The Main Purpose of Socialist Production

The conversion of the means of production into social property radically alters the driving forces and purpose of production.  

The purpose of capitalist production is the extraction of profit. The manufacture of a commodity for its own sake hardly interests the capitalist. The question whether the needs of all the members of society are satisfied interests him even less. How to turn the production of any given commodity into a source of profit—that is the capitalist’s real preoccupation.

Under socialism the means of production belong to the working people, to society,

and it is obvious that the working people cannot exploit themselves. Consequently sur-plus-value, the result of exploitation, does not exist either. Now, as Lenin pointed out, “the surplus-product does not go to the propertied class, but to all the working people and to them alone”.342

The whole social product produced every year in the socialist economy belongs to the owner of the means of production—to society, i e., to the working people, taken as a single national producer collective. Later we will show that this gross annual product can be used only for the satisfaction—direct or indirect —of the needs of the working people.

The labour of the working people, who have won supreme power and have organ-ised socialised production, can have no other purpose but the satisfaction of their social and personal needs. Now nobody stands between the producer and the result of his la-bour—neither capitalist nor landlord, neither merchant nor money-lender. The essence of the new mode of production and distribution is that everything produced in the social enterprises belongs to the producers themselves. Therefore it is understandable that the workers are striving constantly to increase the production of material wealth, since they themselves receive the fruit of their labour. Thus the purpose of socialist production fol-lows from its very nature.

One must also take into account that the needs of people, their living standard, are not rigidly fixed. They are bound to change, since with the development of social wealth and culture man’s material and spiritual demands also grow, and new needs arise. So-cialist production is fully able to supply people with everything they need. “The aim of socialism,” it is stated in the Programme of the C.P.S.U., “is to meet the growing mate-rial and cultural requirements of the people ever more fully by continuously developing and improving social production.”343

The fullest possible satisfaction of man’s needs—the purpose of socialist produc-tion—has an objectively necessary or law-governed character. In other words, the very laws of production based on social property objectively impose this purpose on socialist society. If production did not serve the satisfaction of the growing material and cultural requirements of the working people, it would lose the main stimulus of its development.

Hence the socialist state considers that its main purpose is the expansion of produc-tion in order to provide a continuously rising living standard for the population. This is merely the conscious expression of the objective economic law inherent in socialist pro-duction. In economic literature this basic economic law of socialism has been formulated thus: the continuous expansion and perfection of production on the basis of the most advanced techniques and collective labour for the purpose of the fullest satisfaction of the constantly growing requirements and the all-round development of all members of society.

The steady rise of the material well-being of the working people in the socialist countries vividly demonstrates the operation of this law. Between 1940 and 1960, the real earnings of manual and brain workers in the Soviet Union more than doubled and the real income of the peasants, calculated per working collective farmer, increased al-

most 2.5-fold during the same period.

For historical reasons the majority of the socialist countries that were the first to en-ter into competition with capitalism had not belonged to the economically advanced countries in the past To win this competition they have to achieve a high rate of growth of production, they have to make a great labour effort and overcome numerous difficul-ties connected with their former backwardness A high rate of growth cannot be achieved unless all branches of production are supplied with up-to-date technical equipment and that requires a high rate of accumulation, which means that a large part of the national income must be allocated to the expansion of production.

The consumption fund has also been limited up to now by fact that the socialist countries have to spend considerable amounts on defence. But for these reasons, the consumption fund would by now be much larger.

At the present time, however, the economic and defensive power of the socialist camp has grown to such an extent that the countries constituting it can assign ever in-creasing amounts to improve the living conditions of the population. A high rate of de-velopment of heavy industry and expenditure on defence are now quite compatible with a rapid progress of light industry and a steep advance in agriculture.

This has enabled the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries to undertake with full confidence the task of reaching—in a historically short period—a level of consump-tion surpassing in every respect that of the most highly developed capitalist countries.

3. Planned Development of the National Economy

With the establishment of social ownership, the laws of capitalist economy cease to operate. As already stated, the new form of property creates its own, new objective laws. The most important of these is the law of planned, proportional development of the na-tional economy.

The Law of Planned, Proportional Development of the National Economy

In socialist society the national economy is an integral organism directed by a single will. To ensure harmonious co-ordination and maximum integration of all parts of the country’s social production mechanism becomes under these conditions the chief eco-nomic requirement. This is expressed in the law of planed, proportional development of the national economy.

What is the essence of this law? First of all, it lies in the fact that the normal func-tioning of socialist economy requires definite relationships or proportions between its different branches. Furthermore, in a socialist society the establishment and maintenance of these proportions can and must take place in a planned way, that is as a result of the predetermined action of the socialist state and its planning bodies.

The objective character of the law of planned, proportional development lies in the fact that these proportions in the national economy cannot be arbitrarily established ac-cording to someone’s wish or fancy, but are governed by necessary requirements, the infringement of which leads inevitably to the disorganisation of the social production

process. This had already been pointed out by Marx who wrote that the ”necessity of the distribution of social labour in definite proportions cannot possibly be done away with by a particular form of social production but can only change the mode of its appear-ance.... No natural laws can be done away with”.344

This means that socialist society cannot disregard the real position of the national economy and the existing resources and change “by a wave of the wand” the relation-ships between production and consumption, and between accumulation and consump-tion.

Let us consider for a moment that society or its state organs guided by the best in-tentions wanted suddenly to increase sharply the volume of consumption omitting how-ever to arrange in good time for a corresponding increase in production. As a result the existing stocks of commodities would be rapidly exhausted. The same would happen if the relationship between consumption and accumulation of resources earmarked for the expansion of production were to be arbitrarily changed. A reduction in the share of ac-cumulation will inevitably slow down economic development and subsequently bring it to a halt, leading to a rapid consumption of basic capital and to the disorganisation and decline of the whole of economic life. An excessive increase in the rate of accumulation, however, may weaken the material incentive of those engaged in production and ulti-mately affect the rate of growth of labour productivity. Nor can one disturb with impu-nity the proportions between wage rates and the level of labour productivity, between the total monetary income of the population and the volume of trade, etc.

In addition to those already enumerated, many other branches of production and dis-tribution exist which cannot function normally unless certain proportions are observed. Thus a balance must be maintained between the basic branches of the national economy, such as industry, agriculture and transport. Incalculable difficulties threaten if any of them falls behind.

Definite relationships are required in the development of the heavy and light, the ex-tractive and manufacturing industries. A faster rate of development of heavy industry ensures the advance of all branches of the economy. Similarly the raw-material and power industries must expand faster than the manufacturing Industries, and create the necessary reserves for their advance. Proper proportions have to be maintained also with regard to the distribution of industry among separate economic districts, and specialisa-tion and co-operation of production. The economy will not work smoothly either unless a correct ratio is established between the number of skilled personnel required in the national economy and the country’s training facilities.

Hence it is an important task of socialist society to maintain the wide range of pro-portions in the national economy.

Someone may say that a certain proportionality in the development of production is required in any economic system, including capitalism. That is in fact so. But under capitalism the necessary economic relationships are established spontaneously by way of abnormal fluctuations and disproportions, crises and recessions. The position becomes still more complicated because monopolies impede the spontaneous flow of capital from

one branch to another. Capitalist economy staggers blindly, stumbling, and falling, in-curring enormous expenses while it gropes its way towards the proportionality de-manded by objective economic laws.

Matters are entirely different in a socialist society, where the law of planned, propor-tional development has come into effect, where in Engels’ words, “socialised production upon a predetermined plan becomes henceforth possible”.345 For the first time in history people possess everything required to achieve the maximum co-ordination of the social production process and to control it in a rational way.: The fact that all the means of production are social property and production is planned and directed from a single cen-tre, has created unprecedented opportunities for the maximum economy in the expendi-ture of material and labour and for a high productivity of social labour.

Socialist society gains enormous advantages from mastering the economic law of planned, proportional development. This applies to the national economy as a whole as well as to each of its parts, to any industrial enterprise, mine or collective farm. The smooth functioning of each link, each part of the apparatus of production is a condition for the smooth working of the whole economic machinery of socialism. That is why in socialist economy each worker plays such an important part, whatever job he is doing.

This is the more important because the law of planned development, as already stated, does not operate spontaneously or automatically. In planned, socialist economy there is not and cannot be spontaneous distribution of labour-power and capital among the branches of the economy. All this is effected deliberately by the socialist state and in accordance with the basic purpose of socialist production. But this places a special re-sponsibility on the state organs in charge of planning and directing the development of the national economy.

Their task is the more complicated because in a socialist society, too, there are no eternal proportions. There can never be any permanently fixed proportions between the branches of the national economy. Stability in this sphere would not be a sign of health but an alarm signal, for it would mean that the volume of social production remains con-stant, that production is moving within the same circle and is not expanding at all. But technology does not stand still, revolutions in the organisation of production are taking place, society’s needs are changing. All this drives the national economy forward alter-ing the relationships between its branches. New and more promising branches make their appearance and some of the older ones are pushed into the background.

In the same way there cannot be any permanently fixed unchangeable relationship between production and consumption or consumption and accumulation. On the basis of the growth of labour productivity consumption increases. With the emergence of new tasks set by socialist construction or changes in the international situation, the previous rate of accumulation may prove to be too small or, on the contrary, too large.

It is the task of the socialist system of planning to take into account in good time the changes which are taking place, to introduce the necessary corrections into the economic plans, and to forestall the appearance of disproportions in the economy, or at any rate to eliminate them speedily should they still occur.

Tasks and Methods of Planning

Planning in the socialist state is a process in which elements of scientific research and economic organisation are closely interwoven. Correct planning demands a thor-ough knowledge of the economy of the objective laws governing its development, and the ability to look ahead. Nor is an effective guidance of the economy possible without a well-established system of economic accounting and statistics. Lenin wrote: “Account-ing and control—that is the main thing required for ‘arranging’ the smooth working, the correct functioning of the first phase of communist society.”346

The demands of the law of planned development have found their expression in the economic plans drawn up by the state planning bodies in accordance with directives is-sued by the Communist Party and the Government. Planning bodies exist in the centre as well as the administrative and economic districts and directly at the enterprises. Proceed-ing from the tasks confronting the society and fully taking stock of existing resources and possibilities, the planning bodies work out current and long-term plans for 5, 7 or more years. After these plans have been widely discussed by the population and con-firmed by the supreme organ of the socialist state, they come law.

The participation of the workers themselves and the fact that the plans are compiled on the basis of the general experience accumulated in the course of productive work guarantee that the national economy is guided along correct lines. The economic activity of the socialist state rests on Lenin’s principles of democratic centralism. This means that planning proceeds not only from the top downwards but also from the bottom up-wards. Centralised state planning is combined with socialist democracy, with the inde-pendence and initiative of the enterprises in economic operations, with the creative ac-tivity of the working masses. So-called “counter-plans”—i.e., plans amplified by pro-posals introduced by the workers, engineers and technicians of the enterprises and sup-plemented in accordance with their wishes—were widely current in the Soviet Union as far back as first five-year-plan periods. After the reorganisation of management in indus-try and agriculture carried through in 1957, local experiences initiative and suggestions are more than ever taken into consideration in planning practice.

It would, however, be wrong to assume that the great advantages inherent in social-ist, planned economy automatically ensure its success. The law of planned development of the national economy must not be confused with the actual planning itself. Though the economic law unfailingly operates—in the sense that its effect will be felt inevita-bly—planning may be correct or incorrect, precise or very approximate. Hence the method and system of planning must be continuously improved, the scientific, technical and economic basis of the plans strengthened, and the plans constantly checked and cor-rected in the light of experience, of the most advanced practice. Only in that case will planning satisfy the actual requirements of a planned economic development.

The historic success of the Soviet economic plans and the results achieved by the People’s Democracies in conducting their planned economy, prove that socialist society is mastering the law of planned, proportional development to an ever increasing extent and following it more closely in its day-to-day practice.

It is self-evident that the objective advantages which socialism obtains on the basis of the law of planned development only become reality through the practical activity of the working people in socialist society. To compile a good plan for economic develop-ment not enough, it will remain a scrap of paper unless implemented by selfless labour. It is not sufficient to know that socialism is the most economical system; without a daily struggle for economy the advantages of socialism will not be fully utilised, they can even be completely wasted in case of gross negligence. Only the creative work of all members of society can transform the enormous potentialities of socialism into reality. The economic and organisational activity of the socialist state and its organs plays a de-cisive part in this respect. Not only are the production targets for the collectives of work-ing people set by the state, it also organises their work to ensure that they are reached.

4. Commodity Production and the Law of Value in Socialist Society

There is commodity production at the stage of development of the productive forces and social property characteristic of socialism. This means that the main economic opera-tions, such as planned distribution of labour among different branches of the national economy and distribution of the means of production and consumer goods, cannot take place without utilising commodity-money relations or forms of value. This in no way con-tradicts the principles of socialism, it does not hinder but, on the contrary, helps to bring out the great advantages and potentialities inherent in the socialist system of economy.

Special Features of Socialist Commodity Production

It is well known that commodity production is dependent on the fact that all the di-verse forms of concrete labour are reduced to their equivalent in abstract labour, which creates the value of the commodity. This great advantage of commodity production re-tains its importance so long as there is a distinction between the labour of the worker and of the collective farmer, between skilled and unskilled labour, between mental and physical labour, and as long as society cannot simply measure the labour expended in the manufacture of a given commodity.

Furthermore, value relations, i.e., relations of buying and selling, give those engaged in production a pecuniary incentive to economise labour and raw materials, to reduce costs, to introduce new techniques and advanced methods of production. This important trait of commodity production fully corresponds to the interests of socialist society and is widely utilised by it. When socialist society is fixing the volume of output of any given product it matters a great deal what the cost of production will be, in other words, how much labour will be expended per unit of output. Society is vitally interested in re-ducing the cost of production as much as possible, since an economy of labour achieved in one place will permit an expansion of production somewhere else.

However, this does not imply that socialist commodity production is just the same as simple or capitalist commodity production discussed in Chapter 8. On the contrary, it is essentially different and should on no account be identified with them. Under socialism, commodity-money relations have a new content.

Socialist commodity production is a commodity production without private owner-ship, without capitalists and without small commodity producers. It is carried on by state enterprises, agricultural co-operatives, artisans’ and handicraftsmen’s co-operatives, etc., i. e. associated socialist commodity producers. Exchange is not the only form of social connection between them as it is under capitalism Before any exchange takes place the socialist commodity producers are linked into a single whole through collective property and joint participation in planning and guiding the national economy. The means of pro-duction cannot be turned into a means of exploitation since they are collective property. The land, this important means of production, cannot be sold or bought at all, hence it is no longer a commodity. Nor can labour-power become a commodity in socialist econ-omy. The working people, who collectively own the means of production, obviously cannot sell their labour-power to themselves.

However, all the rest—means of production and consumer goods manufactured in state enterprises, agricultural produce and raw materials, whether supplied by the co-operative sector to the state or sold by the co-operatives and their members on the col-lective-farm market—consists of commodities, which have value, i.e., the socially nec-essary labour that has been embodied in them. The price of a commodity expresses its value in monetary form.

State enterprises and agricultural co-operatives sell their products to each other and do not simply transfer them as, for instance, different departments of the same factory do. This is an important fact, indicating that socialist society retains the necessity of ex-change, i.e., of those economic relations by which each enterprise, in order to receive the necessary supplies, raw materials and power from the national economy, has to give in exchange an equivalent quantity of its output. This ensures the normal course of so-cial production as a whole and the maintenance of the required proportions within it.

Exchange, by which the costs of production are replaced, is of particular importance in the mutual economic relations of the state and co-operative sectors, for in this case the products belong to different owners—the state and the co-operatives. The commodities manufactured by industry belong to the state and those produced by collective farms are collective-farm or co-operative property. Under these conditions the exchange by means of purchase and sale provides the necessary economic link between industry and agriculture.

One of the chief measures, introduced in the Soviet Union during the last few years, in order to achieve a steep rise in agriculture, was the change-over from state procure-ments of collective-farm produce to purchases at prices permitting collective farms to replace their outlay incurred in the production of agricultural produce as fully as possi-ble and also to build up the necessary reserves.

Distribution of consumer goods in socialist society is also based on commodity-money relations. Everyone receives from society the means of subsistence he needs only in exchange for his labour. Payment for work takes the form of wages, which can be used to obtain consumer goods. Money, in turn, gives rise to trade as a means of distrib-uting consumer goods under socialism. In socialist society, trade remains the only possi-

ble mechanism for the distribution of consumer goods and serves as a link between pro-duction and consumption. It helps to reveal the changing needs of society and to im-prove the planning of production of the commodities required for their satisfaction.

The Law of Value in Socialist Society

Since there is commodity production in socialist economy, the law of value also continues to operate. However, its role differs radically from that in capitalist economy. Under capitalism the law of value serves as a spontaneous regulator of the distribution of labour and means of production. Under socialism, where spontaneous market exchange and competition do not exist, this function of the law of value disappears, since the dis-tribution of labour and the means of production takes place in accordance with the law of planned, proportional development of the national economy. On the other hand its function as a measure of labour expenditure and as a stimulus to economise social labour increases tremendously.

How does the action of the law of value manifest itself in practice in socialist econ-omy? It compels society to produce commodities and exchange them on the basis of the socially necessary expenditure of labour. Not the market but production itself becomes the chief sphere of operation of the law of value. Engels pointed out that once private property is superseded, “there can no longer be any question of exchange as it exists at present. The practical application of the concept of value will then be increasingly con-fined to the decision about production, and that is its proper sphere”.347 Confirming this conception Marx wrote: “Even when exchange-value has disappeared, labour-time will always remain the creative essence of wealth and the standard of the cost required to produce it.”348

In the first place the effect of the law of value is taken into account by the state in the planned fixing of prices. Under capitalist conditions prices are formed on the market, but in socialist economy planned prices obtain. These cannot be derived from the mar-ket, but fixed in accordance with the conditions of labour prevailing in production.

In fixing commodity prices, the state cannot proceed from the quantity of labour ac-tually expended in a particular enterprise. It is guided by the socially necessary labour expenditure, i.e., the expenditure required at a given stage of development of the produc-tive forces, with the existing technical level and the existing average skill and intensity of labour. In other words, commodity prices are fixed by the state on the basis of their value.

This method of fixing prices, which links them to value, is a reliable basis for their economic validity. And this has a most important bearing on the development of the na-tional economy. Commodity prices by and large must reflect the real relationships of labour outlays existing between the various branches of social production. For example, if more labour is expended in the production of one commodity than in the production of another, it is obvious that the prices of these commodities must reflect the difference in labour outlay. Economically sound prices, in their turn, ensure correct proportions when the products of one branch of industry are exchanged for the products from another

branch, and this helps to maintain the system of proportions established by society in the national economy.

But prices in socialist economy do not only reflect the actual value relations existing between different sections of the national economy, but also serve the state as a most important instrument for exerting a direct influence on the course of social production. Hence planning of prices has always been one of the most important factors in the whole economic policy of the socialist state—a factor not only of economic importance but also of paramount political importance. This in particular accounts for the fact that in socialist economy prices of commodities are not always or in every case identical with their value.

With the help of an appropriate price policy the state can utilise part of the income created by some branches to bring about a rapid advance in other branches that are of great importance to the national economy. Such a price policy is of special value for the development of new branches and the introduction of new technology. Before they are put into mass or serial production, the cost per unit is as a rule relatively high for articles formerly not manufactured. To stimulate their wide introduction it is necessary in the beginning to fix a price below their value. This makes it possible to organise large-scale production of the new commodity and to reduce its value to such an extent that it corre-sponds to the fixed price, and subsequently to lower the price again.

Its effect on the planned fixing of prices is therefore the first function of the law of value in socialist economy. Another function of the law of value is to help to reduce the material costs of production, to introduce advanced technology, and to raise labour pro-ductivity.

By indicating the price, the government as it were tells the enterprise: this is the up-per limit of labour and materials that society can afford to expend per unit of the article in question and which ought not to be exceeded by the enterprise. Enterprises whose outlay is below that socially necessary are therefore in a more profitable position, while enterprises with a high outlay find themselves in an economically unfavourable position. This prompts the latter to economise labour, raw materials and power, to improve their technology and introduce new equipment.

This shows the stimulating role of the law of value in socialist economy. Material incentives are a concrete expression of the law’s stimulating action. Socialist society strives to ensure that economic requirements and the workers’ material interests them-selves advance production.

Hence the economic activity of socialist (industrial and agricultural) enterprises rests on cost accounting.

Unlike enterprises subsidised by the state budget, those run on cost accounting lines conduct independently their economic operations. They have the necessary material and financial resources at their disposal and in applying them they can use their own initia-tive to a large extent. Cost accounting means that the expenditure incurred by each en-terprise, by each economic organisation, has to be replaced by its own income and that, moreover, the enterprise should show a profit. Part of the profit is allocated to the enter-

prise’s fund and is used to satisfy the needs of its employees. Cost accounting is an in-ducement to strive for profitability, and this is only possible if the outlay of labour, ma-terial, and money is kept as low as possible.

The operation of the law of value makes it possible to compare and correctly ap-praise the results of the economic activity of separate enterprises, and it supplies an eco-nomic incentive both to the enterprise as a whole and its workers to achieve high results.

The Law of Value and Planning

But how is socialist planning compatible with the law of value since the former de-pends on another law, the law of planned proportional development?

Experience shows that it is perfectly possible for the two laws to operate together, because they do not contradict but supplement each other.

Socialist society itself determines the volume and the structure of output and distrib-utes the means of production, labour resources, and consumer goods among the various branches and economic areas. But it does this by using commodity-money relations or forms of value. The process of realisation of commodities serves as a necessary addi-tional check showing whether the production plans correspond to social needs. This process reveals, after the event, whether in a particular case the output of a commodity was correctly adjusted to the demand. The movement of commodity stocks in the trade network, for example, is an important index for possible adjustments in the production programme.

In other words, the law of value helps to adjust and make more accurate the distribu-tion of labour and means of production between the branches, which takes place on the basis of the law of planned proportional development of the national economy.

The closer the prices of commodities approach their value, the more accurately is it possible to calculate and plan costs, profitability, the effectiveness of labour outlay and capital investments, and the application of new technique and new methods in the or-ganisation of production.

In planning commodity prices, the socialist state has to take into account that, as a result of technical progress, the outlay of socially necessary labour, on which prices are based, is constantly changing. Deprived of this objective basis, the price would become a conventional quantity and cease to be an instrument of socialist planning. The Pro-gramme of the C.P.S.U. points out that prices must increasingly reflect the socially nec-essary outlays of labour, and ensure return of production and circulation costs and a cer-tain profit for each normally operating enterprise.

Precise determination of value, that is of socially necessary labour outlay, becomes a matter of first-rate importance in socialist society. Only thus is it possible to eliminate unnecessary waste of labour and to run the economy in the most rational and economical way. Marx wrote that after capitalist production has been abolished, “the determination of value continues to prevail in the sense that the regulation of labour-time and the dis-tribution of social labour among the various production groups, ultimately the book-keeping encompassing all this, become more essential than ever”.349

To use the law of value correctly means to put into practice cost accounting and con-trol by the ruble, and to plan prices, costs, profitability, commodity circulation, finances and credit in such a way as to ensure that the national economic plans are fulfilled and over-fulfilled and the highest labour productivity and the greatest economy of society’s resources attained.

5. Labour Under Socialism

Socialist society translates into reality the right of all citizens to work. This right is guaranteed by the whole organisation of the national economy, the elimination of crises and the abolition of unemployment.

The division of society into a working majority and an idle minority, living by the exploitation of others, is impossible in a socialist society, for labour has become the only source of income.

New Character of Social Labour

When all basic means of production are concentrated in the hands of the socialist state and the producer co-operatives, the labour of each individual loses its private char-acter and acquires a direct social character. This means that everyone’s labour helps to fulfil a definite part of the national-economic plan.

Under capitalism, each commodity producer works at his own risk. Commodity pro-ducers are linked to one another through the market. There and only there are the actual requirements of society regarding the outlay of a particular kind of labour ultimately ascertained. Crises provide especially striking evidence of the wasteful use of labour resources in capitalist society, where the hard toil of millions alternates with the suffer-ing caused by unemployment.

The direct social character of labour in socialist society, where the possibilities and needs of society are taken into account in advance, helps the workers to develop new interests. Moral inducements to work arise in addition to material incentives. Owing to this labour is becoming ever more meaningful, gradually turning from a mere means of existence into a form of social activity. The activity of the working people in production is growing, their participation in social life increasing. The ranks of inventors, rational-isers and other industrial innovators are swelling. In place of the old labour discipline built on coercion, a new, conscious discipline becomes established, which is based on the fact that every worker understands his duty towards society and has a personal inter-est in his labour.

The new attitude towards work and the workers’ concern for the development of so-cial production find their expression in socialist emulation. In the course of emulation practical solutions are found to remove deficiencies in the organisation of production, and hitherto unknown reserves are discovered and utilised. Emulation is a specially ef-fective form of self-criticism, a method for overcoming contradictions characteristic of socialism. The spirit of rivalry is alien to emulation, which presupposes comradely assis-tance by the foremost to the laggards, so as to achieve an advance of all.

Communist subbotniks*came into being in Soviet Russia already during the first formative years of the new order. Lenin perspicaciously discerned in them the first signs of a new attitude towards work. In 1919, he wrote: “It is the beginning of a revolution that is more difficult, more material, more radical and more decisive than the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, for it is a victory over our own conservatism, indiscipline, petty-bourgeois egoism, a victory over the habits that accursed capitalism left as a heritage to the worker and peasant. Only when victory is consolidated will the new social disci-pline, socialist discipline, be created; then and only then will a reversion to capitalism become impossible, will communism become really invincible."350

• Communist subbotniks— voluntary, unpaid work done on Sundays or after working hours for the benefit of the Soviet Republic. The first subbotnik was organised on the initiative of Commu-nist workers on the Moscow-Kazan Railway on a Saturday in April 1919 (subbota is the Russian for Saturday).—Ed.

Steady Growth of Labour Productivity Is an Economic Law of Socialism

Every new social-economic formation conquers because it brings with it a higher productivity of labour. The ability to ensure a higher labour productivity is the decisive condition for the final victory of communism.

Marx showed that the productivity of labour is determined “by the average amount of skill of the workmen, the state of science, and the degree of its practical application, the social organisation of production, the extent and capabilities of the means of produc-tion, and by physical conditions”.351

What are the advantages of socialism from the point of view of the factors men-tioned by Marx?

In socialist society the average amount of skill possessed by the worker and the level of his knowledge of the job are growing considerably faster than under capitalism. The fact that education is available to all working people, that all obstacles have been re-moved from the path leading to the highest educational levels, enables every worker to become in time a qualified engineer or technician. Even in the most highly developed capitalist countries, the mass of the workers do not have such opportunities.

The importance of science grows tremendously in socialist society, its unlimited possibilities are for the first time utilised in the interests of the whole of society and are placed at the service of progress. Hence the extensive application of scientific achieve-ments in production.

Of particular importance are the potentialities of socialism regard to “the social or-ganisation of production”—i.e., division and co-operation of labour—mentioned by Marx. Under capitalism, spontaneous market relations regulate the division of labour on a national scale. Crises, unemployment, impoverishment, and the physical and moral degradation of whole sections of the working people are the costs of this adjustment. As already stated, socialism makes it possible to carry through in a planned way both the organisation of labour in individual enterprises and the co-operation of labour in society

as a whole.

Socialist co-operation of labour is the comradely collaboration of workers free from exploitation, based on the social ownership of the means of production and the most ad-vanced technology. Socialist co-operation enables society to combine the branches of social production in the most rational way. Improved socialist co-operation of labour in all its parts—beginning with the team, shop or individual enterprise and ending with the entire economy of a country and the whole system of socialist states—is an inexhausti-ble source for the steady growth of labour productivity.

The extent and capabilities of the means of production is another important lever for raising the productivity of labour. The volume of output can be enlarged either by lengthening the working day and increasing labour intensity or by improving the tech-nology and organisation of production. Socialism chooses the latter way. The chief method by which socialist society attains a higher productivity of labour is by cease-lessly supplying industry with new technical equipment, and by continuously improving technological processes while simultaneously reducing the working day.

Capitalism makes use of technical progress and improved organisation of production to intensify exploitation and to increase absolute and relative surplus-value. The em-ployer introduces machinery not because it saves labour, but only if it costs him less than the wages of the workers it displaces. The motto of capitalism is “to extract as much as possible from the worker”. The slogan of socialism is “to extract as much as possible from machinery”.

Of course under socialism too a definite standard of labour intensity, dictated by the rhythm of the production process, must be maintained. But socialism excludes an inten-sification of labour which drains the worker of his strength and destroys his health.

Finally, in socialist economy natural resources can be utilised to raise labour produc-tivity much more effectively than under capitalism. In capitalist society where the land and its mineral wealth are in the hands of private owners the distribution of the produc-tive forces has been brought about in a spontaneous way, without, in most cases, taking into consideration the most favourable combination of physical conditions for a given industry. Socialism is incomparably better equipped for the task of obtaining from na-ture as much as possible of the wealth it is capable of giving man.

Thus socialist society has every opportunity to put into operation all the factors af-fecting the productivity of labour and to ensure its steady growth.

As Marx has shown, the struggle for a high productivity of labour can in the last analysis be reduced to the saving of labour-time— both labour-time directly expended and that embodied in the material elements of production.352 Hence, economy of labour in all its forms, economy of living and of congealed labour, is a principle of socialism. The careful utilisation of equipment, machinery, fuel, raw and other materials is a neces-sary element of a high labour productivity. This is a reliable course towards increasing material wealth and towards a shorter working day.

The Principle of Distribution According to Work

In socialist society, the bulk of material and cultural values are distributed in accor-dance with the quantity and quality of labour expended by each worker in social produc-tion. Those who work more and better receive a larger and better reward for their work from socialist society.

Distribution according to work fulfils a dual function; it is a material stimulus for the workers, causing them to raise the productivity of their labour, and thus assists the growth of production; on the other hand, it promotes the well-being of the working peo-ple, enabling everyone by honest work to achieve a constant increase in the size of his earnings. The principle of payment in accordance with the quantity and quality of work, properly applied, is a powerful means for raising labour productivity and strengthening socialist labour discipline. The combination of material incentives and moral motives to work is a most important condition of correct economic leadership. In order that distri-bution according to work should play its part properly there must be constant improve-ment of systems of payment for labour and bonus awards, including collective forms of material stimulus, making each worker more interested in a high level of performance by the enterprise as a whole.

The socialist principle “from each according to his abilities, .to each according to his work” stimulates the worker to improve his skill. Equalisation of wages runs counter to the interests of socialist society because it violates the principle of payment for work in accordance with skill and so weakens the worker’s incentive to improve his skill.

Under capitalism, the level of real wages is limited by the law governing the price of labour-power and the capitalists’ efforts to extract the highest profit. In socialist coun-tries there are no limits to the growth of wages other than the level of productivity of social labour and the level of development of society’s productive forces.

Thus rising labour productivity is the chief factor determining the growth of real wages. And in its turn the rise in wages is a stimulus to increase labour productivity thereby bringing about a reduction in the cost of all the wealth produced.

However, the rate of growth of wages should not exceed that of labour productivity. On the contrary the increase in labour productivity must run ahead of the growth of wages. If payment for labour grows faster, this will limit the expansion of production and slow down the development of the economy, which will ultimately lead to wage reductions.

Distribution according to work done is the chief but not the sole method of distribut-ing material and cultural values among the members of socialist society. It is combined with free satisfaction of part of people’s requirements from public funds devoted to so-cial and cultural needs. This method of distribution, which is a specific feature of social-ist society, substantially supplements the individual wage of the worker by hand or brain. The cost of medical services, education, pensions, social insurance, etc., is met from public funds. These free services represent a considerable addition to wages.

6. Socialist Extended Reproduction

In elaborating the theory of reproduction of social capital (see Chapter 8, Section 7), Marx established the laws governing this process not only in capitalist but also in social-ist and communist society. His calculations showed the general conditions required for simple and extended reproduction.

The most important of these conditions is the maintenance of a certain proportional-ity between Departments I and II of social production, i.e., between the production of means of production (machinery, fuel, raw materials) and the production of articles of consumption (foodstuffs, clothing, footwear, etc.). In addition, definite proportions must be maintained between the various branches within each department, between consump-tion and accumulation in each department and between accumulation in Departments I and II.

Marx pointed out that his calculations were abstractions disregarding the concrete conditions of capitalist reality. They are, so to speak, models with the help of which one can study the circumstances obtaining when the reproduction process takes place con-tinuously and without interruptions. In actual fact, the anarchy of production prevailing in capitalist economy, as we have already said, makes it impossible to maintain correct proportions fixed in advance. The process of social reproduction there is periodically interrupted by economic crises.

The Essence of Socialist Reproduction

Socialist society for the first time in history enables extended reproduction to be car-ried on in accordance with the required proportions pointed out by Marx. Of course this does not exclude the possibility that some disproportions in the sphere of production may arise but the inevitability of their regular occurrence has now been eliminated. The superiority of socialist economy lies not only in the absence of crises and the steady growth of production; the scale and rate of its extended reproduction also prove its supe-riority to capitalism. The effect of these advantages will be the greater, the closer social-ist society adheres to the conditions required for extended reproduction. What are these conditions?

In order to constantly increase the output of the national economy, a relationship be-tween Department I and Department II must be maintained which provides for a higher rate of advance for Department I. Marx showed that extended reproduction is possible only if the growth of the means of production in Department I exceeds their depreciation and using up in both departments. The greater the difference the higher the possible rate of expansion of production. The priority development of production of the means of pro-duction ensures an increasing supply of technical equipment for all branches of the na-tional economy, and, consequently, a rise in labour productivity.

Marx’s law of extended reproduction refers to the general long-term tendency of economic development. In applying it the conditions of the particular socialist country must, of course, be taken into account. It is obvious that the actual ratio of the rates of development in Departments I and II cannot be the same in all countries and at all stages

when a world socialist system exists. It depends on the economic conditions of the coun-try, its position in the world socialist system, the character of its natural wealth, the pro-duction experience of its population, and so on. But these particular features do not alter the general rule governing socialist reproduction—the priority growth of production of the means of production.

A further condition for extended reproduction is the constant introduction of new and timely replacement of old technical equipment. It is not necessary to wait till the existing equipment is worn out in order to introduce new machinery in good time. Equipment, which is physically still in working order, is replaced if it has become obso-lete because new improved designs have appeared. Such obsolescence is called the moral depreciation of machinery.

Under capitalist conditions morally obsolete machinery is ousted as a result of the competitive struggle. A firm which introduces new machinery while the majority of en-terprises still use old equipment will receive extra surplus-value. Striving to retain this position as long as possible, the firm will usually keep its technical innovations secret. But as a rule the secret will sooner or later be discovered by competitors, who will also introduce the new plant in place of the old.

Every opportunity exists in socialist society to utilise on a wide scale any new ma-chine immediately it has proved satisfactory. The only obstacles that might be encoun-tered are the routinism and conservatism of the administration of an enterprise, who wish to avoid the trouble that is inevitably connected with the introduction of new equipment. But socialist society has sufficient strength to cope with harmful conserva-tive tendencies.

Extended socialist reproduction demands not only a planned increase in the means of production and articles of consumption but also in the number of skilled workers em-ployed in production. Socialist society does not have to cope with the problem of unem-ployment, which gives such a headache to bourgeois economists and politicians. Thanks to extended reproduction it can fully utilise its labour resources and distribute them in a planned way among the various branches of national economy and culture.

Finally one of the greatest advantages of socialism is the fact that it does not have a sales problem, which fetters capitalist economy. The continuous planned expansion of all branches of production ensures a ready market to each of them. The unhampered technical advance, the systematic raising of the income of the working people, and the absence of unemployment make the market of each socialist country, and of the entire socialist system taken as a whole, practically unlimited.

How the Gross Social Product Is Used

The sum total of material values at the disposal of socialist society constitutes its na-tional wealth. The material values created in all branches of production in the course of a year form the gross social product.

How is it distributed in socialist society?

Part of it goes to replace the means of production used up during the year. The re-

maining part constitutes the national income. In other words, the national income is the total value newly created in the course of the year, i.e., the total of the personal income of the working people employed in material production, and the net income of society (added-product) created by them, which is used for the further development of the na-tional economy and for the satisfaction of the needs of society as a whole (public health services, education, maintenance, defence, etc.).

The main index of the rate of extended reproduction is the growth of the national in-come. The average annual rate of growth of the national income in the U.S.S.R., calcu-lated for the full period of the existence of the world’s first socialist state, has been ap-proximately three to five times higher than that of the most highly developed capitalist countries.

The national income of socialist society is divided into the consumption fund and accumulation fund. In the U.S.S.R., up to 75 per cent of the national income is allocated to the consumption fund. Absence of parasitic consumption by exploiting classes and their attending menials and the elimination of losses connected with crises and the anar-chy of production have enabled socialist society considerably to increase also the share assigned to accumulation. In the U.S.A., for example, accumulation has on the average not exceeded 12 per cent during the most favourable years of the post-war period, while in the U.S.S.R., the accumulation fund has for many years amounted to approximately 25 per cent of the national income.

Even disregarding all the other advantages of planned economy this alone is suffi-cient to explain why in the socialist countries the rate of growth of output and labour productivity is several times higher than the rate of development of capitalist economy. For it is the rapidly growing accumulation fund which enables the socialist state to cre-ate new and expand old factories, power stations and mines; to set up state farms; to im-prove the transport network; to build houses, schools, hospitals, children’s institutions, and so on. Large-scale capital construction is also carried out by co-operatives and col-lective farms and financed from their accumulation funds. Part of the capital investments is earmarked to replace worn-out fixed stock (amortisation of buildings, machinery, equipment, etc.) and another part to expand it.

The working people, who have taken over the means of production and the man-agement of the economy, prove to be much more judicious, zealous and careful manag-ers than the capitalists. The old bourgeois slander levelled against the working class—which alleged that the workers, if they became the masters, would not develop and ex-pand production, but merely consume everything they inherited from the capitalists—has burst like a soap-bubble. The triumph and progress of the socialist system have con-firmed the Marxist tenet that the liberation of the means of production from the fetters of private ownership results in the uninterrupted development of the productive forces at an ever increasing rate, and a sharp rise of production. Accumulation—one of the most im-portant progressive functions of society—is accomplished by the working people them-selves incomparably better than by the exploiters.

In capitalist economy an antagonistic contradiction exists between production and

consumption. The consumption of the mass of the population is kept within the narrow bounds set by the low income of the working class and peasantry. No such contradiction exists in socialist society. By ensuring the priority development of industries manufac-turing the means of production, extended reproduction creates the conditions for a steady rise in the production of consumer goods, thereby providing for the ever fuller satisfaction of the growing material and cultural needs of the population.

Thus, it is a notable feature of extended reproduction under socialism that it leads to an increase both in the wealth owned by society itself and in the welfare of all its mem-bers. Moreover, thanks to the high rate of accumulation and therefore to the greater scale of the national economy, industrial and agricultural output can and must exceed the pur-chasing power of the population. This was overlooked by Stalin, who put forward the erroneous thesis that in the U.S.S.R. the increase of consumption (purchasing power) by the masses continuously outstrips the growth of production, and this was alleged to be a law of socialist reproduction and almost an advantage socialism over capitalism. But, as N. S. Khrushchov says, that in fact meant justifying the shortage of articles of prime ne-cessity and perpetuating of the rationing system and its psychology.353

Bourgeois economists and reformists have spread a story that in the socialist coun-tries all efforts are devoted to the development of the heavy and war industries and not to the production of consumer goods. However, this slander against socialism is refuted by the fact that in the socialist countries the output of mass consumer goods per head of the population has been rapidly growing. Historical experience has proved that the faster growth of production of the means of production in socialist countries is not an end in itself but a necessary means for achieving the main purpose of socialist production, namely to raise the living standard of the population. Indeed, only by improving the technical equipment of the branches of economy serving the needs of the population—agriculture, the food and light industries, etc.—can their output be raised. And there is only one way of doing this—-priority development of production of the means of pro-duction.

Extended reproduction must not be understood in the narrow sense of the word, dis-regarding the social changes engendered by it. Marx showed that in capitalist society, simultaneously with the material reproduction, the development of the contradictions inherent in capitalism also proceeds on an ever increasing scale. Extended socialist re-production also causes changes in the social structure of society. This does not however weaken the social order, as under capitalism, but on the contrary strengthens it. The growing importance of public property in the socialist economy as a whole and the in-creasing share of the non-distributable funds in the economy of the producer co-operatives are signs of an extended reproduction of socialist relations of production that is hastening the transition to the second, higher phase of communism. Hence extended socialist reproduction is the path towards communist society.

CHAPTER 24

SOCIAL RELATIONS AND CULTURE IN SOCIALIST SOCIETY

Socialisation of the means of production leads to a radical reconstruction of all so-cial relations, of the political superstructure, ideology, culture, way of life, morals and customs.

Just as in the past an exploiting society with its own special institutions—classes, state and code of laws—and its own customs and ethics, grew up on the basis of private ownership of the means of production, so does the new, socialist social and political system grow up on the basis of public ownership, on the basis of the socialist mode of production.

A study of the distinctive features of the socialist system has to depend in the main on the experience of the Soviet Union, at present the only country where socialism has long been established and where the gradual transition to communism is now taking place. The experience of the People’s Democracies, which are in different, stages of so-cialist construction, is also of great value.

1. Socialist Democracy

Thorough-going democracy is the cardinal political characteristic of socialist soci-ety. Democracy permeates the diverse aspects of society’s life, giving rise to new rela-tions, habits, norms of behaviour, and traditions.

Socialist democracy is a new, higher historical type of sovereignty of the people, which grew out of the proletarian democracy of the period of transition from capitalism to socialism. In comparison with preceding formations, socialism has extended the very concept of democracy to include not only the political, but also the social rights of the working people. It has vested democracy with a new meaning and, by extending it to all of society, has made it true democracy of the entire people. Lastly, socialism has made the central question of democracy not the formal proclamation of rights, as is the bour-geois society, but the provision of the possibilities for exercising these rights.

We shall examine now the most important aspects of socialist democracy associated with the specific features of the class structure of society, the state, and the social and political rights of the citizens. Subsequent sections of this chapter will cover some of its other aspects pertaining to national relations, culture, and the position of the individual.

A Society of Friendly Working Classes

A new class structure of society is formed as a result of the economic and social changes of the transition period.

The exploiting classes—capitalists, landlords, and kulaks— have been completely abolished. Society has become a community of working people: workers, peasants, and the intelligentsia. Their position has been radically changed.

This applies first and foremost to the working class. From a class deprived of the means of production, it has become, together with all the people, their owner; from an

exploited class it has become the leading force of society. The professional skill and cul-tural level of the workers rise immeasurably under socialism.

Another class of socialist society, the peasantry, has also undergone profound changes. Under capitalism it was a class of small producers little connected among themselves, who were doomed to eke out a miserable livelihood from their tiny plots. Village life gave rise to cultural backwardness which bordered on savagery. Collectivi-sation of agriculture and the cultural revolution have radically altered the aspect of the peasantry.

The overwhelming majority of peasants in socialist society are collective farmers. In the Soviet Union, for example, peasants farming on their own account constituted only 0.1 per cent of the total in 1959. The socialist peasantry is a class freed from the exploi-tation of landlords and kulaks, a class which is working collectively and makes exten-sive use of machinery.

The culture of the peasants rises swiftly owing to the advantages of the collective-farm system. True, for a long time after the victory of socialism the cultural level of the peasantry still lags behind that of the working class and the rural mode of life is inferior to the urban. But this distinction is gradually being eliminated. A stratum of skilled farm machine-operators, associated with advanced technology and culture, is growing in the countryside. As it develops, the entire peasantry is coming up to the level of this stratum.

The co-operative and collective-farm system broadens the outlook of the peasant, draws him into public activities, makes him interested the success of his own collective (team or collective farm) and of the entire country. This is how the selfishness and se-clusion of the small owner, proclaimed by bourgeois literature to be a “natural of the peasant”, are being overcome.

In contrast to the working class, the proportion of the peasantry in the total popula-tion as a rule does not increase, but declines. For countries which prior to the socialist revolution had been backward agrarian lands, this is a progressive and natural phenome-non. Mechanisation of agriculture makes it possible to reduce considerably the number of people engaged in it, who are needed for the development of other branches of the economy, industry in the first place.

The intelligentsia, the brain workers, comprises an important section of the working people in socialist society. It cannot be grouped either with the working class or with the peasantry. Nor does it form a special class, because it does not hold an independent posi-tion in social production, although it plays a big part in the life of socialist society. The engineering and technical intelligentsia holds an important place in material production. Writers, painters, actors and scientists contribute to the treasury of intellectual creation and enrich culture. The large bodies of teachers and physicians educate the people and safeguard their health. Lastly, many persons who have a specialised education (lawyers, economists, financial experts) do necessary work in the management of the economy, in the state administration, etc.

The intelligentsia is the most rapidly growing section of socialist society. At the end of 1960, the Soviet Union had about 8.8 million people with a higher or specialised sec-

ondary education, whereas in 1913 there were only 190,000 such specialists, and in 1928, 521,000. The share of the intelligentsia will continue to grow, which is in line with the requirements of technical and cultural progress.

The socialist intelligentsia is not an isolated social stratum, but a truly people’s intel-ligentsia, bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh of the workers and peasants. To serve the people is its cherished aim. Service to the people not only advances the culture of society, but also spiritually enriches the intelligentsia itself, and lends purpose to its work.

The new class structure formed in socialist society radically changes the entire pic-ture of class relations.

By abolishing exploitation of man by man completely and finally, socialism does away for ever with the class hierarchy, the system of subjugation of some classes by others, which existed for thousands of years.

All classes and strata become equal in their relation to the means of production, to the state, and political power, in their rights and duties. No one can any longer appropri-ate the means of production and use them for exploiting other people. Solid foundations are laid for social equality and justice in all spheres of life.

It follows from the above that although social distinctions do not vanish under so-cialism, their nature is radically altered. They are already no longer connected with rela-tions of domination and subordination, but represent distinctions between separate groups of the working people which have equal rights, distinctions resulting from the different forms of one and the same socialist property (state property and co-operative-collective-farm property). This is a distinction between people engaged in different branches of one socialist national economy, engaged in different forms of labour.

Thus the distinctions between classes still existing under socialism are of a funda-mentally different nature than under capitalism; they are of a non-antagonistic character and, as society develops, steadily decrease, a process that is actively promoted by the policy of the Party and the state. Under capitalism, on the contrary, social barriers are not demolished but are raised higher; social injustice, far from declining, becomes more flagrant.

Lastly, under socialism class distinctions no longer affect the lives of people as they do under capitalism. In any bourgeois country it is enough for a person to be born into the family of a banker or manufacturer to be ensured comforts and a high income, op-portunities for an education and an enviable social position, with very little merit or ef-fort on his own part. On the other hand, the son of a worker, despite the legend spread by the bourgeoisie that any bootblack can become a millionaire, finds it almost impossi-ble to escape from the grip of poverty and “make good”. In socialist society differences in the position of people depend on their personal qualities, capabilities, knowledge and industry, and not on social origin or position.

Let us consider, specifically, the question of incomes. The still existing differences in living standards under socialism are increasingly losing their class nature. There are entire categories of workers (miners, metallurgical workers, etc.) who are earning more

than certain groups of the intelligentsia. In many collective farms, the incomes of the front-ranking collective farmers are higher than the average earnings of a factory or of-fice worker.

In socialist society prestige and fame also cease to be the monopoly of particular classes and sections and become an inalienable attribute of honest service to society, of honest work in any sphere of life. In the U.S.S.R., for example, such front-ranking workers and innovators as the spinner Valentina Gaganova and the miner Nikolai Mamai, such collective-farm machine-operators as Alexander Gitalov and Nikolai Manukovsky, are no less renowned than outstanding scientists, engineers, artists, and political leaders.

The obliteration of class distinctions is also facilitated by the fluidity and relative na-ture of the boundaries between classes in socialist society, the ease of passing from one class or section into another. This is true not only of the boundary between the working class and the peasantry, but also of that separating these classes (manual workers) from the intelligentsia (brain workers). The new, socialist intelligentsia in its overwhelming majority is of working-class or peasant origin. But that is not the only thing that matters. No less important is the fact that the ranks of the workers and peasants are increasingly swelled by educated people, whose daily work in production is distinguished by many features of creative, mental labour.

It goes without saying that to master certain trades one must study a great deal, must have an education. But under socialism a higher education entirely loses the nature of a social privilege. Society carefully sees to it that the advantages preserved so far, which consist of a more cultured environment at home, greater leisure, better material condi-tions for study, etc., should not turn into such a privilege. For this purpose priority in enrolment in universities and institutes is given to those who have a record of work in production; stipends are paid to students who are less secure materially; the system of evening and correspondence studies is extensively developed, etc.

Full equality, the gradual effacement of distinctions between classes, and social jus-tice are characteristic features of class relations under socialism, which help to consoli-date the unity of society.

Since all classes and sections consist of working people, since all are connected with property of the same type, socialist property, the relations between them are free of any antagonism. Their interests coincide in all the main and chief things. In particular, work-ers, peasants, and intellectuals are equally interested in the advance of the national econ-omy, in the strengthening of the socialist system, in the development of democracy and culture.

Thus, socialism replaces the age-old struggle of classes by solidarity and unity aris-ing from the community of aims, ideology, and ethics. The abolition of the exploiting classes and the socialist transformation of all the petty-bourgeois classes lay the founda-tions for the ideological and political unity of society.

Conversion of the State of Proletarian Dictatorship into a  Socialist State of the Whole People

After ensuring the victory of socialism, the dictatorship of the proletariat undergoes important changes.

The decisive significance given to the idea of proletarian dictatorship in Marxist-Leninist theory and in the practice of socialist construction has already been dealt with in Chapter 21. Marx, Engels and Lenin clearly demonstrated that recognition of the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat is the main thing that distinguishes genuine revolu-tionary Marxists from overt and covert defenders of capitalism.

At the same time the founders of Marxism-Leninism never regarded the dictatorship of the proletariat as an end in itself. They saw in it merely a necessary means for sup-pressing the overthrown classes and ensuring the building of socialism. Lenin stressed that the aim of the dictatorship of the proletariat is “to build socialism”. He spoke of the “period of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the period of the transition from capital-ism to socialism”.354

It is true that in formulating the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Cri-tique of the Gotha Programme, Marx speaks of the transition to communism, “Between capitalist and communist society,” he says, “lies the period of the revolutionary trans-formation of the one into the other. There corresponds to this also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the prole-tariat.”355

It should, however, be remembered that the founders of Marxism often used the term “communism” to denote its first phase— socialism. “What is usually called social-ism,” Lenin explained, “was termed by Marx the ‘first’ or lower phase of communist society. Insofar as the means of production become common property, the word ‘com-munism’ is also applicable here, providing we do not forget that this is not complete communism.”356

Thus, Marxist-Leninist theory has always proceeded from the fact that the dictator-ship of the proletariat is historically transient and necessary only for the period of the transition from capitalism to socialism. But as to what transformations statehood would undergo after the victory of socialism, and what would then be the nature and functions of the socialist state-—these important questions could only be answered by theory later, on the basis of generalising the relevant historical experience.

This was accomplished in the Programme of the C.P.S.U. adopted by the Twenty-Second Congress, the programme of the Party under whose leadership socialism was built for the first time. On the basis of its rich historical experience, the C.P.S.U. put forward a new, fundamentally important thesis of Marxist-Leninist theory that the dicta-torship of the proletariat ceases to be necessary before the time when the state withers away. “Having brought about the complete and final victory of socialism—the first phase of communism—and the transition of society to the full-scale construction of communism, the dictatorship of the proletariat has fulfilled its historic mission and has ceased to be indispensable in the U.S.S.R., from the point of view of the tasks of internal

development. The state, which arose as a state of the dictatorship of the proletariat, has, in the new, contemporary stage, become a state of the entire people, an organ expressing the interests and will of the people as a whole.”357

The proletariat is the only class in history that has not sought to perpetuate its dicta-torship. As soon as socialism is victorious and has been consolidated the need for the dictatorship of a class ceases and the working class voluntarily renounces it.

Under these circumstances the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat becomes a socialist state of the whole people. The state ceases to be a class state in as much as it becomes the expression of the will and interests of the whole people. The emergence of such a state is a new phenomenon in the history of statehood: the state loses its age-old characteristic of being an instrument of class suppression. That is to say, precisely the chief function of the state, that which was its essential function throughout its history, disappears.

The completion of the historic mission of the dictatorship of the proletariat does not mean that the working class ceases to be the guiding force of society. It continues to play this role. Its leading position rests not on any exceptional rights acquired and re-tained at the expense of other classes or strata, but on its high moral and political pres-tige. The leading position of the working class in society is due to the fact that after playing the decisive part in the revolution its whole life is identified with the most ad-vanced form of socialist economy, viz., socialist industry. It is also the most consistent champion of communist ideals. Among the working class there are incomparably fewer survivals of the psychology of property-owners such as is characteristic of part of the peasantry, or of individualism, which persists among some representatives of the intelli-gentsia. The traditions of socialist mutual assistance and comradely solidarity have their deepest roots in the working class.

These merits of the working class make it the force which continues to bring about the advance of the whole of society, both under socialism and in the period of the transi-tion to communism. “The working class will have completed its role of leader of soci-ety,” states the Programme of the C.P.S.U., “after communism is built and classes dis-appear.”358

In a society in which the only classes remaining are those of the working people en-gaged in socialist production who are socially, politically and ideologically united, the working class naturally carries out its leadership by other methods and in other forms than during the preceding stages.

How is the transformation of the state of proletarian dictatorship into a socialist state of the whole people concretely expressed?

First and foremost in the fact that proletarian democracy, which developed in the transition period, becomes socialist democracy of the whole people. From the first mo-ment of its appearance the dictatorship of the proletariat contains features of this democ-racy. As socialism develops these features become stronger and with its complete vic-tory they become predominant. It will be shown below that this is expressed in the fur-ther extension of all democratic institutions and civic rights. Class equality is established

in state administration, the formation of governmental bodies and political life in gen-eral. All socio-political restrictions that had been introduced to defend the gains of the working people during the transition from capitalism to socialism are now removed.

Further, a change takes place in the objective character of the coercive function still possessed by the state and in the extent and form of its application. Coercion is now used not against classes or social groups but against individuals who violate the laws of socialist society. Consequently, the sphere in which administrative coercive measures are applied is much reduced and their place is increasingly taken by methods of persua-sion, education and prevention.

It is clear that such a transformation does not occur all at once but is more or less prolonged. In the Soviet Union, where it had been held back owing to the war and the conditions obtaining under the personality cult, it has made powerful progress in the re-cent period when Soviet society has entered on the full-scale construction of commu-nism.

It may be asked: if the state has ceased to be an instrument of class domination, which was the purpose for which it came into being, why does it still remain under so-cialism? The answer is that the tasks which society can only accomplish by means of the state are not yet exhausted.

Socialist society cannot do without the state for a variety of reasons.

Firstly, because after the victory of socialism the state remains for a long time the most suitable and rational form of public leadership of the economy, social relations, and cultural development. The expediency of this form is determined by the level of economic, social, and spiritual development of society.

Secondly, because under socialism a certain inequality in the satisfaction of the re-quirements of people still remains; there remain manifestations of the psychology of the private owner and other survivals of capitalism in the minds of some members of soci-ety. In these conditions society cannot get along without a special machinery which con-trols the amount of labour and consumption, protects public and personal property, and cuts short anti-social actions dangerous to the socialist system.

Thirdly, the state is preserved for external reasons. So long as socialism has not tri-umphed on a world-wide scale, the danger of attack by the imperialist states remains and, therefore, there also remains the need to have armed forces and other state bodies called upon to ensure the country’s defence power and also to combat spies, saboteurs, and other subversive elements sent in by the imperialists.

The tasks and functions of the state that replaces the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat undergo changes.

In the first place, the economic role of the state, the extent of its activity in guiding the national economy, is substantially enhanced. Whereas in the transition period, at the time when several forms of economic structure existed, the state was unable to control, plan, and direct all sectors and branches of the national economy, under socialism the state actually concentrates in its hands all the threads of the country’s economic devel-opment. The organisation of social production—direction of the economy—becomes its

cardinal function.

The cultural and educational function of the state becomes widely expanded in so-cialist society: it includes the development of socialist culture—science, the arts, and literature—the cultural advancement of the people, and their communist education.

The function of safeguarding socialist property, the corner-stone of the new system, plays a big part in the activities of the state.

In socialist society the activities of the state in connection with the protection of the rights and interests of the citizens, of their personal property, and of public order, con-tinue to be of great importance.

Thus, following the victory of socialism the state acts primarily as the organiser of economic and cultural development, directing the creative activities of the working masses.

Together with this, inasmuch as the capitalist system exists and the danger of armed attack has not been removed, the function of defending the country from outside attack is fully preserved. The socialist state is compelled to strengthen its armed forces, army and navy, counter-intelligence and intelligence agencies in order to defend successfully the gains of socialism. Its activities in the international arena, however, are not limited to military defence. They include economic, cultural, and political relations with foreign states and their purpose is to ensure peaceful coexistence of countries with different so-cial and political systems, to strengthen peace among the nations. The formation of the world socialist system has given rise to another task of the socialist state’s foreign pol-icy, namely, the consolidation of the friendship, co-operation, and mutual assistance be-tween the fraternal socialist countries.

Improvement of the methods of leadership by the state is an important problem that arises following the victory of socialism. On its successful solution largely depend both the rate of economic growth and progress in the social, cultural, and other spheres. Elaboration of proper methods and forms of state activities, conforming to the new class structure and the new type of the economy, is not an easy task. Here socialist society is not immune from mistakes. That is why the Communist Party is devoting unflagging attention to problems of developing the state.

Improvement of the socialist state demands determined eradication of bureaucracy. In conditions of victorious socialism its manifestations are even more intolerable than in the transition period. For the state now handles an incomparably greater volume of af-fairs. The socialist state guides all industries, agricultural production, and trade. It directs the activities of most institutions which serve the daily needs of the citizens (health ser-vices, social maintenance, communal services, education, etc.). In these conditions bu-reaucracy can inflict great harm on society, both economically and politically. Taking this into account, the Party wages a consistent struggle against bureaucracy, for the con-solidation of the bonds between the state apparatus and the masses, it develops and strengthens socialist democracy.

Extension of the Political and Social Rights of the Working People

Socialism for the first time creates the economic, social, and political requisites for achieving real nation-wide democracy. Only socialism creates such unity of interests of all sections of society that under it all political problems can be settled without any class coercion, in a democratic way.

Genuine political equality of the citizens is achieved only under socialism. It is en-sured by the fact that the people are actually equal in relation to the means of production and hence have an equal right to participate, as real masters, in taking decisions which affect all of society.

Under socialism the members of society receive not only formal rights and free-doms, but also the actual opportunity to enjoy them. Nor is it accidental that socialist constitutions, proclaiming the basic freedoms—freedom of speech, press, assembly, street demonstrations, etc.— lay special emphasis on the guarantees which ensure the actual opportunity to enjoy these freedoms and stipulate that all stocks of paper, printing presses, meeting halls, etc., be placed at the disposal of the working people.

It goes without saying that even in conditions of socialism unlimited freedom of the individual is out of the question. Unlimited freedom of the individual would be not free-dom but arbitrariness, since it would infringe the interests of other people, of society as a whole. Granting man the broadest freedoms, the socialist state at the same time prohibits any activity which is harmful to other people. For example, it metes out punishment for spreading racialist and fascist views, or for advocating war. In contrast to the bourgeois state, the socialist state does not allow the circulation of books, magazines, and films which corrupt youth and extol immorality, brutality, and violence. Such restriction is undoubtedly in the interest of the people and therefore does not undermine but, on the contrary, reinforces the democratic nature of the new system.

Hence socialist democracy differs essentially from the unlimited, uncontrolled “freedom”, of which anarchists love to chatter. Such “freedom”, incidentally, exists only in their heated imagination, but not in society. As for socialist democracy, it is not direc-tionless democracy, but directed democracy, i.e., democracy directed by the Party and the state to further the development of socialism and the building of communism. This is stated by the Communists straightforwardly and openly.

This fact infuriates the revisionists. They keep on asserting that democracy is in-compatible with any restriction or direction, and on these grounds call for socialist de-mocracy to be replaced by “unrestricted” democracy, or, putting the same thing more hazily, by “integral” democracy. The bombastic words of the advocates of such views conceal a very definite political aim—to push socialism back to bourgeois democracy, which means not to any sort of unlimited democracy, but to democracy directed by the bourgeoisie, with the introduction of various limitations conforming to the interests of capitalism.

Another object of the revisionists is to undermine the leadership of society by the Party, which would in fact result in the curtailment, and not the development, of democ-racy. For the Party embodies in its activities the will of the masses and represents the

most democratic organisation of socialist society. Its leadership most fully personifies the principles of genuine democracy.

While sweeping aside the theories of the revisionists, and particularly their recipes for “democratisation”, the Marxist-Leninist parties at the same time regard the consistent development and extension of socialist democracy as a prime task. But, in contrast to the revisionists, they see the way to attain this not in copying the institutions and principles of bourgeois democracy, but in perfecting socialist democracy, i.e., in drawing the masses into administering the state; in boldly stimulating their constructive activities and initiative in all spheres of society's life, and in strengthening all forms of popular control over the working of the state apparatus.

Here the Party is confronted with great tasks, because such genuinely socialist de-mocracy does not arise of itself in an unchanging form, but develops as socialism gains in strength. This is a process which claims constant attention and effort on the part of society, the state and the Party, and demands struggle against wrong views, against ad-ministrative-bureaucratic tendencies, and against disbelief in the intelligence and power of the mass of the people.

Why does the Party attach such great importance to the development of socialist democracy?

Because under socialism the broadest democracy of the highest type in history be-comes not only possible, but also necessary. In socialist conditions democracy is not a concession the ruling classes are forced to make, as it is under capitalism, but a law of life which ensures the normal and rapid development of society. Lenin wrote that “victo-rious socialism must necessarily give effect to complete democracy....”359 Socialism and democracy are inseparable.

Broad democracy enables each member to feel a full-fledged master of society and stimulates the creative initiative of the masses, without which socialism cannot advance a single step. It gives encouragement to the talents and capabilities of millions of people, facilitates the rapid promotion of ever new gifted leaders, draws the working people into the activities of the state, ensuring their ever more active and direct participation in ad-ministering society’s affairs. For example, of the deputies to the Sixth Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R., elected in March 1962, 45 per cent were workers and collective farmers directly engaged in production. Among the deputies of city Soviets 39.4 per cent are workers directly engaged in production, and among the deputies of rural Soviets 58.8 per cent are collective farmers. Altogether about 340,000 workers and nearly 780,000 collective farmers were elected to local Soviets in 1959.

We may recall by way of comparison that in the U.S. Congress bankers and manu-facturers comprise 30 per cent of all the Senators and 34 per cent of the members of the House of Representatives; 21 per cent of the Senators are large landowners. The other members of Congress are employees of the big monopolies or professional politicians known as loyal servants of capital. It is not by chance that the following saying is cur-rent in the United States: some are Senators because they are rich, while others are rich because they are Senators.

The constitutions of the socialist countries embody legislatively the principle of electivity, removability, and accountability of all persons holding office, the principle of electivity and accountability of all state bodies. The voters have a right to recall any deputy who has not justified their trust before the expiration of his term of office. Public organisations of the working people exercise ever wider control over the activities of executive bodies and themselves take part in these activities.

State bodies of a socialist country enjoy the assistance of activists, a vast number of public-spirited citizens who work in factories and collective farms, in cultural and edu-cational establishments. In the U.S.S.R. from 14 to 15 million people take part in can-vassing and organisational work during election campaigns. Millions of people work in standing and ad hoc committees of local Soviets; as public instructors or inspectors, as members of aid committees elected in factories, offices or neighbourhoods; as members of control groups set up by public organisations. This vast army of people is taking part in the activities of the state and going through a big political schooling, improving its political consciousness, knowledge, and culture. The masses also exert their influence on the machinery of state through the press, which serves as a medium for the exchange experience, control, and criticism.

The growing role of public organisations—the Party, trade unions, Young Commu-nist League, and others—is an important feature of socialist democracy. Millions of people take part in the work of these organisations and in this way influence various as-pects of society’s life. Suffice it to note that in the Soviet Union in 1961 there were over 9.7 million people in the ranks of the Party, 19 million in the Young Communist League, and over 63 million in the trade unions.

One of the main distinctive features of the Marxist understanding of democracy is that, while attaching great importance to political rights and freedoms, it does not limit democracy to them alone. Marxists regard as a prime integral part of democracy the so-cial and economic rights of the working people: the right to work, to rest and leisure, to education, to material maintenance in old age or in case of illness, etc. For these rights are the basis of man's genuine freedom and happiness.

The historic advantages of the socialist system are revealed with especial clarity in the way the social rights of the working people are ensured.

Can capitalist society with its chronic unemployment ensure each citizen the oppor-tunity to work, let alone to choose the work he likes? Clearly, it cannot. But the socialist system makes the right to work a constitutional right of a citizen, delivering him from the oppressive anxiety and uncertainty over the morrow. Free labour becomes not only a means of subsistence, but also the chief measure of the social value of man.

Can capitalist society guarantee its citizens the right to rest and leisure? Again the answer is no. What does the capitalist care for the health of his workers or the provision of holiday and recreation facilities for them? He sees in them merely a source of profit. Graphic proof of this is furnished by the high cost of medical service in bourgeois coun-tries, which makes it ruinous for the working people. Under capitalism limitation of the working day by law, paid vacations, and other social rights of the working class are won

only through prolonged struggle by the labouring people, who have to exert great efforts to preserve and extend these gains.

On the contrary, in socialist society where both the means of production and politi-cal power belong to the working people themselves, concern for the health and welfare of the people are in the focus of attention of public and state organisations.

Can capitalist society guarantee its citizens the right to education? No, and not only because it takes no interest in the cultural requirements of the working people, at any rate in the requirements that go beyond the level necessary for work at a factory. The bourgeoisie, as all exploiting classes, regards the monopoly of education and culture as one of the principal instruments for the preservation of its monopoly of political power. It is much easier to keep the working people in check so long as they are illiterate, un-educated and are held in the grip of all kinds of prejudices and superstitions.

Socialist society, on the contrary, is vitally interested in making all its members edu-cated and cultured. In a society where power belongs to the working people themselves the advance of their culture and political consciousness, the widening of their outlook, is a source of strength for the state, a way to multiply the public wealth and accelerate pro-gress.

Socialist society devotes special attention to the political and cultural advancement of that part of the population which in the past was the most downtrodden socially and suffered the greatest oppression. This applies especially to women.

In some capitalist countries even to this day women are deprived of many political and civil rights, get less pay for equal work with men and are kept in a subordinate posi-tion in the family.

Marxism-Leninism holds that the emancipation of women presupposes, firstly, full equalisation in rights with men both in the family and in political life; secondly, the enlistment of women in public activities and productive work, and, thirdly, abolition of the system of domestic drudgery under which housekeeping absorbs all the time and energies of women.

The socialist system is successfully solving this intricate problem. It not only gives women equal rights with men, but it also accords the mother honour and respect. The state grants working mothers long paid maternity leaves, gives monthly allowances to mothers of large families and unmarried mothers, and decorates mothers of large fami-lies with orders or medals. The rights of mother and child in the family are protected by law.

Socialism leads woman on to the path of important public activities and production work. In tsarist Russia, according to the 1897 census, only 13 per cent of women wage-workers were employed at factories and construction sites and 4 per cent in educational and medical institutions. The majority of all women—55 per cent—were domestic ser-vants and 25 per cent toiled as agricultural labourers for the kulaks and landlords. Today women comprise 45 per cent of all workers in industry. Women make up more than half, 53 per cent to be exact, of all specialists with a higher education. Hundreds of women have been elected deputies to the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. and the Supreme Sovi-

ets of the Union Republics. There are nearly 700,000 women deputies in local Soviets.

Naturally, by no means everything has yet been done in this respect. Housekeeping continues to take up too much time, retarding the political and cultural advancement of many women. There are still not enough nurseries, kindergartens, and also boarding-schools, which could relieve mothers of a considerable share of the cares involved in child upbringing. In some republics of Soviet Central Asia, survivals of a feudal attitude to women are still manifested here and there. But the successes scored in the U.S.S.R. and the People's Democracies in emancipating women and the attention by the whole of society to this problem afford grounds for confidence that the full solution of this prob-lem is not far off.

We must not forget that socialism is only the first, lower phase of the new social formation. Naturally, at this stage it is impossible yet to solve completely all the numer-ous difficult and involved, problems which socialism has inherited from the rule of the exploiters over thousands of years. But now it is already clearly seen that socialism, as no other system, ensures the working people real democratic rights and extends the sphere of democracy to an unprecedented degree. It could not be otherwise in a society which assumes care for all its members, their happiness, welfare, and personal destinies. As socialist society develops, more social benefits are enjoyed by the citizens and they have greater opportunities for active participation in political life. This makes all the working people deeply interested in the prosperity and progress of society.

2. Friendship of the Peoples of Socialist Society

In many countries capitalism leaves the new system a grave legacy in the form of economic and cultural backwardness of some peoples and deep-seated national enmity. Hence the primary task confronting the victorious working class in the sphere of na-tional relations is to abolish all national oppression and inequality, and to emancipate completely and finally all nations and nationalities. Lenin stressed that “in the same way as mankind can arrive at the abolition of classes only through a transition period of the dictatorship of the oppressed class, so can mankind arrive at the inevitable fusion of na-tions only through a transition period of the complete emancipation of all oppressed na-tions, i. e., their freedom to secede”.360

The emancipation of the oppressed nations and the ensuring of national equality be-gins immediately after the socialist revolution. The basic principle in the programmes of the Communist Parties on the national question is that each nation has the right to self-determination, including secession and the formation of an independent state. The grant-ing of such a right does not at all mean that each nation is invited or, still less, compelled to secede, to break state ties with the nation with which it formerly belonged in a single state. Such an interpretation of the right to self-determination would merely play into the hands of international capital, which is interested in dividing the nations of the socialist countries and then crushing them one by one.

But that is not the only point. The very need for further developing the productive forces makes it imperative for the socialist nations to draw closer together. That is why

separatist tendencies can only inflict considerable harm on the cause of socialism. Communist Parties always take into account the danger of such tendencies in determin-ing their attitude to the question whether a given nation under given conditions should exercise its right to secession or not.

But it is only the formerly oppressed nations themselves that can decide this ques-tion. Only liberation, complete to the end, enables them to forget old insults and hu-miliation and thus brings about a turn in national relations. The basic principle which Communists uphold in deciding the question of the secession or union of nations is the voluntary principle. Abolishing all types and forms of national oppression, recognising the right of each people to their own statehood, their national language, their own culture and national traditions, the socialist system thereby establishes genuine internationalism which is irreconcilable with any chauvinist tendencies.

The liberation of nations, of course, does not consist in the simple abolition of na-tional oppression and establishment of legal equality. Imperialism leaves the economic and cultural backwardness of the oppressed peoples as a legacy to the new social sys-tem. “That is why,” Lenin stressed, “internationalism on the part of oppressing, or 'great' nations as they are called..., must consist not only in observing formal equality of na-tions, but in a leniency that would make up, as far as the oppressing nation—the great nation—is concerned, for the inequality which obtains in actual life. Whoever does not understand this has not grasped the real proletarian attitude to the national question, he is still essentially on the standpoint of the petty bourgeoisie and therefore cannot but slip continually into the bourgeois point of view.”361

That is why Marxist-Leninists proceed from the premise that the socialist system must not only give the formerly oppressed peoples the right to free development, but also create real opportunities for this, helping them to overcome their backwardness which arose in the course of history.

Thanks to the assistance of the advanced socialist nations, the Russian people in the first place, the economy of the non-Russian republics of the Soviet Union, which were underdeveloped in the past, is growing on the average at a faster rate than that of the Soviet Union as a whole. While total industrial output in the U.S.S.R. rose 40 times be-tween 1913 and 1960, in the Kazakh S.S.R. it grew 58 times, in the Kirghiz S.S.R. 61 times, and in the Armenian S.S.R. 68 times. The policy of accelerated industrialisation of the backward territories is pursued in the People's Democracies as well, an example being the industrialisation of Slovakia.

The more even distribution of the productive forces, taking local conditions into ac-count, and the accelerated training of specialists result in the rapid development of na-tional personnel and the elimination of cultural backwardness. This is seen in the case of every Soviet republic. For example, pre-revolutionary Turkmenia had altogether 58 schools attended by 6,780 children, the sons of the rich, clergy, and government offi-cials. Today the republic has 1,467 schools with a total enrolment of over 279,000 chil-dren, a university, a medical institute, an agricultural and other institutes, and also 23 secondary specialised educational establishments. Seventy-eight newspapers and thir-

teen magazines are published, most of them in the Turkmen language.

The situation is similar as regards the other formerly backward nations and nation-alities in the Soviet Union and the People’s Democracies.

Summing up the activities of the Party in the sphere of national relations, the Pro-gramme of the C.P.S.U. notes: “With reciprocal fraternal assistance, primarily from the great Russian people, all the Soviet non-Russian Republics have set up their own modern industries, trained their own national working class and intelligentsia and developed a cul-ture that is national in form and socialist in content. Many peoples which in the past were backward have achieved socialism, by-passing the capitalist stage of development.”362

Abolition of national oppression and the achievement of economic and cultural pro-gress promote the formation of nations out of nationalities which formerly were de-prived of such a possibility owing to economic backwardness, administrative division, or other causes. On the other hand, the aspect of nations formed in the bourgeois epoch becomes radically changed.

In as much as a socialist nation is free from class antagonism, it is unusually mono-lithic. For the first time a single national culture arises that most fully expresses the thoughts and aspirations of the masses and the distinctive features of their historical de-velopment. Since the socialist system shapes the entire life of the people, it is natural that their national culture becomes socialist in content. The culture of all the socialist nations, clothed in the richest and most diverse national forms, is at the same time inter-national, integral in its ideological content. This strengthens the relations of fraternal friendship and mutual assistance between the peoples, relations formed in the process of joint work in building the new society.

Of course, the establishment of new, internationalist between nations strikes root not of itself, but as a result of persistent work in overcoming the survivals of nationalism. Such are very tenacious and if the political work to eliminate them ceases they swiftly grow. That is why the Marxist-Leninist parties attach such great importance to struggle against all distortions in relations between nations.

The flowering of socialist nations, far from running counter to the task of drawing the nations closer together, on the contrary facilitates its accomplishment.

The tendency to break down national barriers, to strengthen ties between nations and draw them closer together economically, politically, and culturally, which had already arisen under capitalism, does not disappear under socialism but, as Lenin emphasised, grows much stronger.363 Now, however, this tendency is realised not through the en-slavement of some peoples by others but through the voluntary drawing together of equal peoples. This is true not only of economic development. Simultaneously a process of mutual enrichment of national cultures, and of their drawing closer together, takes place.

3. Culture of Socialist Society

When the revolution occurred in Russia its enemies maliciously predicted that the awakening of the dark and ignorant masses threatened to destroy culture, that the rude

“bast-shoe” wearers could not able to preserve the old cultural treasures, let alone create new ones. Not a few gloomy prophecies of such a nature were heard by the working people of other countries who took the path of socialism.

Today the absurdity of such assertions is obvious to all. The socialist revolution has resulted not in a decline of culture, but in its full flowering; it has brought about the greatest cultural revolution in scope and significance.

Cultural Revolution—a Major Component Part of Socialist Reconstruction

The socialist reconstruction of society is inconceivable without deep-rooted changes in culture, rightly called a cultural revolution. The purpose of these changes is to create a new, socialist culture.

But the cultural revolution must not be understood in an oversimplified way as the negation of all past culture. Socialist culture does not arise out of nothing, it is the le-gitimate successor to all the best that was created in the conditions of an exploiting soci-ety. Lenin said: “We must take the entire culture left by capitalism and build socialism out of it. We must take all science, technology, all knowledge, and art. Without this we cannot build life in communist society.”364

To choose from the cultural heritage such imperishable treasures and to cast aside everything unnecessary which runs counter to the nature of socialist society, and espe-cially what is harmful and reactionary—such is one of the definite tasks of the cultural revolution. This is the basis for the development of genuine socialist culture, socialist in its content, i.e., reflecting the life and ideals of the new society, and permeated with the latter's ideology and a desire to serve the people, to help them actively in building so-cialism and then communism.

To turn culture from a possession of the few into a possession of all is another cen-tral task of the cultural revolution. The need for it inevitably arises in any country, even the most “civilised” according to bourgeois standards. In the final count, capitalism al-ways gives the working people only the minimum of knowledge needed for participation in production and no more.

The advance of education in the Soviet Union has been of particularly great impor-tance. In pre-revolutionary Russia over 75 per cent of the population (of nine years of age and older) were illiterate. Among the Kirghiz only 0.6 per cent were able to read and write among the Turkmens and Yakuts 0.7 per cent, among the Kazakhs 2.0 per cent, and so on. Many nationalities even had no written language of their own. The Soviet state had to begin from the most elementary things—teaching the ABC to tens of mil-lions of people teaching them how to read a newspaper and a book, bringing them the rudiments of knowledge. This task was accomplished with a truly revolutionary sweep. More than 30 million adults learned to read and write between 1929 and 1932. Universal compulsory elementary education began from 1930. All this made it possible to wipe out illiteracy by the end of the transition period.

Still greater effort was required to eradicate illiteracy in the People's Democracies of Asia, where over 90 per cent of the population were illiterate.

In the European People’s Democracies the cultural revolution has its own distinctive features. In some of them, where the cultural level of the population is relatively high, no such tasks as the abolition of mass illiteracy had to be solved. But problems of the struggle against bourgeois ideology, which had struck deep roots in the minds of people, and the liberation of the working people from the reactionary influence of the Church, often become very acute in these countries.

The conversion of the school from an instrument of class domination of the bour-geoisie into an instrument of socialist re-education is an indispensable part of the cul-tural revolution in all countries. The school is separated from the Church and freed from the influence of bourgeois ideology. Instruction is gradually re-arranged on the basis of scientific knowledge verified by experience. A new system of education is built up. This system produces educated people equipped with basic knowledge in science and tech-nology, capable of consciously taking part in socialist construction.

At the same time extra-mural education becomes widespread after the revolution. Clubs, libraries, palaces of culture, theatres, museums, cinema, radio, television, press, and a ramified network of evening and correspondence schools become part and parcel of the people s life. The working class and the peasantry rapidly advance culturally and technically as a direct result of industrialisation, the collectivisation of agriculture and the tremendous educational activities of the socialist state.

To ensure the advance of society’s productive forces and culture, the cultural revolu-tion must solve yet another important problem: the development of a new, genuinely people's intelligentsia, closely linked with the working class and the peasantry. Prior to the victory of the socialist revolution the proletariat did not have any substantial number of intellectuals of its own. The bourgeoisie barred the workers and. peasants from higher education.

The problem of creating a new intelligentsia is solved in two ways: through the enlistment and re-education of the bourgeois intelligentsia and through the accelerated training of specialists from among the workers and peasants.

The enlistment of the old intelligentsia in socialist construction, naturally, is not an easy matter. Particularly difficult was it for the working class of Russia, where the in-tense sharpening of the class struggle, which had assumed the most extreme forms, pushed a considerable part of the old intelligentsia—for a time, at any rate—into the camp of the enemies of the revolution, of its ill-wishers.

Nevertheless, the Soviet Communists succeeded in coping with the problem of the intelligentsia, indicating the main methods of its solution to the working people of other countries who have taken the path of socialism. Speaking in 1958, in the Academy of Sciences of Hungary, N, S. Khrushchov said: “Our Party has much experience in work-ing with the intelligentsia. After getting not a few knocks, we gained a correct under-standing of many questions. We share this experience with you as friends.”365

Experience teaches us that above all great attention, tact, and tolerance must be dis-played towards the old intelligentsia. If at times some of its groups, even large ones, do not at once understand the meaning of, and need for, revolutionary changes, if they re-

main ideologically remote from the revolution, one should not be in a hurry to rank them as enemies. Real intellectuals cannot remain long on such erroneous positions and will inevitably look for ways to be with the people. By being tolerant, by assisting them and allowing them time to realise their mistakes, we can make it much easier for them to side with socialism.

Such a broad approach, however, has nothing in common with a position of non-interference, a passive or indifferent attitude to the ideological and political processes taking place among the old intelligentsia. To leave it to its own devices means to allow the enemies of the revolution to lure the unstable representatives of the old intelligentsia into their nets.

Lenin paid great attention to work with the intelligentsia, with the old-time special-ists. He said that it was necessary to arrange things so that they should live better than under capitalism not only materially, but also as regards “legal status, comradely col-laboration with the workers and peasants, and spiritual requirements, as regards finding satisfaction in their work, realising that it is socially useful and independent of the sordid interests of the capitalist class”.366

Such an approach to the old intelligentsia has proved fully justified.  

It may be assumed that in many countries which still have to take road of socialism the enlistment and socialist re-education of the intelligentsia will be a much easier proc-ess. As pointed out earlier, the growing oppression of the monopolies impels ever wider sections of the intelligentsia to seek alliance with the working class even before the revolution. The experience of the socialist countries, in which unparalleled vistas for creative work and genuine service to the people are open to the intelligentsia, also has an effect on the intelligentsia in the capitalist countries.

But whatever the successes achieved by the Party and the dictatorship of the prole-tariat in work with the old intelligentsia, this cannot satisfy all the requirements of so-cialist society. From its very first days the state of the working class is confronted with the task of organising the large-scale training of engineers, technicians, scientists, and cultural personnel, in the first place from among the workers and peasants.

The work which the Party and the state of the working class have to accomplish in the course of the cultural revolution is truly immense. Lenin said: “Of all the writings by socialists on this subject, I cannot recall a single socialist study I know, or an opinion of prominent socialists about the future socialist society, which would indicate the concrete practical difficulty that will arise before the working class after taking power, when it undertakes to turn the entire richest store of culture, knowledge and technology accumu-lated by the bourgeoisie and which historically we need unavoidably, to turn all this from an instrument of capitalism into an instrument of socialism.” “...This,” Lenin points out, “is a task of unprecedented difficulty and historic significance.”367

Having accomplished the cultural revolution, the working class, its Party and state not only ensure the provision of the skilled personnel needed for socialist construction, not only help the new, socialist ideology to strike root in society, but they also lay the foundations for an advance of culture unprecedented in history.

Striking evidence of this is the progress of education, the success in training engi-neering and scientific personnel, and the achievements in science, technology, literature and the arts, both in the Soviet Union and in the People's Democracies.

“It is only logical," states the Programme of the C.P.S.U., “that the country of victo-rious socialism should have ushered in the era of the utilisation of atomic energy for peaceful purposes, and that it should have blazed a trail into outer space.”368

Culture for the People

The socialist system radically democratises culture, making it accessible not only to a narrow stratum of the intelligentsia, but to the whole of society. This has a favourable effect first of all on the development of culture itself.

In socialist society, writers, painters, and actors have no cause for complaint about inadequate public attention. Foreigners visiting the socialist countries are often surprised at the speed with which all more or less successful books are bought up, and at the great attendance at museums, theatres, and concert halls. This steady growth of the spiritual requirements of the people creates favourable conditions for artistic creative work and stimulates its further development.

The democratisation of culture facilitates the advance of talents in all spheres of sci-entific and artistic endeavour from the very heart of the masses. Would the miner’s son Pavel Bazhov, or the son of a village smith Alexander Tvardovsky have had any chance of becoming a renowned writer prior to the October Revolution? Thousands upon thou-sands of talented people in the capitalist world perish without being able to break their way through poverty, privation, and society’s indifference. Socialism, on the other hand, creates the necessary conditions for bringing talent to light and supporting it. Scientific technical societies, literary associations at factories and offices of newspapers and magazines, amateur talent groups, and many other organisations help to bring out and develop the abilities of people, enriching socialist culture with fresh, young forces.

What is important is not only the material facilities, but also the spiritual atmos-phere, which differs radically from that in capitalist society. A writer or artist held in the grip of bourgeois ideology has no source from which to draw a positive ideal in life, in the light of which he could assess the processes taking place. Life often seems to him dark and meaningless, and people petty and worthless. But he does not see a way out of this situation and, depicting the abominations of capitalist reality, he, at the same time, often directly or indirectly justifies them, regarding them as features of human nature, of human life as it is. Such a view fully suits the reactionary ruling top section, which seeks to prevent people from fighting for a change of the inhuman conditions of capitalism.

In the West there is, of course, also a progressive democratic culture which repre-sents a considerable force. But it does not prevail in the capitalist world and its expo-nents have to wage an intense struggle against reaction.

In socialist society, where all culture belongs to the people, the situation is different. The atmosphere of rapid social progress, the steady rise in the cultural and material standards of the people, scientifically grounded confidence in the future—all this pro-

vides exceptionally favourable conditions for creative work.

Naturally, this imposes great responsibility on workers in culture. Literature and art not only reflect the life of the people, but also mould the human mind. The idea of the indivisible bond of literature and art with the interests and the struggle of social classes and, socialist society, with the life of the entire people, was theoretically substantiated by Lenin who put forward the principle of the partisanship of literature. Bourgeois propagandists viciously attack this principle, seeking to prove that serving the interests of a definite class and conscious pursuance of a definite political line are incompatible with freedom of artistic creation. But this is a futile attempt.

Artistic creation cannot remain outside the struggle of classes, outside politics, for each writer and artist—whether he wants it or not—expresses in his creative work the interests of some one class. Does not contemporary bourgeois art reflect the sentiments of the ruling bourgeoisie and does it not serve as an instrument for ideologically influ-encing the masses? Do not bourgeois publishing houses, film companies, directors of art exhibitions and, lastly, the influential press dictate their will to the intelligentsia and do they not bring the strongest material and moral pressure to bear on those who resist this dictation? The persecution of progressive scientists, writers, painters, and actors in bour-geois countries over many years offers a graphic example.

Socialism is the first social system which frees culture from the oppression of the money-bags, affording the artist the opportunity to create not in order to pander to the depraved tastes of a small handful of the “big pots”, but for the masses. Does this in-fringe the freedom of the artist? Not in the least. Each real artist searches for the truth, seeks to depict the truth in order the better to serve his nation. But this is exactly what socialist society is interested in. The main demand of socialist realism is to portray life truthfully, in its progressive development. “In socialist society where the people are free, where they are the true masters of their destinies and the creators of a new life,” it is stated in the highly important document of the C.P.S.U. For Closer Ties of Literature and Art with the Life of the People, “the question of whether he is free or not in his crea-tive work simply does not exist for any artist who faithfully serves his people. For such a creative worker the question of the approach to the facts of reality is clear. He does not have to adapt or coerce himself. The truthful presentation of life from the positions of Communist partisanship is his heart's necessity; he firmly adheres to these positions, upholds and defends them in his creative work.”369 That is how representatives of the socialist intelligentsia understand their role.

4. Socialism and the Individual

Bourgeois critics of the socialist system try to prove that it is incompatible with the freedom of the individual. Revolutionary Marxism, they allege, does not regard human personality as any value. Hundreds of books and thousands of articles have been written about the “totalitarianism” of the socialist system, “the submerging of the individual in the collective”, and the “levelling” of people. Nothing could be falser than this concep-tion.

Emancipation of the Individual Through the Emancipation of the Working Masses

The spiritual aspect of man, his relations with the people around him and his per-sonal consciousness depend on the nature of the society in which he lives.

Bourgeois propaganda depicts the capitalist system as a realm of freedom of the in-dividual and presents the formal legal equality of people as the only possible form of equality. But actually the rule of capital is the greatest mockery of the freedom of the individual.

Capital bases relations between people on selfish calculation. Money replaces all personal traits of man. In capitalist society, Marx wrote, “what I am and am capable of is by no means determined by my individuality. I am ugly, but I can buy for myself the most beautiful of women. Therefore I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness—its deter-rent power—is nullified by money. I, in my character of an individual, am lame, but money furnishes me with twenty-four feet. Therefore I am not lame. I am bad, dishonest, unscrupulous, stupid; but money is honoured, and therefore so is its possessor. Money is the supreme good, therefore its possessor is good”.370

At one pole, man is worn out and benumbed by exhausting toil and the all-absorbing concern for daily bread. At the other pole, a surfeit of the good things of life and the ab-sence of fruitful social activity lead man to confine himself to the intimate emotions of his ego. Such individualism leads to an impoverishment of man’s inner world, produces a feeling of moral emptiness, melancholy and divided personality. In the decay of bour-geois society this individualism easily turns into brutal selfishness, the ideology of the “superman”, so clearly expressed in the philosophy of Nietzsche, which became one of the corner-stones of the fascist world outlook. All this represents the real “destruction of the personality”.

Only the socialist revolution provides a way out. “If man is shaped by his surround-ings,” Marx wrote, “his surroundings must be made human.”371 There can be no freedom of man from society, freedom is possible only in society. To free the individual it is neces-sary to free the entire mass of people, by changing the social relations which enslave them. Emancipation of the individual through emancipation of the working masses—this is the substance of the Communists’ position, the corner-stone of their collectivist ideology.

When bourgeois propaganda accuses Marxists of “destruction of the personality”, it tacitly proceeds from the assumption that private property is the basis of the personality. But the abolition of private property is horrifying only to those whose entire social posi-tion, beginning with their comforts and ending with their prestige among the people around them, is based not on personal abilities and personal merits, but on the privileges of wealth. To such men the abolition of private ownership of the means of production used for the exploitation and degradation of other persons really seems to be the destruc-tion of their own personality, all the more so since this deprives them of the opportunity of leading a life of idleness, and for the bourgeois parasite work is the most horrible mis-fortune.

To men of labour and talent, on the other hand, socialism opens up broad opportuni-ties for the development and application of their personal gifts. Only the socialist system

allows for “...actually drawing the majority of toilers into an arena of such labour in which they can display their abilities, develop their capacities, reveal their talents, of which there is an untapped spring among the people, and which capitalism crushed, sup-pressed and strangled in thousands and millions”372 (Lenin).

Socialism for the first time recognises the right to development and independent creative endeavour of ordinary working people, whom bourgeois ideologists have al-ways scornfully regarded as “a colourless mass”. It at the same time guarantees this right, placing in the hands of society all the material means which make it possible to develop the talents and abilities of people. As the socialist system grows stronger, as material and spiritual values are produced in greater abundance and social relations are improved, all members of society have ever greater opportunities for development and creative effort, for the all-round development of their personality.

Combination of Personal and Social Interests

The antithesis of personal and social interests arose together with private property, under the domination of which man, regarding society as a hostile, oppressing force, seeks to give society as little as possible and grab for himself as much as possible.

The socialist system is concerned first of all for the common interests. For on them depends the welfare not only of the entire society, but also of each of its members. That is why socialist morality condemns the signs of individualism and small-proprietor self-ishness, rightly considering them survivals of the capitalist past in the minds of men. But, on the other hand, Engels already pointed out that “society cannot free itself unless every individual is freed”.373 Care for man, a thoughtful, attentive attitude to him is one of the cardinal demands of socialist morality.

Socialism opens before every member of society the way to improve his position. It is first and foremost the way of more productive and skilled labour. Naturally, the desire of people to raise their living standard in this way conforms to the interests of society and is supported by it to the utmost. This is the objective basis on which the organic unity of personal and social interests arises in socialist society. This distinctive feature of the socialist system is reflected in the minds of the people. As the socialist conscious-ness of the masses grows, moral stimuli begin to play an ever greater part in the activi-ties of people, and concern for public affairs becomes a personal affair of everyone. A man reared in the spirit of socialist morality cannot look on with indifference at short-comings, at anything that runs counter to the interests of society, even though it does not concern him directly. The feeling of being master and the sense of responsibility for the common cause inseparably associated with it constitute a major feature of the spiritual make-up of the new man. Members of socialist society have not only great rights, but great duties as well. But these are the duties of masters, of real citizens of their country, and not the obligations of downtrodden subjects.

It is understandable that in the course of a few decades it is impossible fully to eradicate all the conceptions and habits which struck deep root during the domination of private property for thousands of years. Various traits of the old morality and way of life

still survive in the minds of some members of socialist society: a bureaucratic attitude to work, money-grabbing, selfishness, nationalistic prejudices, a wrong attitude to women, drunkenness, and anti-social views which at times lead to hooliganism and crime. We speak of all such phenomena as being survivals of capitalism. Thereby we also stress that these phenomena are alien to socialism and that in themselves social relations in socialist society, far from producing such ugly phenomena, on the contrary, gradually oust them.

The survivals of capitalism persist tenaciously in the minds of some members of so-ciety. We must not forget that there are large spheres of human relations in which anti-social habits, views, and customs exert a particularly great influence, for example, fam-ily relations and the general way of life.

That is why even after the victory of socialism there remains the need for patient and constant educational work. Socialism is inconceivable without social discipline which obliges the citizen to abide by the demands of society and to observe the norms of be-haviour of the socialist community. This also conforms to the interests of each person, if these interests are understood correctly and their dependence on the prosperity of society as a whole is appreciated.

The developing unity of personal and social interests is a very important moral ad-vantage of the socialist system which removes the old tragedy of the “divided” human mind, and brings up harmonious, cheerful, and courageous people who are not daunted by difficulties. The victory of socialism is a tremendous moral revolution. “It goes with-out saying,” the great French writer Romain Rolland wrote on this score, “that this moral revolution has not been completed as yet, but is being made, and its consequences will be immeasurable It may already now be said that it is saving civilisation from desperate bankruptcy, in which the human spirit would land in the impasse of its futile and proud solitude.... A new age of a mighty uplift and joyous forward movement is opening for all mankind.”

5. Driving Forces of the Development of Socialist Society

The development of society does not stop with the victory of socialism, but on the contrary is accelerated. The development of industry and agriculture, of social and po-litical relations, of the entire social superstructure, and their improvement along the lines leading to communism, proceed with a rapidity without precedent in any earlier social system.

This process is based on objective laws governing the development of socialist so-cial production. This gives the development of socialist society entirely new features radically distinguishing it from the exploiting system.

Society is rid of antagonisms for all time. The contradictions in its development have become non-antagonistic. These are mainly contradictions and difficulties of growth, contradictions which arise in the clash of the new and the obsolete, the advanced and the backward. Such contradictions are resolved not through class struggle—in so-cialist society there are not social sections or classes interested in retarding development

and upholding the old, backward order of things—but on the basis of the co-operation of all classes and sections equally interested in consolidating socialism and building com-munism. This does not mean, of course, that in socialist society there are no manifesta-tions of conservatism and backwardness, attempts to hang on to obsolete forms that run counter to the new requirements of life.

Criticism and self-criticism is the main instrument for bringing to light and resolving contradictions in socialist society. Extensive criticism and self-criticism is needed for timely discovery and removal of shortcomings and contradictions, for promptly cutting out what is old and obsolete. Where criticism is stifled, stagnation results and the neces-sary resolving of contradictions becomes more difficult. That is why socialist society is vitally interested in the constant development of criticism and self-criticism; it sees in them an important means of rallying the creative energies and political activities of the working people to overcome difficulties, to accomplish new tasks in building commu-nism.

The fact that the socialist system is free from antagonistic class contradictions is of tremendous advantage to it, affording unprecedented opportunities for the harmonious development of the productive forces and for corresponding progress of the political and ideological superstructure of society. An ever greater part in the development of society is played by factors which do not divide people and do not set them at loggerheads, but unite them and concentrate their energies on the achievement of common aims and tasks. The appearance of new driving forces of development enables society to advance faster and with smaller social outlays than in the past.

Moral stimuli developing during collective labour on the basis of socialist property become the main driving force of social development. From a means of enriching the exploiters, labour has become a social function encouraged by society; it has become a service for the common good. Collective labour, relations of comradely mutual assis-tance and co-operation give rise to a new form of constructive co-operation of socialist emulation—that helps to bring out and develop their capabilities. In contrast to capitalist competition, which is based on the principles of “each for himself” and “homo homini lupus”, it presupposes all-round comradely mutual assistance, exchange of the best ex-perience, the systematic bringing up of those who lag behind to the level of those in ad-vance.

In view of the basic changes in class relations resulting from the victory of social-ism, a solid basis is laid for the ideological and political unity of society. Such unity of all classes and social groups in respect of their chief interests also becomes a powerful driving force of social development. Ideological and political unity makes it possible to rally all the working people for the accomplishment of the most important economic, socio-political and cultural tasks. And such cohesion produces a force capable of over-coming any obstacle.

Friendship of the socialist nations, in each country and on the scale of the world so-cialist system, is an important driving force of socialist society. This friendship not only helps to uphold the gains of the working people from the encroachments of the imperial-

ists, but also creates the most favourable conditions for the economic and cultural pro-gress of all the peoples on the basis of fraternal mutual assistance. The Party, the state and socialist society as a whole devote much attention to strengthening friendship among the peoples. Economic, political, and cultural and educational measures are all being used to this end. Experience shows that for this purpose it is necessary consis-tently to combat all relapses into nationalism.

The lofty ideological qualities of socialist man are expressed in the feeling of social-ist patriotism. This new, socialist patriotism is now not only the attachment which man naturally feels for his native land, people, customs, language, etc. It is in the first place devotion to the socialist system, based on an understanding of its decisive advantages over capitalism. Such patriotism, far from dividing, draws the representatives of differ-ent nations closer together. The natural outcome of socialist patriotism is not national estrangement, but a feeling of deep international solidarity and friendship with the work-ing class and all the working people of other countries. Socialist patriotism is an active, dynamic feeling. It prompts people to give their country all their energies and abilities and, if need be, their life. This was vividly shown in the feats of the Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War.

Socialist society, therefore, possesses mighty driving forces which ensure steady and rapid progress in all spheres of life.

A very important feature of social development under socialism is that it loses its spontaneous character and becomes a process in which the planned conscious activities of men play an ever greater part.

In these conditions tremendous importance attaches to the activities of the Marxist-Leninist party, the vanguard of the working people, in which the collective intellect and will of socialist society are expressed most fully and comprehensively. Correct and skil-ful leadership by the Party is an indispensable condition for realising all the intrinsic potentialities and advantages of the socialist system.

Hence, Marxist-Leninists after the victory of socialism, too, attach prime importance to consolidating the leadership of the Party, to enhancing its role in all spheres of soci-ety’s life.

The leadership of the Communist Party is one of the decisive factors making for the great achievements of socialism. It is a guarantee of progress, of the successful solution of the great task of transition to communism confronting the society that has built socialism.

CHAPTER 25

THE WORLD SOCIALIST SYSTEM

After socialism had extended beyond the confines of one country and had become a world system, both theory and practice were confronted with new important problems bound up with the organisation of a world socialist economy, with relations between independent sovereign socialist states.

The study of these problems was, of course, not an entirely new matter for the Communist and Workers’ Parties of the socialist countries. They were in possession of a reliable foundation, consisting of the huge ideological wealth left by the founders of Marxism-Leninism, and they also had some practical experience in establishing relations between nations based on internationalist principles which had been accumulated prior to the formation of the world socialist system.

But the birth of this system required the solution of many new problems put forward by practice, the creative development of Marxist-Leninist theory on the basis of experi-ence. The generalisation of this experience forms a new and still incomplete chapter of Marxist-Leninist science, one which is of tremendous significance for the socialist coun-tries and the international working-class movement as a whole.

1. Historical Features of the Formation of the World Socialist System

Speaking of a world system, whether socialist or capitalist, we have in view not a simple aggregate of states with a social system of the same type.

There was a time when one and the same social system prevailed on a considerable part of the globe, the feudal system, for example, but there was not and could not be any world system because the countries in which this system prevailed were not linked up in a single social and economic organism, and often even knew nothing, or almost nothing, about each other.

The conditions for the formation of a world system first arose only the epoch of capitalism, when the development of the productive forces caused the economies of dif-ferent countries to be connected by strong ties. The process of forming the world capital-ist system took hundreds of years and was completed only in the epoch of imperialism. International division of labour turned all capitalist countries into links of a world econ-omy. It was inconceivable that any of them could exist completely isolated from interna-tional economic connections.

The world capitalist system was not destined to retain a monopoly position for long. The countries freed from the rule of capital united and formed a world socialist system. Its formation was influenced both by political factors (particularly the need for joint de-fence against imperialist aggression) and economic factors—requirements of the rapidly developing productive forces of today which call for increasing internationalisation of the economy. The Programme of the C.P.S.U. describes the world socialist system as “a social, economic and political community of free, sovereign peoples following the so-cialist and communist path, united by an identity of interests and goals and the close

bonds of international socialist solidarity”.374

Ways and Methods of Formation of the Two World Systems

Underlying the formation of the two world systems are the requirements of the de-velopment of the productive forces, outgrowing national bounds. But this factor operates not by itself, but through the policy and activities of the ruling classes. In one case it was the bourgeoisie that was the main force which implemented the objective tendency to bring together countries and peoples, their economy and culture; in the other case it was the working class. Naturally, the formation of the capitalist and the socialist world sys-tems proceeded in different ways and by different methods, and produced different re-sults.

The drawing together of countries under capitalist conditions most of all resembled the “rapprochement” of a robber and his victim. Tendencies towards the uniting of na-tions, towards the creation of international economic and political connections, are real-ised under capitalism in a form that is painful for the peoples. For capitalism cannot “unite” nations in any other way than by the subordination and exploitation of weak countries by strong ones, the enslavement of hundreds of millions of people, and the conversion of whole continents into colonial, agrarian and raw-material appendages of the imperialist centres.

For this reason the formation of the world capitalist system took place during an in-cessant struggle in all forms—military, political, economic, and ideological. The fact that the countries had the same social system did not give rise to international solidarity. This is convincingly demonstrated by history. In the second half of the eighteenth cen-tury there was one large capitalist state in the world, Britain, but her ruling class acted as the sworn enemy of bourgeois revolutions in other countries. This was vividly seen dur-ing the bourgeois revolution in France, which began in 1789, when Britain became the bulwark of the counter-revolutionary bloc of feudal absolutist states which sought to restore the old order.

The historic mission of the working class determines the fundamentally different ways and methods of formation of the world socialist system. The working class, which abolishes for ever exploitation and oppression in its own country, has no intention of preserving or reviving them in the international arena. The way in which the world so-cialist system was formed was by the voluntary drawing together of equal peoples and not by the subordination of the weak to the strong. Deep social solidarity and unity re-sulting from the fundamental interests of the working people being the same in all the countries of this system become the basis for relations between its members.

The social nature of the two world systems explains also other fundamental distinc-tions between them.

The world capitalist system has a rigid hierarchy that has come into being through the actual correlation of forces and is often legally sanctioned as well. It resembles a pyramid, at the top of which is a small group of developed countries, while at the bottom is a huge mass of backward and oppressed peoples.

The world socialist system looks entirely different. It is not a hierarchy based on subordination and dependence, but a community of free and equal states.

The world capitalist system by its very nature is adapted not for removing, but for preserving and deepening the differences in the economic, social and cultural position of the countries belonging to it, the unevenness of their development. The essence of the world capitalist system consists in the subordination of the economy, policy, and social relations of most of its countries to the interests of the monopoly bourgeoisie of the well-developed states.

The world socialist system, on the contrary, by its nature is adapted for promoting the swiftest development of all countries belonging to it and for bringing up those lag-ging behind to the level of the advanced ones.

The existence of this system makes economically possible the building of socialism in any country, irrespective of its level of development in the moment of the revolution, whereas formerly such a possibility existed only for countries which had at least an av-erage level of economic development. This circumstance is of special importance for the underdeveloped countries.

The world socialist system reliably guarantees the security of each member-country in face of the imperialist camp and thereby creates the political possibility of building socialism in any country, irrespective of the size of its territory and population and mili-tary potential. This is particularly important for small countries which by themselves would never be able to defend their socialist gains from imperialist encroachments.

The essence of the world socialist system consists in the establishment of such rela-tions between countries as most of all accord with the interests of each country sepa-rately and of the socialist world as a whole, relations which help to bring out to the full the historic advantages of socialism and, on this basis, promote the swiftest economic, social, and cultural advance of the entire socialist camp towards communism.

Of course, the process of formation and consolidation of the world socialist system must not be oversimplified. This system does not come into existence in a ready-made form but passes through definite stages of development. A detailed description of the processes that have so far taken place within the countries of the socialist system and in their relations with one another was given in the Statement of the Moscow Conference of Representatives of 81 Communist and Workers’ Parties (1960).375

2. Principles of Relations Between Socialist States (Socialist Internationalism)

The problem how relations should be arranged between countries in which the working class is at the helm had been solved in general form by Marxism-Leninism long before the world socialist system was formed. Equality of nations and proletarian inter-nationalism—such are the unshakable principles by which Marxist parties of the work-ing class have always been guided. But before the working class won power, the princi-ples of proletarian internationalism in the main regulated relations between national con-tingents of the international proletariat, between its political parties, trade unions, and other organisations of the working people. At that time there was no experience of ap-

plying a policy of proletarian internationalism in state affairs, nor could there have been any.

Such experience was gained after the victory of the proletarian revolution in Russia. For the first time relations between nations and peoples within a huge multi-national state were arranged in conformity with the principles of equality, voluntariness and mu-tual assistance, respect for national sovereignty and consideration for the specific fea-tures of each socialist nation and nationality.

When the socialist revolution triumphed in other countries as well, Soviet experi-ence became for them a point of departure, a model and an example. But this experience could not be transferred mechanically to the socialist camp as a whole, since it was not a case of relations within one country, but of relations between independent socialist states, headed by independent Communist and Workers’ Parties.

It was necessary to apply in a creative way the general principles of proletarian in-ternationalism to relations between socialist states. At the same time this meant the fur-ther development of these principles themselves, the enrichment of proletarian interna-tionalism with new historical content. It acquired a new quality and became socialist internationalism, which incorporated relations between socialist states as well.

The principles of socialist internationalism rest on a solid scientific foundation: they take into account the objective tendencies of the development of nations in the socialist era. These tendencies wore pointed out by N. S. Khrushchov in his report on the Pro-gramme of the C.P.S.U. at the Twenty-Second Congress. Referring to the experience of the Soviet Union, he noted: “Under socialism two interlinked, progressive tendencies are operating in the national question. First, there is a rapid, all-round development of each nation. The rights of the Union and Autonomous Republics are expanding. Secondly, the socialist nations are drawing closer and closer together under the banner of proletarian internationalism; they influence and enrich each other more and more.”376

The same tendencies undoubtedly operate also in the world socialist system as a whole. While the content of socialist construction is the same for all countries, each na-tion which has overthrown capitalism seeks to plot the course of its economic, political and cultural development in such a way as to be most in conformity with its concrete historical features and progressive traditions.

The economy of each socialist country develops as an independent national econ-omy with its own proportions and correlations which are determined by the historically formed branches of the economy, the special features of the production experience of the population, the character of the natural resources and the geographical location of the given country, etc.

The preservation of national bounds is characteristic of the subsequent stages in building the new society as well. Lenin pointed out that national and state distinctions between peoples and countries would continue to exist for a very long time even after the victory of the working class on a world scale.377 This is explained by the fact that a nation, a national language, and a national form of culture belong to social phenomena marked by unusual stability.

Besides the tendency towards full development of the potentialities of each nation individually, another tendency operates in the world socialist system, that towards draw-ing the nations and peoples closer together, interaction of the national economic sys-tems, and mutual influence and mutual enrichment of the nations. This tendency is based primarily on the requirements of the development of the productive forces. Even under capitalism these requirements tend to develop and extend the ties between nations, while under socialism they accelerate the process of rallying states and peoples ever closer together.

The two tendencies are not contradictory but, on the contrary, are closely connected. Only the full development and flowering of national forms of life open the way to the voluntary, genuinely internationalist drawing together and unity of the socialist nations. And this in turn, is a prime condition for the progress of the national economy and culture.

Each Socialist Country Is a Sovereign State

The principles of equality and sovereignty are an important integral part of socialist internationalism. These general democratic principles were proclaimed for the first time as far back as the period of the formation and consolidation of bourgeois nations. But under capitalism recognition of these principles is largely of a formal nature. Actually the relations between capitalist states are determined by the real relationship of forces. A more powerful state disregards standards of international law, does not stop at brazenly intervening in the domestic affairs of weaker states and makes them dependent upon itself when it considers necessary to do so.

More than that, capital knows no state boundaries, it penetrates the weak countries, subordinates their economy to its interests, and deprives them of economic independ-ence. That is why under capitalism very often a state is formally considered sovereign, while actually its policy is dictated by the Great Powers.

Only under socialism do equality, national independence, and sovereignty acquire their real meaning. Political sovereignty is reinforced by the fact that owing to public ownership of the main means of production, each nation has the opportunity of being the master of its economy—the corner-stone of its existence—and of directing its develop-ment in conformity with its national requirements.

Socialism proclaims genuine sovereignty and also demands its strict observance.

Why? Because the building of socialism is based on the activity of the broad masses. It is only when the people of a given country themselves determine their economic and political tasks that the masses are able to participate consciously and actively in the ac-complishment of these tasks and, if need be, are ready to endure temporary hardships and make sacrifices for the sake of the freely chosen aim. No one can know better the requirements and potentialities of a given socialist nation than that nation itself, no one can more correctly take into consideration the specific features of its economic, political, and cultural development. Any interference from outside, even if dictated by the best of intentions, can prove not only out of place, but even harmful to the building of socialism

in a given country. Mutual respect for sovereignty is a necessary condition for the de-velopment of socialism in one or another country to assume forms which take into ac-count the specific national features and traditions of the people.

Does not all this, however, hamper the drawing of the peoples closer together, which is the ideal of socialism? Not in the least. Leninism teaches us that observance of the equality and sovereignty of nations is essential to ensure that they draw closer together.

Such precisely, as pointed out earlier, is the dialectics of the national question. Only when the nations are really free and equal, when no one nation encroaches on the inde-pendence of another, only in that case do they deeply trust each other, voluntarily enter into close relations dictated by the interests of developing the economy, defence, and foreign policy.

Remaining a sovereign state, each socialist country at the same time cannot isolate itself within national bounds and ignore the ways and methods by which the problems of socialism are solved in other countries. Of course, all the socialist countries—big and small— accumulate their own, independent experience in building socialism. In this, as in many other respects, they are equal and each one is capable of making its contribution to the theory and practice of socialism. But the socialist countries are vitally interested in utilising all the experience which has been accumulated by the peoples who are building socialism and which helps to create the new society more successfully and avoid mis-takes and shortcomings. It is clear that this notably accelerates the building of socialism in each country.

The utilisation of experience, of course, has nothing in common with copying it mechanically. Experience is used creatively: each country takes from it the substance, that which is of non-transient value and can be successfully applied in the concrete conditions.

Unity and Mutual Assistance

Socialist internationalism is by no means limited to recognition of independence and equality.

The voluntary pooling of effort in the joint work of building socialism and fraternal mutual support are the new and specific element that distinguishes relations between socialist states. In the final analysis, these relations are determined by the socialist rela-tions of production. They are based on comradely co-operation and mutual assistance.

Socialism has the great advantage that it enables the national interests of each coun-try to be harmoniously combined with the interests of the world socialist system as a whole. Patriotism of the peoples of the socialist countries merges with internationalism. Love for one’s own socialist country is organically combined with love for the whole family of fraternal socialist nations.

Relations based on good will, on friendship of the peoples themselves, on the basic interests in common of the working people—these are the strongest relations between states in the world. That is why the camp of socialism is not an ordinary coalition of states bound by interests that temporarily coincide, but a solid force which stands op-

posed to the imperialist camp as a single whole, as a strong political and economic community founded on the lasting, basic interests of its members.

Socialism, as distinct from bourgeois democracy, cannot limit itself to the formal proclamation of equality of nations. It lays chief stress on the achievement of actual equality. For this it is necessary to eliminate the unevenness in the economic and cul-tural development of separate nations that was inherited from capitalism, and achieve a general advance. Such is the policy pursued in relations of nations constituting one multi-national state. The same principles are applied in international relations within the world socialist system.

The principle of mutual assistance permeates the political relations between socialist states as well. The existence of a powerful socialist camp safeguards the sovereignty and security of each socialist country and guarantees the preservation of the gains of its peo-ple’s revolution. A powerful demonstration of this was the unanimous support the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries rendered the working people of Hungary during the counter-revolutionary uprising provoked by foreign imperialism.

Acting in a united and solid front in the world arena, the socialist countries enhance manifold the efficacy of their foreign policy, whose aim is the maintenance and consoli-dation of world peace, peaceful coexistence, and economic competition with capitalism.

Overcoming the Survivals of Nationalism

Thus, the socio-economic and ideological community of the states belonging to the world socialist system creates favourable objective conditions for the solution of all problems bearing on their mutual relations. But the Marxist-Leninist party of each so-cialist country needs to be able to solve these problems in such a way as to combine the national interests with the general interests of the socialist camp.

It is fully possible to achieve such a combination on the basis of the principles of so-cialist internationalism. The experience of the world socialist system shows that the ap-plication of these principles in relations between states yields remarkable results. No friction or incidental misunderstandings, inevitable during the development of new in-ternational relations, detract in the least from the historic significance of this experience.

But the principles of socialist internationalism, just as the forms of their application, are something new in international relation, whereas the relations of the old type have existed throughout the many centuries of exploiting society. Between separate countries, including those which have now become socialist, there were in the past quarrels and clashes which left bitter memories. To get rid of them quickly, to remove the accumula-tions of the past, is not always easy, because petty-bourgeois nationalistic prejudices are particularly persistent. As early as in 1920, Lenin foresaw the danger of nationalism in establishing new relations between countries and peoples, and he pointed out the need for a resolute struggle against this deep-rooted evil.378

It is no accident that imperialist reaction, which seeks to weaken the world socialist camp, pins its hopes on a revival of nationalistic elements in the socialist countries. Nor is it accidental that the most poisonous flowers of revisionism blossom in the nationalist

morass. Nationalist prejudices, as a rule, form the common platform on which the rem-nants of the exploiting classes, direct agents of imperialist intelligence services, and trai-tors to the cause of socialism unite or struggle against the new system.

It is well known that revisionist elements, seeking to pave the way for nationalism in the international working-class movement, took up the slogan of “national communism” invented by imperialist reaction. They pretend that there is a recipe for communism that is fully compatible with national isolation and exclusiveness, that can allegedly be built by a country standing apart from other socialist countries and even being in hostility to them, renouncing all loyalty to the principles of proletarian internationalism and class solidarity. It is clear, however, that such recipes have nothing in common with commu-nism and are an attempt to revive under a new label the old opportunist policy of adapt-ing the working-class movement to the interests of the reactionary bourgeoisie. Any one who speaks in favour of “national communism”, who encroaches on the unity of the world socialist system, in fact renounces the ideas of socialism.

The experience of the world socialist system, as the Programme of the C.P.S.U. points out, has confirmed the need for a very close alliance of the countries that have broken away from capitalism and for their joint efforts in building socialism and com-munism. A policy of building socialism in isolation from the world community of so-cialist countries is theoretically untenable because it contradicts the objective laws of development of socialist society. It is economically harmful because it leads to wasting social labour, reducing the rate of growth of production and making the country depend-ent on the capitalist world. Politically, it is reactionary and dangerous because instead of uniting the peoples in face of the united front of imperialist forces, it disunites them, nurtures bourgeois-nationalist tendencies and in the long run may lead to the loss of so-cialist gains.

The C.P.S.U. Programme regards nationalism as the main political and ideological weapon used by international reaction and the remnants of the domestic reactionary forces against the unity of the socialist countries. Nationalism harms the common inter-ests of the community of socialist countries and primarily the people of the country where it is manifested, since isolation from the socialist camp hampers the country’s development, deprives it of the advantages of the world socialist system and encourages attempts by the imperialist powers to use the nationalistic tendencies for their own ends.

“Nationalism,” the Programme of the C.P.S.U. points out, “can gain the upper hand only where it is not consistently combated. The Marxist-Leninist internationalist policy and determined efforts to wipe out the survivals of bourgeois nationalism and chauvin-ism are an important condition for the further consolidation of the socialist commu-nity.”379

The need for combating nationalism was also forcefully pointed out by the interna-tional meetings of Communist representatives in 1957 and 1960. The Statement of the 1960 Meeting says: “In order to strengthen fraternal relations and friendship between the socialist countries it is necessary that the Communist and Workers’ Parties pursue a Marxist-Leninist internationalist policy, that all working people be educated in the spirit

of combining internationalism and patriotism, and that a resolute struggle be waged to eliminate the survivals of bourgeois nationalism and chauvinism.”380

The danger of nationalism is especially great where the leaders of the state forget about internationalism, are inclined to over-exaggerate national distinctions and to close their eyes to the general laws of socialist construction, and where the narrowly under-stood interests of their country or their party are counterposed to the interests of all other fraternal peoples. This happened in Yugoslavia, where at one time narrow nationalistic tendencies came to the fore in the policy of the country’s leaders. Later the same thing happened also with the leadership of the Albanian Party of Labour, although in a differ-ent ideological setting, and in particular under cover of “revolutionary” phraseology. The Twenty-Second Congress of the C.P.S.U. noted that the actions of the Albanian leaders run counter to the Declaration and Statement of the Meetings of Representatives of Communist and Workers’ Parties in 1957 and 1960 respectively and cannot but be appraised as splitting actions which aim at undermining the friendship and solidarity of the socialist countries, and which play into the hands of the imperialists. At the same time the Congress expressed the hope that the Albanian leaders, if they value the inter-ests of their people and really want friendship with the C.P.S.U. and all fraternal parties, will renounce their erroneous views and return to the path of unity and co-operation with all the socialist countries, with the international communist movement.

The Marxist-Leninist parties proceed from the premise that nationalistic hangovers and prejudices cannot be eliminated by methods of compulsion and scolding. Alongside patient explanation and criticism of nationalistic errors, a decisive part in overcoming these is played by the consistent practical application of the principles of socialist inter-nationalism. In an atmosphere of fraternal co-operation, constant readiness to help one another, equality, and mutual respect for the interests, customs, and traditions of each other, the hotbeds of nationalist discord and former enmity are swiftly stamped out, na-tionalist prejudices are obliterated and disappear.

Genuine internationalists should always remember that distortion of the role of the Soviet Union in the socialist camp has a special place in the arsenal of present-day reac-tion and nationalism. Capitalist propaganda eagerly spreads the most monstrous fabrica-tions on this subject. It is echoed too by people who call themselves communists but who in fact have slipped into the nationalistic morass. They assert, for example, that the Soviet Union lays claim to the role of “hegemon”, that it “domineers over” the other socialist countries, the Communist Parties of each are “dependent” on the C.P.S.U.

Such gossip and rumours are spread in the hope of somehow discrediting the Soviet Union and the entire socialist system, of stirring up nationalistic prejudices among back-ward and uninformed people, of undermining the trust of the masses in Soviet policy.

In reality the role of the Soviet Union in the world socialist system has nothing in common with the role ascribed to it by hostile propagandists. In the communist move-ment there are no “superior” and no “subordinated” parties at all, just as there are no “hegemon” states or “satellite” states in the socialist camp. All the socialist countries are fully independent in solving their national problems and each one has an equal voice in

solving the common problems of the socialist camp. “In the socialist camp or, which is the same thing, in the world community of socialist countries, none have nor can have any special rights or privileges.” (Extract from the Programme of the C.P.S.U.)381

Similarly, the Communist and Workers’ Parties of these countries are fully inde-pendent and equal; they are responsible to the working people of their country and the entire world working-class movement, and not to the party of any one country. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union does not in the least claim a special, leading role in the international communist movement.

Hence it is wrong to speak of the socialist camp being directed by the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union, as stressed in the report of S. Khrushchov to the Twenty-First Con-gress of the C.P.S.U., does not direct the other countries. Thanks to its rich experience it merely sets an example of struggle for socialism, an example of the successful solution of the most intricate problems of socialist and communist construction. “As for the So-viet Union,” N. S. Khrushchov said, “everyone knows that its role consists not in direct-ing other countries, but in having pioneered the way to socialism for mankind, in being the most powerful country in the world socialist system and the first to enter the period of full-scale communist construction.”382 Here are the roots of the confidence and pres-tige enjoyed by the Soviet Union in the community of socialist nations.

3. Development of World Socialist Economy

At a definite level of development of the productive forces the economy grows be-yond the bounds of separate countries and becomes a world economy. This, as pointed out earlier, is an objective process which begins under capitalism and rapidly develops under socialism on a new basis and in new forms.

In what definite way is the conversion of the separate national economies into links of a world economy manifested? First of all, that the international division of labour is extended tremendously, and simultaneously the economic ties between nations become closer and more comprehensive.

An intricate, world-wide system of economic relations between states arises already under capitalism. But socialism cannot merely take over this system and develop it on the old basis. It is impossible for both theoretical and practical reasons. Economic rela-tions within the capitalist world economy are of an antagonistic nature and, as a rule, are based on the domination of some and the subordination of others; they lead to the pres-ervation of the backwardness of the less developed countries, to the warped one-sided growth of their economy. Clearly, socialism cannot preserve such relations which are alien to its ideology of equality, friendship, and brotherhood of the peoples. Moreover, the international economic relations that are the most developed from the standpoint of capitalism cannot satisfy the much higher requirements of the world socialist economy.

We should add to this that capitalism itself, in a futile attempt to hinder the building of the new society, frequently breaks economic relations with the countries where a so-cialist revolution has occurred and organises a blockade and economic war against them. As a result, the states which have taken the path of socialism have to establish a new

division of labour and new economic connections.

This historic process was initiated by the socialist revolution in Russia. The first country which broke the chain of imperialist formed the first link in the future world socialist economy. That w why Lenin wrote in 1920 about the need to have in mind, in solving problems of socialist construction, the “tendency towards the creation of a single world economy, regulated by the proletariat of all nations as an integral whole and ac-cording to a common plan. This tendency is already quite clearly revealed under capital-ism and should certainly be further developed and fully consummated under socially.383 When a number of European and Asian countries had taken the path of socialism, the economic structure of the Soviet Union, which had built up a powerful and integrated economic system, was well adapted to becoming the core of the world socialist econ-omy.

The process of the economic drawing together of the socialist countries, the gradual shaping of an integral world economic system, has been under way ever since the social-ist camp was formed. It is not only a new process but also an intricate one, requiring much time and effort. But it is progressing steadily for it represents a law of history in this epoch and takes place under the influence of the same economic laws that underlie the development of each socialist country.

Economic Laws of the World Socialist Economy

The nature of economic relations between the socialist countries is largely deter-mined already by the revolutionary changes taking place in their national economy. So-cialist industrialisation and the establishment of agricultural producer co-operatives in the People’s Democracies have broken up the old proportions between separate branches of the economy. From the very outset in developing new branches of the economy ac-count has been taken of the possibilities opened up by co-operation with other socialist countries. The Soviet Union has begun increasingly to co-ordinate the planning of its economy with the economic needs of the fraternal socialist countries.

Interdependent changes in proportions between industries have thus taken place in all the socialist states, and the structure of exports and imports has been altered to some degree or another. The new economic relations between states have become a necessary element of the process of extended socialist reproduction in each country. The economic law of planned, proportional development, inherent in socialism, has thus begun to op-erate on an international scale, and the co-operation of socialist countries is effected in conformity with this law.

The co-ordination of the national economic plans of the socialist countries has be-come an economic necessity. It is impossible to draw up a scientifically based plan of the economic development of an individual country without taking into account the prospects of development of the whole socialist system. Thus the very requirements of production cause the planning and economic organisations of the socialist countries to look beyond the national horizon and to think in terms of the socialist system as a whole.

By uniting in a world system, the countries obtained a variety of benefits and advan-

tages over and above those resulting from the victory of socialism on a national scale. They no longer needed to spend efforts on establishing branches of the national econ-omy for which they have neither the natural resources nor the appropriate economic fa-cilities.

When the Soviet Union was building socialism while encircled by capitalist states it had to develop an integrated industrial system to develop its economy relying solely on internal sources and the division of labour within one country. This determined the spe-cific type of Soviet socialist industrialisation. The new socialist countries are relieved of the need to strive for such autarchy. They are able to enjoy the tremendous advantages offered by the international socialist division of labour.

International Socialist Division of Labour

At the initial stage the division of labour in the socialist camp was determined by the need for the earliest possible restoration of the war-wrecked economy. It also had to eliminate the consequences of the blockade, with the help of which the imperialists ex-pected to frustrate, or in any case retard for a long time, the economic development of the socialist states.

The Soviet Union supplied the People’s Democracies with the raw material, fuel, equipment, and food they needed. Among themselves these countries exchanged the goods in which they usually traded and of which they had a surplus. They delivered the same goods to the Soviet Union as well.

The initial measures for establishing the international socialist division of labour were based primarily on bilateral agreements. But the rapidly growing diverse economic ties could not for long be regulated and co-ordinated only by bilateral agreements, which were proving inadequate. The development of the productive forces of socialism de-manded a wider and many-sided co-ordination of economic activity, which became es-pecially necessary in view of the successes of socialist industrialisation. To avoid un-necessary parallelism and waste of resources, the socialist countries started increasingly to take account of each other’s requirements and potentialities. For example, taking ac-count of the needs of other countries, the German Democratic Republic and Poland de-veloped shipbuilding; the Soviet Union expanded the extraction of iron ore and oil to meet the requirements of friendly countries; Hungary, reckoning with the demands of her neighbours, increased the production of aluminium, etc.

The advantage of, and need for, wide international specialisation and co-operation of production became more and more obvious.

Measures of this nature have been applied on a particularly wide scale since 1955-56, in engineering in the first place. Specialisation has made it possible to reduce to a minimum duplication both in production and designing, to decrease relatively the range of items produced by each country, while at the same time increasing volume of serial production. Thus, the joint decisions on specialisation in the manufacture of machine tools made it possible to reduce considerably the number of models of machine tools produced in each country. Specialisation in the production of motor vehicles, railway

wagons, farm machinery, ships, power equipment, ball bearings, and some other items has substantially contributed to a rise in labour productivity and a saving of resources.

Subsequently the Communist and Workers' Parties of the European socialist coun-tries developed new forms of dovetailing economic plans. An important step forward was the co-ordination of the main indices of development for individual branches of the national economy in 1956-60. From 1959 the plans for national economic development as a whole began to be co-ordinated. Periodic consultations and exchange of opinions on economic and political problems between leading bodies of the different countries be-came regular practice.

It was decided to draw up in all socialist countries long-range economic develop-ment plans for 10-15 years, to effect more far-reaching specialisation and co-operation of interrelated branches of the economy on the basis of international division of labour.

A new impetus to all these processes was given by the Meeting of Representatives of Communist and Workers’ Parties held in June 1962. It endorsed an important docu-ment entitled “Basic Principles of International Socialist Division of Labour”, which later became the basis for drawing up an effective long-range programme of economic co-operation.

Co-ordination of plans in interrelated branches and in the national economy as a whole is a new form of international economic relations possible only in the socialist system. It greatly extends the scale and sphere of co-operation between states.

Co-ordination of economic development in the socialist countries does not, how-ever, signify that their economy is subordinated to some kind of a single plan, a general plan for them all. By no means. Drawing up their economic plans, they are guided first of all by the interests of national development and reconstruction. But international co-ordination of such plans has become a very effective form of pooling the production ef-forts of the socialist countries, from which each of these countries and the socialist sys-tem as a whole benefit. The Council for Mutual Economic Aid, set up on a voluntary basis in 1949, is the international agency with whose help the governments of the sover-eign socialist states jointly prepare proposals for the planned division of labour. Its range of functions includes the elaboration and promotion of measures for the specialisation and co-operation of production, for the expansion of trade and scientific and technical co-operation.

The principal method of activity of the Council for Mutual Economic Aid is by co-ordinating the long-range and current national-economic plans of its component states so as to ensure the most rational utilisation of their resources. The Meeting of Representa-tives of Communist and Workers’ Parties in June 1962 registered the need to enhance the role, prestige and responsibility of the Council for Mutual Economic Aid and its agencies, and to enlarge their rights.

The pooling of production efforts by socialist countries is realised not only through international bodies, but also through direct contacts between them. Co-operation on a bilateral basis takes place for example, in the manufacture of motor vehicles, turbines and farm machinery between the German Democratic Republic and Czechoslovakia; in

rail-wagon building—between the German Democratic Republic and Poland; in the manufacture of equipment for power stations and in the iron-and-steel and cement indus-tries—between the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic.

International socialist division of labour rules out, in principle, one-sided economic growth of separate countries, their narrow specialisation. The development of particular branches, which meets the needs of the entire socialist camp, also serves the direct inter-ests of each country possessing such a specialised branch, because it is combined with the general strengthening of its production facilities and an advance of the people’s liv-ing standard.

In contrast to what happens under capitalist “integration”, no country in the socialist camp, however small, is threatened with the danger of being turned into an agrarian raw-material or other kind of appendage of a stronger and economically more developed state. This is guaranteed both by the ideology of Marxism-Leninism and by the very nature of the world socialist economy. For the first time in history the peoples of the socialist countries, in drawing up their economic plans for the future, can be guided solely by considerations of economic expediency and not by considerations of prestige and competition. Knowing that they can count on the support and assistance of the entire world socialist camp, they can calmly concentrate their efforts on the development of the branches of the economy for which they have the best natural and socio-economic conditions.

Nature of Economic Ties Within the World Socialist Economy

The division of labour between the socialist countries has given rise to infinitely more diverse and closer economic ties than those which could be formed on the basis of the antagonistic division of labour created by capitalism. In view of this, the traditional forms of economic relations have acquired a new quality.

Since international trade, credit, and other means of traditional economic exchange now serve new aims, they have acquired a content. At the same time the socialist world market, though it has been in existence for a relatively short time, has devised forms of economic co-operation that are new in principle, are unknown to capitalism and are in-conceivable under capitalist conditions.

Trade—the basic form of economic ties between the socialist countries—is con-ducted by state agencies, and not by private firms or persons out to make a profit. It does not involve a fierce competitive struggle that increases anarchy in the economy. In the socialist countries foreign trade is regulated and directed by the governments. Each of them is guided by the national economic plan of its country and at the same time takes into account the requirements and economic prospects of all the socialist countries.

It is perfectly clear that the socialist countries are interested in long-term planning of their foreign economic ties. This is necessary in order to know in advance their com-mitments which should be embodied in definite assignments to plants, and also in order to take into consideration in time the foreign supplies which could be included in the planned resources of factories, areas, and cities.

The world socialist market, in which the exchange of goods is planned several years ahead, is not subject to economic fluctuations. It knows neither marketing difficulties, nor trade barriers and restrictions, nor exclusive regional groupings and preferential tariffs. The capacity of this market is growing steadily under the influence of planned specialisa-tion and co-operation in production within the bounds of the world socialist system.

The system of prices in the world socialist market takes as its initial basis the prices existing in world trade. But the prices in trade between the socialist countries are devoid of the speculative elements of world (monopoly) prices; there are single prices for the same goods and they are stable over a long period. The socialist countries plan prices so that they should promote the most rational co-operation of production and help the less developed socialist countries overcome their lag. Trade will play an important part too in the subsequent stages of development of the world socialist system. There is every pros-pect, evidently, that it will increasingly take place on the same basis as within each so-cialist country, that is, with return for socially necessary labour outlays.

The growth of trade between the socialist countries conclusively demonstrates the extension and deepening of their economic ties. Between 1950 and 1960, the trade turn-over of the world socialist market increased more than threefold, while total capitalist foreign trade only doubled. Socialist countries are the biggest customers and suppliers of the socialist states. Trade with the other socialist countries accounts for nearly four-fifths of all Soviet foreign trade.

Alongside trade, credit is an important basis of economic ties between the socialist countries. In the world capitalist market credit is an instrument which enables the more advanced countries to impose enslaving obligations on their debtors. It is not accidental that a creditor country is most often portrayed as Shylock. In the world socialist market credit for the first time performs new functions, serving as a means of rendering assis-tance and fraternal support.

Credits and loans are granted on the most favourable terms and at the lowest interest rates. A large part of the Soviet Union’s deliveries of equipment to socialist countries are on credit. According to data for 1961, with the aid of the Soviet Union 620 industrial enterprises and 190 separate installations and workshops had been built or were under construction in the socialist countries, approximately half of them in the People’s Re-public of China. Hungary, the German Democratic Republic, Poland and Czechoslova-kia are giving considerable help in the socialist industrialisation of other countries.

The exchange of scientific and technical data has become a new phenomenon char-acteristic only of international socialist relations. In the world capitalist market the achievements of science, inventions, and discoveries are objects of purchase and sale. Patents are a very expensive “commodity”. Most often industrially developed countries avoid selling patents in order to retard the development of countries which lag behind technologically and economically. Such practices are alien to the world socialist market. The fraternal socialist states give one another inventions, technological specifications and blueprints free of charge.

Each socialist country is ready to make its latest technological achievements avail-

able to all the others. The Soviet Union, which is leading in the peaceful application of atomic energy, was the initiator in establishing the Joint Nuclear Research Institute, and it has supplied atomic reactors to a number of fraternal countries (the German Democ-ratic Republic, the People’s Republic of China, Poland and Czechoslovakia). The estab-lishment of joint scientific research centres and designing bureaux will continue to be an important trend of the scientific and technical co-operation of member-countries of the Council for Mutual Economic Aid. The exchange of scientific achievements and joint solution of scientific and technical problems ensure a huge saving of effort and re-sources. Each socialist country makes its contribution to the common cause, sparing other countries laborious and difficult researches.

International socialist co-operation is also being successfully realised in the form of assistance in the training of specialists for different branches of the economy. It is evi-dent that such assistance is of inestimable benefit to the socialist countries, especially those which had no modern industry and had undertaken the task of building it up in a historically brief period.

The consolidation of the socialist states into one economic system is also facilitated by the widespread practice of joint construction of enterprises, the building of inter-state power grids, transport and hydro-engineering installations. Construction of international power transmission lines has been started and in the near future they will interconnect all the European socialist countries. The largest oil pipeline in the world is being laid reach-ing from the Soviet Volga area to Poland, the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslo-vakia and Hungary. This aspect of the economic co-operation of the socialist countries was further developed in 1962 by the decision to begin co-ordinating basic capital in-vestments in the extractive and manufacturing industries.

The many-sided and constantly growing economic ties of the socialist countries in-creasingly draw them together economically and culturally.

4. Economic Relations of the Socialist Countries with Other Countries

The countries of the socialist system seek to develop economic relations with all other states and at the same time they are competing with the most developed capitalist countries in the rapid advance of production and labour productivity.

In competing with capitalism, the socialist countries naturally do not regard the en-tire non-socialist world as a single whole. Actually they compete only with the countries of old, developed capitalism which have made the biggest technological and economic progress. As for states which are taking their first steps in industrial development, the socialist countries do not treat them as competitors. On the contrary, fully understanding their aspirations, they are rendering these countries ever greater economic, scientific, and technical assistance.*

• For details of this assistance see Chapter 16, pp. 373-374.

Today no one can deny that this friendly attitude of the socialist camp has consid-erably eased the situation of the emancipated peoples. It is difficult to over-estimate the

importance of the fact that the young Asian and African states do not find themselves at the mercy of the Western capitalist monopolies and are able to buy on advantageous terms in the world socialist market the machines and other goods they need.

Though a world socialist market has been formed, general worldwide trade relations remain. Consequently, there also remains a world-wide market which embodies the rela-tions between the two world markets. Taking this into account, the socialist countries, being interested in utilising the conveniences afforded by the international division of labour, advocate the wide development of trade between ail states, irrespective of their social systems, and call for the removal of all artificial barriers to commerce.

The socialist countries have goods to sell to developed capitalist countries as well; they can also buy many things from them, of course on mutually advantageous terms. But it is high time that the capitalist countries understood that the socialist economy can develop successfully even if it has to rely solely on its own forces and resources. The world socialist system has mighty productive forces and inexhaustible and diverse natu-ral wealth, which make it economically independent of the capitalist countries.

•     *     *

The world socialist system has entered a new stage of its development. The chief thing now is, said N. S. Khrushchov in his report to the Twenty-Second Congress of the C. P. S. U., by steadily developing the economy of each socialist country and of all of them collectively, to achieve a preponderance of the socialist world’s absolute volume of production over that of the capitalist world.384

During recent years, thanks to the heroic efforts of the working class and peasantry, and to the tremendous work of the Communist and Workers’ Parties, very favourable opportunities have arisen for further vigorous development of the productive forces and a maximum gain of time in peaceful economic competition with capitalism.

The Moscow Meeting of Representatives of 81 Communist and Workers’ Parties pointed out that the further successful development of the world socialist system re-quires  

consistent application, in socialist construction, of the law of planned, proportional development;

encouragement of the creative initiative of the people;  

continuous improvement of the system of international division of labour through the co-ordination of national economic plans, specialisation and co-operation in produc-tion within the world socialist system on the basis of voluntary participation, mutual benefit and all-round improvement of the scientific and technological standard;

study of collective experience;

strengthening of co-operation and fraternal mutual assistance; gradual elimination, along these lines, of historically created differences in the levels of economic develop-ment, and the provision of the material basis for the more or less simultaneous transition of all the peoples of the socialist system to communism.

CHAPTER 26

THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION FROM SOCIALISM  TO COMMUNISM

The building of socialism signifies a historic victory for the working people. But the socialist system, for all its outstanding achievements, is still only the first stage of the society the building of which is the ultimate aim of the working class. That is why, on achieving socialism, the working people proceed under the leadership of the Marxist-Leninist party to the construction of communism.

The gradual development of socialism into communism is an objective law-governed process of social development. Socialism and communism are not two differ-ent social formations but only two phases of one and the same formation, which differ from each other only in degree of maturity. Hence it follows that to build communism while by-passing socialism, to proceed to the construction of communism before social-ism has triumphed and been consolidated, is as senseless as to try to erect the walls of a house without having laid the foundations. Hence it follows also that the socialist system itself cannot be regarded as an immobile, ossified society. If the Party and the state pur-sue a policy which as a whole accords with the requirements of social development, so-cialism by virtue of its inherent laws develops towards communism. “From capitalism,” Lenin pointed out, “mankind can only pass directly to socialism... socialism must inevi-tably develop gradually into communism....”385

The transition from socialism to communism is therefore a gradual process. Com-munism is built by means of improvement and development and not by the infraction or discarding of the basic principles of socialism; it develops out of socialism as its direct continuation. The rudiments and first shoots of communism arise already within socialist society. The transition to communism takes place without clashes or conflicts between classes or social strata, on the basis of their increasing co-operation and unity.

The fact that the transition to communism is gradual does not mean that it is a slow process. On the contrary, it is distinguished by particularly high rates of development in all spheres of social life, from the growth of production to the advance of culture and the political consciousness of people.

What factors accelerate this development? First of all, the utilisation of new techni-cal possibilities which are opened up by modern science and which make possible a big leap in the development of the productive forces in a relatively brief historical period. Moreover, in the period of transition to communism society increasingly masters the laws of its own development. This enables it to choose the shortest ways, to advance not gropingly but with certainty, achieving maximum results with the least effort.

The rates of advance to communism are accelerated to a decisive degree by the growing activities of the broadest masses, by the rapid rise of their cultural, technologi-cal and political level. The building of communism is not a spontaneous process, but a result of the constructive endeavour of the masses themselves, their conscious participa-tion in the expansion of social production, in the advance of culture, and in the admini-

stration of state and economic affairs.

Hence, despite the gigantic scale of the tasks which have to be accomplished during the building of communism, the road to it can be covered in a relatively short historical period. The leadership of all social life by the Marxist-Leninist party is of decisive sig-nificance in this respect.

1. The Leninist General Line of the Party at the New Stage

The deep connection and continuity between communism and socialism should not obscure the fact that the gradual transition to communism is a special stage in the history of the new society.

This is because, on the one hand, during the building of communism society solves a number of new problems not previously encountered by it. On the other hand, the build-ing of communism proceeds under different conditions from those obtaining during the building of socialism: the exploiting classes have already been eliminated, all classes and social strata of society are vitally interested in the triumph of communism and con-sciously seek to achieve it. In other words, communism in contrast to socialism develops on its own basis, i. e., on the basis created during its first phase and not inherited from capitalism. Consequently, too, the methods of activity of the party and state undergo a change. “The building of communism, said N. S. Khrushchov at the Twenty-Second Congress of the C.P.S.U., “is effected by the most democratic methods, by way of im-proving and developing social relations, by the dying out of old forms of life and the appearance of new forms, and by their interlacement and mutual influence.”386

The party is immediately confronted by important tasks. The first of these is that of accurately determining the inception of the stage of full-scale communist construction. Any running ahead or excessive haste, just as much as any delay, may obstruct and slow down the development of society. In a given country the transition to communism can only be made a practical objective when socialism is fully victorious and has been con-solidated, when the necessary prerequisites have been created for advancing to the next stage.

The second task is to develop in a concrete form the Leninist general line as applied to the problems and conditions of the new stage, to shape the political course towards the complete building of communism. This political course expresses in a concentrated form both the objective laws of the transition from socialism to communism and the working people’s conscious endeavour to build communism.

The experience of the C.P.S.U. at this stage, too, is of great value to all peoples and all the Marxist-Leninist parties, being the experience of the vanguard which is paving the way that sooner or later must be trodden by all the others. The fundamental signifi-cance of this experience is pointed out in the major documents of the international com-munist movement, in particular in the Statement of the Representatives of 81 Commu-nist and Workers’ Parties in 1960.387

Significance of the Experience of the C.P.S.U.

In the Soviet Union the building of socialism was in the main completed by the middle of the nineteen-thirties. The basic prerequisites then began to be formed for be-ginning the gradual transition of Soviet society from socialism to communism. In 1941, however, the peaceful creative activities of the Soviet people were interrupted by war, which made it necessary to concentrate all efforts on defence of the Soviet homeland and, after the war, on restoring the national economy and the ruined towns and villages.

The further development of Soviet society on the road to communism was also hampered by the mistakes and abuses of power committed by Stalin, by the conse-quences of the cult of his personality, which adversely affected many spheres of life. The reasons for the personality cult and the damage it does to the cause of socialism have already been mentioned (see Chapter 6). Here, however, it should be stressed that while the personality cult is incompatible with Marxism-Leninism and the interests and ideals of the working class at all stages of its struggle for emancipation, such ideology and practice are still more intolerable in the period of building communism, which can-not be carried out successfully without the all-round development of the initiative and activity of all the working people, without the perfecting of socialist democracy.

What would have happened if the Party had not solved the problem of eliminating the personality cult and overcoming its serious consequences? Answering this question, N. S. Khrushchov said in his report of the Central Committee to the Twenty-Second Congress of the C.P.S.U.:

"There would have been the threat of a cleavage between the Party and the masses, the people, grave violations of Soviet democracy and revolutionary legality, the slowing down of the economic development of the country, a lower rate of communist construc-tion and hence a deterioration of the well-being of the working people In the sphere of international relations, the result would have been a weakening of Soviet positions in world affairs and a worsening of relations with other countries, which would have been fraught with dire consequences. That is why criticism of the cult of the individual and the elimination of its consequences were of the utmost political and practical impor-tance.”388

The activities of the C.P.S.U. and its Leninist leadership during the past few years put an end to the ideology and practice of the personality cult, thereby providing wide scope for the creative forces of the Party and people, enabling the Party’s links with the masses to be extended and consolidated, and increasing its militancy. This has enor-mously helped the C.P.S.U. and its Central Committee to be fully armed in coping with the new problems confronting the country in the period of full-scale communist con-struction and to solve them in a genuinely Leninist way.

The historic victories scored in the recent period in the field of communist construc-tion have confirmed that the Leninist Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. correctly esti-mated the requirements of the new stage in the development of the country and made them the basis of all its work. Only a negligible handful of renegades headed by Molotov, Kaganovich and Malenkov—a handful of ossified conservatives, who had

hopelessly sullied themselves in the past, and were fearful of personal responsibility for crimes committed by them in the period of the cult of Stalin’s personality—-rose up against the Party’s Leninist general line which had the support of the whole people. This anti-Party group, resorting to underhand methods of factional struggle and violating the resolution of the Tenth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.) “On Party Unity”, which had been formulated by Lenin, tried to switch the Party and country from the Leninist path, but were completely routed ideologically and politically. Having smashed this group of fac-tionalists, who were divorced from life and the people, the Party finally cleared the way for a rapid advance and firmly indicated the need for a creative policy that is bold in the Leninist way.

The activities of the C.P.S.U. as the leading force in the society that is building communism have acquired in the highest degree an innovatory, truly revolutionary char-acter. This has found expression both in the theoretical and in the practical sphere. The theoretical generalisations and conclusions of the Twentieth, Twenty-First and Twenty-Second Congresses of the C.P.S.U., and particularly the new Party Programme and other documents of the Twenty-Second Congress, were appraised by the international com-munist movement as an important contribution to Marxist-Leninist theory. In the practi-cal sphere the C.P.S.U., creatively applying the principles of Marxism-Leninism, does not shrink from boldly breaking with obsolete methods of work and forms of organisa-tion, from resolutely replacing them by new ones more in accord with the needs of the time.

During the recent period the Party has still further strengthened its close ties with the masses. On all major issues the C.P.S.U. consults the workers, collective farmers and intelligentsia, paying due regard to their opinions and proposals in drawing up plans for the future. For this purpose ever wider use is made of such forms and methods as con-ferences on particular questions of communist construction, and nation-wide discussion of national economic plans and important legislative proposals. The Party leaders fre-quently make journeys into the localities to obtain a closer acquaintance with the state of affairs on the spot. The Party Congresses and Plenary Sessions of the Central Committee have become a platform from which the most essential, key questions of communist construction are put before the country and discussed. From this platform one can hear now not only the voices of outstanding leaders of the Party and its local organisations, but also voices of non-Party front-rankers in production, specialists and scientists.

The C.P.S.U. could not have achieved success in carrying out the policy of the full-scale building of communism if it had not put an end to the violations of inner-Party democracy that had been committed in the past, if the new leadership of the Party had not made a sharp turn to Leninist principles and standards of Party life. The C.P.S.U. now has a genuinely collective leadership—the Leninist Central Committee of the Party, headed by its First Secretary, N. S. Khrushchov. The convocation of Party Congresses and Plenary Sessions of the Central Committee has been made a regular practice and their role in the Party's life is increasing from year to year. The Party has given an ex-ample of bold criticism and self-criticism, frankly revealing shortcomings to the people

and indicating ways of correcting them. All this—according to the appraisal made by the Twenty- Second Congress and embodied in its resolution—was an important aspect of the activities of the C.P.S.U. during the period 1956-61.

The C.P.S.U. and its Central Committee are performing a great service by fighting indefatigably and consistently for world peace, and against the forces of imperialism and aggression. The Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. and the Soviet Government spare neither time nor effort to achieve a peaceful settlement of issues in dispute, to remove the sources of international conflicts, and to develop friendly relations and fruitful co-operation between states and peoples. The basis of the foreign policy pursued by the Party and the Soviet Government is the Leninist principle of peaceful coexistence. In its foreign policy the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. has set example of combining full adherence to principle and firmness with political flexibility and wise audacity. The So-viet Government’s active policy in world affairs during recent years has enriched inter-national practice with such highly important methods of promoting friendship among the nations as reciprocal visits of political and cultural delegations, personal contacts of statesmen, meetings and conferences at the highest level, etc.

Thus, during the recent period the C.P.S.U. has carried out a great and varied work. While responding to current practical demands this work has at the same time aimed at fulfilling long-range tasks of huge historical dimensions—the tasks of building commu-nism. The political line of communist construction has been hammered out in the course of the Party’s daily activities, its theoretical efforts, and its struggle against those who desired to switch the Party from the Leninist path. This line was given definitive shape in the new Programme of the C.P.S.U. adopted by the Twenty-Second Congress and appraised by the Soviet people and the international communist and workers’ movement as the Communist Manifesto of our time.

Main Features of the New Programme of the C.P.S.U.

The Programme of the C.P.S.U., besides giving a description of the world situation and the present stage of the emancipatory struggle of the working people of all coun-tries, a description that embodies and develops further the achievements of modern Marxist thought, contains a full-scale plan for the construction of communist society.

This is the contribution of the Programme to the treasure-house of Marxism-Leninism, one which makes it the valued possession of the entire communist and work-ers’ movement. Of course, when the Communists of other countries are faced with the task of building communism they will encounter a number of specific tasks and prob-lems. But the chief theses of the Programme of the C.P.S.U. will undoubtedly retain their significance for other Parties as well, inasmuch as they express the general laws and tasks of the transition from socialism to communism.

In describing the main features of the Programme in his report to the Twenty-Second Congress, N. S, Khrushchov emphasised first of all that the main thing is that '"it is a concrete, scientifically substantiated programme for the building of communism.389 It shows how the bright edifice of communism is to be erected.

The Programme marks a new state in the development of the revolutionary theory of Marx-Engels-Lenin. Generalising the experience that has been gained, it furnishes an explicit answer to all the basic questions of the theory and practice of the struggle for communism.

The Programme embodies the indissoluble unity of the theory o] Marxism-Leninism and the practice of communist construction. Its theoretical propositions are not abstract declarations but a generalisation of actual experience, concretely defining the economic, political and ideological tasks of the Party for a considerable period ahead.

The Programme of the C.P.S.U. is a programme of the whole Soviet people. The programme of communist construction could not be anything else, for this construction is the vital collective cause of all workers, peasants and brain workers, the cause of the whole of society, cemented by the ties of ideological and political unity.

The Programme of the C.P.S.U. points out the way to a full realisation in practice of the Party slogan: “Everything for the sake of man, for the benefit of man” And that is quite natural. ‘The Bolsheviks,” said N. S. Khrushchov at the Twenty-Second Congress, “raised the banner of revolution in order to make the life of the working people joyous and happy.”390

A characteristic feature of the Programme is that it proceeds from the new interna-tional conditions: communism is being built not in a capitalist encirclement, but under the conditions created by the increasing superiority of the forces of the world socialist system over those of imperialism, of the forces of peace over those of war. Although the Soviet country has to reckon with the intrigues of the imperialist powers and therefore has to devote considerable expenditure to defence (if this were not so the rate of advance to communism would be still greater), as the forces of socialism increase and those of imperialism grow weaker, more favourable conditions will arise for the building of communism.

The Programme of the C.P.S.U. is a document imbued with the spirit of socialist in-ternationalism. The Party and the whole Soviet people consider that their chief interna-tional duty is to build communism.

Lastly, the Programme of the C.P.S.U. is a document of true communist humanism; it is imbued with the ideas of peace and fraternity among nations. In the course of the advance to communism the Soviet state will become more and more mighty. N. S. Khrushchov, speaking for the C.P.S.U., solemnly proclaimed at the Twenty-Second Congress that all this might of the country would be placed at the service of peace and the progress of mankind.391 The implementation of the Programme will tilt the scales in the international field to such an extent in favour of the forces of peace that there will a real possibility of banishing war for ever from the life of society.

2. Creating the Material and Technical Basis of Communism

The creation of the appropriate material and technical basis is the principal link in the chain of economic, cultural and social tasks that have to be accomplished during the transition to communism. The new society has to be provided with a material and tech-

nical basis which enables the highest productivity of labour to be attained, radically changing the very nature of labour. Only in this way can production be such as to ensure an abundance of material values for all members of society. The creation of the new ma-terial and technical basis makes it possible to transform all social relations, to abolish the differences between classes, between town and country, and, in the long run, between mental and physical labour. Hence it is clear why the creation of the material and techni-cal basis is the chief economic task of the Party and people on the road to communism.

The Industrial Basis of Communism

How is the material and technical basis of communism created?

In the first place, of course, by a gigantic growth of industry. The scale of this growth can be judged from the fact that the industrial output of the Soviet Union will be increased not less than sixfold in 20 years. Figuratively speaking, where there was one factory there must be six. After twenty years the country’s industrial output will be al-most twice as great as that of the entire non-socialist world in 1961.

The chief source of the grandiose increase of the national economy outlined by the Programme of the C.P.S.U. can only lie in a powerful and steady rise in the productivity of social labour. Lenin considered this a most important condition for the victory of the new social system. It demands a complete technical re-equipment of all branches of the national economy. New, more productive equipment will take the place of the existing, and at the same time the technological level and efficiency of production will be raised, its organisation will become more perfect and social production as a whole will undergo a qualitative transformation.

This task is exceptionally complicated, but its fulfilment is quite feasible along the lines of all-round acceleration of technological progress. For the task of building com-munism is being set at a favourable moment in history when the latest achievements of science and technology enable a radical revolution in material production as a whole to be accomplished in a very short period. Our generation is witnessing a great scientific and technical revolution connected with the mastery of atomic energy, the conquest of outer space, the successes of automation, cybernetics and chemistry. This revolution affects all aspects of production—sources of energy, instruments and objects of labour.

Socialism paves the way for wide use of all these progressive tendencies of modern productive forces. Technical progress in socialist society, in contrast to capitalist society, does not take place spontaneously but is controlled consciously and in a planned fashion. Technical policy in this case is an integral part of the state’s economic policy. Moreover, as the Programme of the C.P.S.U. states, “In contrast to capitalism, the planned socialist system of economy combines accelerated technical progress with full employment of all able- bodied citizens.”392

In the period of transition to communism, maximum acceleration of scientific and technological progress becomes a most important national task. The economic section of the Programme of the C.P.S.U. takes fully into account the tasks of utilising to the ut-most the latest trends of science and technology.

Characteristic of modern production is, above all, the growing application of electric power. At present the improvement of technique, technology and the organisation of production in any sphere of the national economy is only possible on this basis. Power consumption, particularly electric power consumption per worker, is the decisive factor in raising labour productivity. For this reason complete electrification of the whole country is a central task of the next twenty years. As the Programme of the C.P.S.U. points out, electrification is the pivot in building the economy of communist society. This is fully in accord with Lenin’s famous formula: “Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.”

The general prospect for the development of the national economy of the U.S.S.R. envisages electric power production increasing at a higher rate than other branches of industry. Not only industry and transport, but all collective and state farms, all towns and villages will have an abundance of electric power. Great opportunities will be of-fered by the creation of a single electric power grid in the U.S.S.R. linked with the power grids of other socialist countries.

A special feature of our era is the discovery of fundamentally new sources of en-ergy, in the first place atomic energy. The Programme of the C.P.S.U. makes the mas-tery of these new sources of energy a task of the coming twenty-year period. The use of atomic energy will be an integral part of the material and technical basis of communist society.

The instruments of labour (machines and machine-tools) play a leading part in the development of the productive forces. The rate of growth of their production must ex-ceed that of all other industries so as to ensure a continuous rise in the productivity of social labour. This rule is vividly reflected in the general perspective of Soviet industrial development in 1961-80. Whereas total industrial output will increase approximately sixfold in this period, the output of the engineering and metal-working industry will in-crease ten- or elevenfold.

But it is not only a question of quantitative changes. Modern engineering technique develops along the line of automation, which radically alters the nature of human labour and vastly increases its productivity. The increased potentialities of automation are par-ticularly bound up with the successes of cybernetics, and the development of electronic computers and control mechanisms,  

Comprehensive mechanisation, i. e., the use of machinery not only in basic but in auxiliary production processes, will already be completed in all branches of the Soviet national economy during the present decade, 1961-70. Arduous manual labour will be completely excluded from production operations. Comprehensive mechanisation in its turn prepares the transition to automation. Comprehensive automation will develop on a mass scale in the second decade (1971-80), when automated workshops and plants will be widespread. All this, of course, calls for a vast development of the engineering indus-try and the manufacture of precision instruments.

Under socialism, automation involves no threat to the working people. It is used in order radically to improve and lighten conditions of labour, to shorten the working day,

and to abolish arduous work and, in the course of time, all unskilled labour. Workers released as a result of automation will be absorbed in a planned way in new, rapidly growing industries and social services.

The modern scientific and technological revolution has affected also the object of labour (raw and other materials), the most conservative element in production. The tradi-tional, naturally occurring materials that were mainly used in industry are being replaced by new materials created by man which have special predetermined properties. These are primarily synthetic materials—modern chemical products, especially polymers, i.e., high-molecular compounds.

This tendency is clearly reflected in the long-range plan for industrial development, which envisages increased smelting of steel up to 250,000,000 tons, i.e., almost fourfold, but an approximately 60-fold increase in the output of synthetic resins and plastics.

It is quite natural that the plans for the creation of the material and technical basis of communism should allot a special place to the chemical industry which is being made one of the leading branches of economy. Moreover, it is a question here not only of in-creasing the output of chemical products but of introducing advanced chemical technol-ogy into all branches of production.

Even this short review of the planned technological changes suffices to show that the Party is undertaking the construction of a qualitatively new material and technical basis of society. An essentially new type of the national economy will take shape, one fully mechanised and, later on, automated.

The achievement of this magnificent aim requires a day-to-day struggle for techno-logical progress. The Communist Party vigorously combats complacency and conceit, which may arise among some economic leaders and specialists under the influence of the successes of socialist economy and science. The Party demands not only that the achievements of Soviet science should be studied and utilised, but also that scientific and technical experience throughout the world should be taken into account.

The Technical Revolution in Agriculture

The transition to a new material and technical basis of agriculture is a complex task with its own special features. Owing to causes which are a legacy of capitalism, the de-gree of concentration of production in agriculture is considerably lower than in industry. Agricultural labour is considerably less mechanised, much work is still done by hand, and consequently productivity is lower than in industry.

The main line of scientific and technical advance in agriculture is the creation of up-to-date machinery, comprehensive mechanisation, and the introduction of the latest achievements of agro-chemistry and agro-biology. Such factors as the application of a scientifically-based system of land cultivation and the use of chemical fertilisers on a large scale are becoming increasingly important.

In its outline of the programme for the building of communism, the Party makes use of all these ways of reconstructing agricultural production. The paramount idea here is comprehensive mechanisation of agriculture and its intensification, increased yields per

hectare with the least expenditure of labour and resources.

The aggregate agricultural output will increase approximately 3.5-fold in twenty years, with, in particular, an annual output of 18-19 thousand million poods* of grain and 30-32 million tons of meat. Yields of grain crops will be doubled. The key to the rise of agriculture is increased grain production. Abundance of grain produces a stable basis for the development of livestock-breeding and other branches of agriculture. The change in the crop structure that is envisaged is such that land will be sown to the most productive crops.

• A million poods = 16,380 metric tons.

The primary requirement for achieving such a rise of agriculture is that it should be fully provided with machinery and technical equipment and that the power consumption per agricultural worker should be sharply increased. Labour productivity must increase 5-6-fold. This is a higher rate of increase than in industry where labour productivity has to increase 4-4.5-fold.

Highly efficient modern agriculture presupposes a wide use of fertilisers and chemi-cal and biological means of combating weeds, diseases and pests of animals and plants. So great is the role of chemisation in raising yields that it ranks equal in importance with mechanisation.

The Party attaches special importance to the development of agricultural science. Scientific institutions and experimental stations must become important links in the leadership of agriculture, and scientists and specialists—the immediate organisers of production. The task set lies in a wider and deeper development of the Michurin trend in agro-biological science.

As a result of all these measures agriculture will be raised to the same level as indus-try. At the same time a social problem of historic significance will be solved: agricul-tural labour will become a variety of industrial labour, and agriculture—a highly devel-oped branch of the economy of communist society.

The Growing Role of Science

In our day, technical progress and the organisation of production rests entirely on applying scientific discoveries and the achievements of engineering and constructional research. In an age of large-scale industry, the attainment of real wealth depends more and more, as Marx put it, “on the general state of science and the degree of development of technology or on the application of this science to production”.393

Socialist society, which owes its origin to conscious application of the discoveries of scientific socialism, is better than any other able to appraise the role and potentialities of science and to establish the most favourable conditions for its development. The Soviet Union is a clear confirmation of this. As regards the number of scientific workers and scientific institutions, and the scale of its training of scientific cadres, the Soviet Union is in advance of the well-developed capitalist countries. Soviet science has to its credit such outstanding achievements as the creation of atomic power stations, surface and

submarine vessels with atomic engines, the construction of ultra-rapid computers, and successes in rocket construction. The launching of artificial earth satellites and the flights of Soviet cosmonauts opened a new page in the history of science.

Never has so much depended on the development of science as in the period of the transition to communism. It has to accelerate and facilitate the building of the material and technical basis of communist society, and make its contribution to the reshaping of social relations. It requires a high level of theoretical investigation, the union of science and production and effective organisation of scientific research.

The prospects for further scientific research are truly boundless. We have every right to expect that science will enable such an inexhaustible source of energy as thermo-nuclear reactions to be placed at the service of man, devise methods of influencing cli-mate and weather, create a vast diversity of artificial materials with needed characteris-tics, penetrate deeply into the earth’s interior, and greatly extend the limits of knowledge and mastery of cosmic space. Tremendous consequences for the development of the productive forces will result from elucidating the biological laws controlling the devel-opment of the organic world, particularly the laws of metabolism and heredity, and studying the mechanism by which living organisms produce high molecular com-pounds—protein, wool, natural rubber, etc., in order to reproduce them by artificial means.

The guarantee of the successful development of science is its close connection with practice, with the creative labour of the people. The union of science and production is the most vital aspect of the process during which science, in Marx’s expression, be-comes a direct productive force. The vast potentialities of science can only be realised if the country’s scientific research as a whole is correctly organised. Socialism has a huge advantage in this respect—it enables science to be planned and co-ordinated on the scale of society as a whole and dovetailed with the actual requirements of production, with people’s practical needs and demands.

In guiding the scientific progress of society, the Marxist-Leninist party takes as its starting point that “the role of the collective opinion of scientists in directing scientific work will increase”.394 An essential condition for scientific development, the Pro-gramme of the C.P.S.U. points out, is free comradely discussion promoting the creative solution of urgent problems.

It is a point of honour for Soviet scientists to take a leading place in world science in all key fields.

Improvement of Planning and Organisation of Production

New technical equipment and scientific discoveries, however great, cannot by them-selves lead to radical changes in the material and technical basis of society. For them to have their proper effect, well- organised production and skilful planning and manage-ment of the economy is needed.

The full-scale construction of communism makes particularly high demands on planning, if only because the scale of production and construction grows immeasurably,

the structure of the national economy becomes more complex, and technological pro-gress more rapid. Planning itself is raised to a higher level. Deep scientific substantiation and strict economic calculation—these are the guiding principles for planning, whether it is a question of drawing up a plan for an individual factory, of seeking the most advan-tageous proportions in the national economy as a whole, of rational utilisation of produc-tion capacities and new techniques, or of correct distribution of capital investments and enhancing their efficiency.

Higher demands on the planning agencies arise from the need for further develop-ment and improvement of specialisation and co-operation, as well as correct siting of industry throughout the country. It is not an accident that the plans for developing the Soviet national economy envisage a considerable transfer of productive forces to the Eastern areas, which have very rich resources of raw materials and cheap power.

Hew techniques will release millions of people from industry, agriculture and trans-port. Managerial, administrative and office staffs will be much reduced. Millions of women will be freed from labour in the home. These forces have to be drawn afresh into expanding material production, which needs numerous additional workers owing to the shortened working day and the vigorous development of new industries. This will re-quire measures for the education, re-education and planned redistribution of the working forces on a completely voluntary basis and strictly complying with the principle of mate-rial incentive.

The system of management of the economy is an important aspect of the organisa-tion of production. During the transition to communism, the principle of democratic cen-tralism underlying the organisation of management of the socialist national economy is further developed. Two tendencies are characteristic of this period: on the one hand, the extension of economic independence and rights of local bodies and enterprises, and, on the other hand, the consolidation and perfecting of centralised state guidance of the na-tional economy. In the conditions of planned socialist economy, these two processes are quite compatible and supplement each other.

Freedom from superfluous regulation from above gives the local bodies and enter-prises a wide field for displaying initiative and independent activity. This, of course, presupposes simultaneous consolidation of democratic principles in guiding the econ-omy—strengthening of public control, greater role of the trade unions and other mass organisations in the management of enterprises.

There is no doubt that every socialist enterprise possesses vast reserves for better utilisation of technical equipment, for economising raw and other materials and power, and for reducing labour losses and sharply raising the quality of output. In the final analysis, all rational organisation of the production process amounts to reducing produc-tion costs per unit of output and lightening people’s labour. The path to it is by consis-tently implementing the principles of cost accounting. Throughout the transition from socialism to communism improving the system of cost accounting, lowering production costs, and raising profitability continue to be a highly important task. The Programme of the C.P.S.U. points out: “It is necessary in communist construction to make full use of

commodity-money relations in keeping with their new content in the socialist period.”395

Is the wide use of cost accounting, that is to say, of commodity-money relations, in contradiction to the aim of building communism, a society where the very concepts of commodity and money are absent? We know that in his work Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R., Stalin maintained that extending the sphere of commodity cir-culation “can only retard our progress to communism” and that “commodity circulation is incompatible with the prospect of the transition from socialism to communism”. This judgement could only stem from a failure to understand the role of commodity-money relations in preparing the conditions for the transition to communism.

In the first place, skilful use of the value levers in production stimulates continuous growth of labour productivity and therefore brings about an abundance of commodi-ties—without which there can be no transition to communism. Further, the worker’s ma-terial incentives enable him to perceive more and more clearly the connection between the personal and the public, the dependence of his well-being on the collective labour of all, and thus assist the education of people in the spirit of communist consciousness, of understanding their obligations to the collective. Finally, cost accounting is a mass school of efficient economic management accustoming people to keep a strict account of labour expenditure per unit of output, to make economical use of time and materials, and to compare the result of production with outlays. This is what communist society re-quires of every worker.

Only with the transition to the single communist form of property and to the com-munist system of distribution will commodity-money relations become economically outdated and wither away.

Change in the Nature of Labour

The transition to communist technology changes also the nature of labour and man’s production habits. Arduous and harmful trades gradually disappear. New occupations appear—operators of automatic machinery, adjusters of equipment, who act as guides of machine processes. On automatic production lines the labour of the worker is of a type which increasingly approximates to that of an engineer or technician.

These changes in the nature of labour are of truly historic significance. For the first time there will come into existence a type of production in which man is completely freed from manual labour and all mechanical functions, which are transferred to the ma-chines while the worker himself occupies the only place worthy of him in the labour process, viz., that of a guiding and regulating force. Only then shall we see the full flow-ering of man’s inherent capacity for creation, i. e., for that form of activity of which no machine is capable.

The development of the productive forces leads to important shifts in the vocational composition of the working class. The share of highly skilled workers in the leading voca-tions increases. The general educational and cultural level of the working people rises swiftly. Engineers, technicians, designers, technologists, and workers of plant laboratories, experimental shops and departments are playing an ever greater part in the enterprises.

Thus, already during the transition to communism, the new aspect of the worker is being moulded, the aspect characteristic of the member of the future communist society. He is politically conscious and educated, a highly skilled specialist in his field, who at the same time possesses wide general cultural outlook. Gradually the way is being out-lined by which a solution will be reached of the great problem of mankind—the emanci-pation of people from the old enslaving division of labour.

This problem will not be solved by people ceasing in general to specialise in any sphere of activity and the disappearance of the need for them to perfect their vocational mastery. On the contrary, the leading tendency of modern technical progress is further proliferation of new branches of production and there are no grounds for assuming that it will change in the future. But narrow specialisation of production does not imply narrow specialisation of people. On the contrary, technical progress is clearly displaying another tendency as well, namely, the greater the progress of science and technology, the more important become the general principles of scientific knowledge on which all modern production processes are based. This holds out the possibility of training people familiar with the fundamentals of many sciences and production processes and therefore, capable in a very short time of mastering work in different branches of production, in conformity with the needs of society and their personal inclinations. This means that the conditions are being created for doing away with the life-long chaining of a man to a single occupa-tion, which, as Marx said, led to the suppression of the entire world of man’s intellectual capacities.

A change will take place also in the very aspect of the primary production unit—the industrial or agricultural enterprise. We can already see how the conversion of socialist enterprises into enterprises of a communist type will take place. New technology, the high degree of organisation and efficiency of production, the automation not only of production processes but of those of management and control as well, will lead to this conversion. The change in the nature of labour, the reduction in intensity and duration of the working day, will make participation in the production process an attractive and in-teresting occupation for all. Under such conditions labour will become man’s prime vital need.

3. Improvement of the People's Well-Being. Creation of the Conditions  for Transition to the Communist Principle of Distribution

The chief thing, for the sake of which the material and technical basis of commu-nism is being built, is the creation of conditions for a secure and highly cultured life of the people. Production under socialism is not an aim in itself. As already mentioned, its aim is the maximum satisfaction of the people’s material and cultural requirements. This applies even more to communism, which is being built for man’s happiness.

Everything for the Benefit of Man

“Everything for the sake of man, for the benefit of man!”—this is the motto of the Programme of the C.P.S.U., in which the problem of improving the people’s well-being

occupies a central position. The Party has set the task of achieving in the Soviet Union a standard of life higher than that in any of the capitalist countries.

Free education, free medical services, full employment, and other benefits that only socialism provides have long been available to Soviet people. But in a number of re-spects, including the satisfaction of requirements for some food products, footwear, clothing, and housing, the U.S.S.R. still lags behind the leading countries of the West. This lag is due to a number of historical causes: the extreme economic weakness of the country in the past, the huge sacrifices borne by the Soviet people as a result of wars and intervention, the constant need to divert considerable resources to strengthen defence. Now, however, the socialist system has become so strong economically, has reached such a stage of maturity, that its advantages can be manifested in all spheres of life without exception.

The Party sets the task of achieving in the second decade of the period covered by the programme (1971-80) an abundance of material and cultural benefits for the whole population. The Soviet Union will reach the communist principle of distribution accord-ing to needs. The period of the transition to communism is simultaneously a period of the gradual elimination of differences in the level of life of particular sections of the population. The prerequisites for the actual equality of people, which is characteristic of developed communist society, are also being formed at this stage.

What are the lines along which society will advance to the communist way of life? Even forty to fifty years ago this question could not be definitely answered. In 1917, in his book The State and Revolution, Lenin restricted himself to noting that after achieving equality of all members of society in relation to the means of production mankind would inevitably be faced with the question how to go farther, to actual equality, i. e., to im-plementation of the rule: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” However, Lenin pointed out, “by what stages, by what practical measures, man-kind can arrive at this higher goal, we do not know and cannot know”.396

Now, on the basis of the rich experience of socialist construction, Marxist theory can give a fairly accurate answer to this question. The main stages and practical measures which prepare for the introduction of communist distribution are described in the Pro-gramme of the C.P.S.U.

Payment According to Work Is the Main Source of Satisfying the Material  and Cultural Needs of the Working People

The transition to distribution according to needs is prepared for by developing and improving the existing forms of distribution— individual payment according to work done and public consumption funds, the latter being a special form of distribution under socialism through which the working people receive an ever growing proportion of benefits gratis, irrespective of the labour contribution of each individual.

On the basis of profound general conclusions from the practice of the Soviet Union and the objective laws of production and distribution, the Programme of the C.P.S.U. concludes that payment according to work done will remain the principal source for sat-

isfying the material and cultural needs of the working people during the whole period of the transition to communism.397

This thesis of the Programme is of fundamental significance for the whole period of communist construction. It is a warning against any undue haste in introducing commu-nist distribution. One has to take into account here both the level of development of the productive forces and the level of political consciousness of the members of society. The transition to communism requires not only an abundance of material and cultural bene-fits, but also a new attitude to labour— its conversion into a prime vital need. Until this is so, people’s labour requires a material stimulus, i. e., in the first place differential payment. Prematurely discarding this would undermine the workers’ incentive to de-velop production and therefore hamper the building of communism.

Wages will rise as the productivity of social labour increases. This means that eve-ryone who works honestly and productively will be able to satisfy his material and cul-tural needs to an ever greater extent. Of course, the rule of socialist economic manage-ment, that the growth of labour productivity must surpass that of wages, retains its full validity during the transition to communism as well.

Apart from direct additions to wages, an effective method of increasing real wages continues to be that of lowering prices. The price policy to which the C.P.S.U. intends to adhere is formulated in its Programme as follows: “Systematic, economically justified price reductions based on growth of labour productivity and reduction of production costs are the main trend of the price policy in the period of communist construction.”398

The working people receive a very appreciable addition to real wages through the abolition of taxes. By the end of 1965 the population of the Soviet Union will not have to pay any taxes at all. Only the socialist state could voluntarily renounce what has been for centuries the prime concern of every state, the levying of taxes on its citizens.

It may be asked: is there not a contradiction in the fact that the socialist state which is striving for universal equality, at the same time lays principal stress on payment ac-cording to work done? Does not such payment inevitably imply inequality of incomes?

There is no contradiction here, since differences in wage payments are being gradu-ally but steadily evened out. It is not a question, of course, of introducing “equalitarian-ism”, but of an objective tendency. With the introduction of mechanisation and automa-tion, labour in the different branches of the national economy more and more becomes skilled labour, which naturally leads to equalisation of wage payments.

Taking this tendency into account, in the general increase in wages in the Soviet Un-ion the course adopted has been one of an especially considerable increase of the in-comes of low- and medium-paid factory and office workers. Already by the end of the first decade there will be no low-paid categories of factory and office workers in the country. At the same time, the difference between the incomes of peasants and those of factory and office workers, and between incomes of people in different parts of the country, will be gradually reduced.

Obviously, the growth in the personal incomes of the working people produces an increased demand for articles of mass consumption. The C.P.S.U. is guided here by the

very important economic thesis: the population’s growing demands for food products and mass consumer goods must be satisfied in full, production must always exceed de-mand. The expansion of the output of consumer goods in turn causes trade to be con-tinually improved and new, advanced forms of trade to be introduced. Only in this way is it possible to prepare the machinery for distribution according to needs, which will replace trade in communist society.

Solution of the Housing Problem

The transition to communism will bring about the final solution to such an acute problem as that of housing.

Housing construction under socialism is carried out at a rate impossible under the capitalist system. In volume and rate of its housing construction the Soviet Union ranks first in the world. In recent years twice as many flats per thousand inhabitants have been built in the U.S.S.R. as in the U.S.A. and France and more than twice as many as in Britain and Italy. In the past five years alone (1956-60) about 50,000,000 Soviet people have moved into new houses.

Nevertheless, much has still to be done to solve the housing problem. The Pro-gramme of the C.P.S.U. indicates the minimum standard of housing that has to be guar-anteed to all members of society during the period of transition to communism. It sets the task: every family, including newlyweds, must have a comfortable flat conforming to the requirements of hygiene and cultural living. In the Soviet Union this task will be ac-complished in two stages. In the first decade, an end will be put to the housing shortage, in the second decade, each family will be ensured a separate comfortable flat.

But this is not the only thing. Communism will give people housing that is not only good but free of charge. During the second decade housing in the Soviet Union will gradually become free for all citizens. More than that, communal services—the supply of water, gas and heating—will also become free of charge. To appreciate the signifi-cance of this for the working people one has only to call to mind the heavy burden of house rents in the domestic budget of millions of people in the capitalist countries. In the U.S.A., Britain, Canada and many other countries, rent amounts to 25-30 per cent of the family budget of the working people. Even now in the Soviet Union rent and payment for communal services do not exceed 4-5 per cent of the budget of a worker’s family.

But the qualitative changes that will take place in housing conditions during the ad-vance to communism cannot be expressed in figures. An essentially new type of hous-ing, a new aspect of towns and villages will gradually come into existence. The ameni-ties of separate flats conforming to individual tastes and requirements will be supple-mented by a well-developed system of institutions for collective, social service. All in-habited centres will become “green towns” or “garden cities”. In this way communities of a communist type will be formed, combining all the best features derived from the age-old development of urban civilisation with all the best features of a rural locality—abundant greenery, water and fresh air.

Reduction of the Working Day

In its advance towards communism, socialism will offer its members yet another great social benefit—a short working day.

The reduction of working hours will become possible primarily owing to the rapid rate of scientific and technological progress. But the latter alone cannot solve the prob-lem of working hours. Only communism inscribes on its banner the slogan of steady reduction of the working day. Capitalism, on the other hand, uses the achievements of scientific and technological progress to intensify the exploitation of the working people.

What is it that guides socialist society in reducing the working day? It is not merely the endeavour to give the working people more leisure, although this alone would be sufficient justification. Society would jeopardise the development of its own productive forces if it did not take care to raise the productive skill of its members to the level re-quired by up-to-date equipment and technology. At the present stage this is impossible except by reducing the working day and lengthening the free time essential for all-round development of the worker. Thus, the reduction of the working day is not only a benefit but a direct necessity.

The Programme of the C.P.S.U. tackles this problem in a broadly based and far-sighted way. Already in the first ten-year period factory and office workers in the Soviet Union will go over to the six-hour working day. In work underground and at enterprises with harmful working conditions, the working day will be less than that—five hours. In the second decade, on the basis of a corresponding rise in labour productivity, the transi-tion to a still shorter working week will begin.

As a result the Soviet Union will be the country where the working day is the short-est in the world, and at the same time the most productive and the most highly paid. As regards the last feature it should be specially noted that the reduction of the working day will take place with an increase and not a decrease of wages.

The question of the correct use of leisure time becomes correspondingly more im-portant. The free time of every builder of communism should not be idleness—the ideal of the philistine—but should increasingly become a rational, well-thought-out combina-tion of cultural rest and recreation and time devoted to science, art, physical culture and sport.

Expansion of Public Consumption Funds

Payment according to work done as the main source of satisfying people’s needs does not imply any belittling of public consumption funds. This is clear from the fact that the rate of increase of these funds is greater than that of individual remuneration of labour. Whereas, in the twenty-year period the national income of the Soviet Union will increase fivefold, the total public consumption funds will increase more than tenfold in the same time.

Taking the twenty-year period, the total of the public consumption funds will amount to approximately half the total of the real incomes of the population. This will enable the following to be accomplished at the expense of society:

free maintenance of children at children’s institutions and boarding-schools (if the parents so desire);

material security for the non-able-bodied;  

free education at all educational establishments;  

free medical services for all citizens, including supply of medicines and treatment in sanatoria;  

rent-free housing and free communal services;  

free municipal transport facilities;  

free use of some types of public welfare services;  

steady reduction of charges for, and partially free use of, holiday homes, boarding-houses, tourist camps and sports facilities;

increasingly wide provision of the population with benefits, privileges and stipends (grants to unmarried mothers and mothers of many children, stipends for students);

gradual introduction of free public catering, mid-day meals at enterprises and insti-tutions, and for collective farmers at work (from the Programme of the C.P.S.U.).399

Such are the material and social benefits that communism will confer on man. They radically alter customary ideas of living standards, for there has never yet been an in-stance when half of all the requirements of a highly cultured people numbering many millions has been satisfied free of charge on an equal basis for all. Indeed, at the time when all these benefits will become part of the life of the Soviet citizen he will also be able—thanks to the growth of wages, reduction of prices and abolition of taxes—to ac-quire, in fact according to his needs, those material benefits which are still subject to payment. From here it is only a single step to the free, communist distribution according to needs of all benefits and services.

By fulfilling the tasks set by the Party for increasing the material well-being of the people, the Soviet Union will make considerable headway towards practical realisation of the communist principle of distribution according to needs.400

The problem of which goods and services are to be the first to be supplied free, and which are to remain subject to payment for the time being, is an important one for com-munist construction. The approach in principle to solving this problem is clearly indi-cated in the Programme of the C.P.S.U. The choice of benefits and services to which the principle of free supply is gradually extended is made in such a way as not to undermine in any way the principle of payment according to work done. For the time being these benefits and services do not include any where the form of consumption is individual (food products, clothing, footwear, and so on). But we find among them almost all social forms of satisfying people’s requirements (i. e., where the objects of consumption are used collectively, jointly with other people). These comprise well-built houses, public catering, a network of children’s institutions, the educational system, medical services, places of cultural rest and recreation, public provision for the welfare needs of the fam-ily, and public transport.

This solution of the problem is not accidental. It is based on objective tendencies ob-servable in the sphere of consumption. As science, technology and material production

develop, the greater becomes the range of people’s requirements that are more conven-iently, profitably and expediently satisfied not individually, but by public, joint, collec-tive use of articles of consumption. In the sphere of services, too, large-scale mechanised production offers every advantage over small-scale production of lower output such as, for instance, household labour.

In other words, in the sphere of consumption, as in that of material production, a process of socialisation takes place, one which began already in previous economic formations but which is completed under communism. Time freed from work in produc-tion becomes really free, for society releases the working people from the burden of in-dividual labour in the home.

All this is nothing but the development of the elements, the first shoots, of the peo-ple’s new communist way of life. As long ago as in the first years of Soviet power, when public catering, crèches and kindergartens were organised in the U.S.S.R., Lenin called them first shoots of communism. Tender concern and care for these first shoots he re-garded as a prime duty of the Party and state, saying that “…with the support of the pro-letarian state power, the young shoots of communism will not wither but grow and de-velop into full communism”.401

That is why the development of public consumption funds is the truly communist way of improving the well-being of the people. For the transition to communism is not merely a quantitative accumulation of wealth. It is also the reconstruction of the tradi-tional forms and conditions of people’s lives, the preparation for the new, communist, socialised way of life. The material basis of this way of life is laid down by means of the public consumption funds, and at the same time habits of collective life are implanted, the survivals of private-owner psychology are outlived, and a spirit of fraternal solidarity fostered not only in production but in daily life as well. The free public consumption funds already introduce into people’s lives elements of genuine equality (but not of eq-ualitarianism!) which will completely triumph in fully developed communist society.

In estimating the prospect for increasing the well-being of the Soviet peoples, one must not lose sight of the international situation. The Party points out that the tasks it enumerates can be successfully accomplished under conditions of peace. “Complications in the international situation and the consequent necessity to increase defence expendi-ture,” the Programme of the C.P.S.U. says, “may hold up the fulfilment of plans for in-creasing the well-being of the people.402 On the other hand, a lasting normalisation of international relations, a reduction of military expenditure, and in particular, the realisa-tion of general and complete disarmament would make it possible greatly to surpass the plans for raising the living standard of the working people.

Communism Can Be Built Only by the Persistent and Skilful Labour  of Millions of People

The benefits that communism will give are splendid, but they will not come of themselves. The transition to communism is not to be compared to a simple crossing from one bank of a river to the other. That is why, when sketching the happy and pros-

perous life under communism, the Programme of the C.P.S.U. at the same time calls upon the entire Soviet people to work perseveringly and with inspiration. This is essen-tial during the whole twenty-year period of creating the material and technical basis of communism, of creating an abundance of means for satisfying the growing requirements of the people.

The C.P.S.U., being a party of scientific communism, advances and solves the prob-lems of communist construction as the material and spiritual prerequisites for them be-come ready and mature, being guided by the fact that necessary stages of development must not be skipped over, just as there must be no halting at what has been achieved, no slowing up of the advance. The success of the labour efforts of people in the initial stage of communist construction is particularly important. Future successes depend decisively on the nature of the take-off at the start of our advance to communism, the fulfilment of current plans and assignments and the degree of productive and political activity of all Soviet people. The plans, which envisage the accomplishment of immediate tasks, have long-range objectives in view. While being in accord with the tasks of the immediate future, they at the same time prepare for the transition to the next stage.

The building of communist society is a great and complex task. Temporary difficul-ties may be encountered in the realisation of the gigantic plans for this construction. These difficulties may be connected with the fact that some branches and sectors of the national economy still lag behind, with shortcomings in the practical work of Party, government and public organisations, with survivals of the past shown in people’s be-haviour.

To ensure that the great work of building communism will be crowned with com-plete success, “we must all work selflessly,” said N. S. Khrushchov, “work in a Leninist manner, devoting all our energies and knowledge to the great cause. Only in this way can we build communism.403

4. Building a Classless Society

Profound changes in the sphere of social relations take place alongside the powerful increase of the productive forces and well-being of the people. These changes are mainly in the direction of gradually obliterating class and other social distinctions connected with the inequality of people. The final outcome of this process is a classless communist society of free and equal working people.

Obliteration of Social Distinctions Between the Working Class and Peasantry

Two classes—the working class and the peasantry—continue to exist under social-ism. These are friendly classes, united by common fundamental interests and indestruc-tible ties of ideological and political unity. Substantial distinctions still remain between them in regard to forms of property, the nature of labour, culture and daily life, etc. These distinctions cannot be removed by artificial measures; they will be eliminated in the long run only as a result of the development of the productive forces. The Twenty-Second Congress of the C.P.S.U. pointed to the powerful rise of agricultural productive

forces as the basis ensuring the gradual transition to communist social relations in the Soviet countryside.

The most deep-rooted basis for the preservation of survivals of class distinctions is the existence of two forms of property—state and co-operative-collective-farm property. In the past, the problem of overcoming the difference between these two forms was raised— under the influence of Stalin’s work Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R.—only as one of “lifting” collective-farm-co-operative property to the level of national property, which in practice meant that the countryside should go over on a mass scale from the collective-farm path to that of state farms. The C.P.S.U. severely criti-cised this formulation as belittling the significance of the collective-farm form of prop-erty. While taking into account the possibilities of some collective farms being con-verted into state farms where this proves expedient, the Party does not allow the one form to be counterposed to the other. “The Party,” said N. S. Khrushchov at the Twenty-Second Congress, “considers that communist construction in the countryside will pro-ceed through the development and improvement of the two forms of socialist produc-tion. One socialist form of farming should not be contraposed to the other. The collec-tive, as well as the state farms, are large-scale socialist enterprises allowing for an effec-tive use of the achievements of technology and science, and for a rapid expansion of social production.”404

If today the basic economic indices (labour productivity, production costs, etc.) of many collective farms are inferior to those of the state farms, this is not because of the specific features of the collective-farm form of economy but is most frequently due to shortcomings in the organisation of production and in the technical equipment of the collective farms. The Programme of the C.P.S.U. expressly states that the collective-farm form fully accords with the level and needs of the development of modern produc-tive forces in the countryside.405

The collective-farm form permits effective application of new machinery and scien-tific achievements, and rational use of labour resources. It successfully combines the personal interests of the peasants with the interests of society as a whole. By the nature of its organisation and its democratic principles, which will increasingly develop, the agricultural artel ensures the management of production by the mass of collective farm-ers themselves, the development of their creative initiative, and their education in the spirit of communism. “The collective farm is a school of communism for the peasantry.” (From the Programme of the C.P.S.U.)406

The task, therefore, is to develop the collective-farm system to the full. In this con-nection, the Programme of the C.P.S.U. formulates the Party’s policy in relation to the collective farms as being a policy based on combining nation-wide interests with the material interests of the collective farms and collective farmers in the results of their labour. In particular, assistance to the collective farms is envisaged along many lines: full satisfaction of their need in regard to means of production (machinery, chemicals, etc.), training of skilled personnel for agricultural production, a considerable increase in capital investments, and increased supplies of manufactured goods.

The development of commodity-money relations has a special part to play in the fur-ther expansion of co-operative and collective-farm production. Stalin’s assertion in Eco-nomic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. that in the period of transition to commu-nism these relations will be reduced to nil and give way to direct exchange of products is incorrect. By its very nature the co-operative and collective-farm property demands the fullest use of value relations and not their curtailment. The principle of cost accounting will be increasingly introduced into co-operative farming. The Programme of the C.P.S.U. outlines a policy of state purchases and purchase prices, and selling prices of means of production, which will take into account the interests of extended reproduction in both industry and agriculture and encourage collective farms to raise labour produc-tivity and reduce production expenses.

An essential condition for the further development of the co-operatives is a correct combination of accumulation and consumption in the distribution of incomes. The col-lective farms cannot develop without constantly augmenting their commonly-owned assets for production, insurance and cultural and community needs, in which modern technical means should more and more occupy a predominant place. This is one of the chief ways of further developing cooperative and collective-farm property and bringing it closer to the property of the whole people. At the same time it must be a standing rule for every collective farm to raise its members’ incomes from collective farming and to enhance their living standard as labour productivity rises.407

On the basis of the economic progress of the collective farms, they will gradually become enterprises of the communist type.

The internal relations of the collective farms will first of all develop in this direction. The degree of socialisation of production will steadily rise. Rate-setting, organisation and payment of labour will come close to that in state enterprises (in particular, a transi-tion will take place to a guaranteed monthly income). Social services (public catering, kindergartens and nurseries, welfare institutions, etc.) will be extensively developed. When the economy of the collective farms reaches a level at which its resources are fully sufficient to satisfy the requirements of the collective farms, the question of sub-sidiary individual farming will arise. It will no longer be economically advantageous and the collective farmers will give it up of their own accord.

At the same time production ties between the collective farms will develop and so-cialisation will increasingly transcend the limits of individual farms. The construction, jointly by several collective farms, of enterprises, state-collective-farm power stations, enterprises for the primary processes, storage and transport of farm products, as well as the establishment of enterprises and cultural-welfare institutions for public services (boarding-schools, clubs, hospitals, holiday homes, etc.)—all this will gradually raise the level of socialisation of collective-farm and co-operative property.

The state farms too have a long path of development before them. The Party regards them as the leading socialist enterprises in the countryside. Their role in agricultural production, especially in supplying food to the urban population, will grow. They are called on to serve the collective farms as a model example of advanced, scientifically-

based, economically profitable methods of farming.

As the collective and state farms develop, their productive ties with each other and with local industrial enterprises will grow stronger, and the practice of jointly organising various kinds of production will expand. This will help to solve the problem of ensuring a full and even use of manpower and production resources throughout the year, and to raise the productivity of social labour, and the living and cultural standard of the popula-tion. Gradually, wherever economically expedient, agrarian-industrial associations will be formed, in which agriculture will be organically combined with the industrial proc-essing of its products.

Such are the principal lines of development of production in the collective and state farms and of improving social relations within them. By following these lines socialist agriculture will rise to a new, higher level, making possible the transition to communist forms of production and distribution. This means that gradually the distinctions between state and collective-farm-co-operative forms of property will be abolished and the col-lective farms will draw level in economic conditions with nationally-owned agricultural enterprises. The labour of collective farmers in highly mechanised farms will be of a character approaching that of workers in industry. In regard to well-being, the amount and forms of payment for labour, and opportunities for making use of all forms of social security (pensions, vacations, etc.) the collective-farm peasantry will be on the same level as workers in industry and agriculture.

At the same time profound changes will take place in the cultural and living condi-tions of the rural population and in the whole structure of village life. Increasing amounts of agricultural machinery, buildings to house it and workshops for repairs, and industrial enterprises for processing agricultural raw materials, will be concentrated in the rural localities. Forces of mechanisers, engineers and technicians will be grouped around these production centres. There will be growing numbers of agronomists, zo-otechnicians, doctors and teachers. The considerable concentration of the population and the rise in its cultural level will require the villages to be planned afresh with a new type of housing, with water-supplies, drainage systems and telephones. There will also be need for good roads, well-equipped hospitals, crèches, kindergartens and schools of all kinds, and a network of shops and public catering establishments, clubs and libraries. Thus the reconstruction of agricultural production will bring with it a complete change in the traditional aspect of the countryside.

All these changes will lead to the elimination in the main of socio-economic and cultural distinctions between town and country. This will be one of the greatest gains of communist construction.

Gradual Obliteration of Distinctions Between Physical and Mental Labour

The division of society into brain workers and manual workers will have to be over-come in the course of the advance to communism: The antithesis of the interests of these two categories of workers, which is characteristic of the exploiting system, is already being eliminated under socialism. In socialist society brain workers and manual workers

have common interests, they are engaged in a common cause and are working for the benefit of the whole people. The people’s intelligentsia is no longer an exclusive strata separated from the workers and peasants. But this does not mean that all distinctions between the working class and the peasantry on the one hand and the intelligentsia on the other, have disappeared. By its culture and technical knowledge the intelligentsia as a whole stands at a higher level than the workers and peasants. The Programme of the C.P.S.U. puts forward the raising of the cultural and technical level of the workers and peasants to the level of the intelligentsia as one of the important tasks of society in the period of full-scale construction of communism.

The prerequisites for solving this problem are already being created in the sphere of production as a result of changes in techniques and in the very nature of labour. The lat-ter, as was shown above, increasingly requires from people constant intellectual growth, a broad horizon, wide knowledge, and a creative approach. Labour in material produc-tion will more and more combine the functions of physical and mental labour, with men-tal activity gradually becoming predominant. Of course, whatever the level of mechani-sation and automation, material production is inconceivable without some expenditure of physical effort. Hence, in the future too, labour in material production will combine elements of both mental and physical work. But it will be a new type of labour, in which both the physical and intellectual abilities of man can be displayed to the full.

On the basis of the processes taking place during the transition to communism, im-portant changes can be foreseen in the occupational structure of the population. Un-skilled and low-skilled forms of occupation will steadily disappear. At the same time, it may be presumed, there will be a considerable increase of many occupations involving highly-skilled mental work (scientific personnel, engineers and technicians, agrono-mists, doctors, etc.), while the share taken by a number of other specialists in the field of mental labour, notably those connected with managerial functions, will become smaller.

These changes in the occupational structure will steadily diminish the distinctions between manual and brain workers. The progress of education is destined to play an im-portant part in this connection. The educational system is being re-organised in such a way that not only is instruction raised to a qualitatively new level but it is being closely linked with labour so that pupils while still at school master some speciality and take part in productive work.

It goes without saying that the full obliteration of distinctions between the intelli-gentsia, on the one hand, and the workers and peasants, on the other, will take longer than the obliteration of distinctions between the classes of workers and peasants. Lenin stressed that the intelligentsia will remain a special stratum “which will persist until we have reached the highest stage of development of communist society".408

Nevertheless, this process goes on from the very beginning of communist construc-tion. Already millions of people who have had a secondary education are coming into the enterprises, and collective and state farms. Tens of thousands of Soviet factory workers and collective farmers are receiving higher education in off-work hours. The labour of numerous factory workers and collective farmers is beginning increasingly to

approach that of engineers and agricultural specialists. The movement of innovators who make an outstanding contribution to the development of technology and production, and who become real experts in their occupations, is developing on a mass scale.

Elimination of Remnants of Inequality in the Status of Women

Elimination of the remnants of inequality in the status of women occupies an impor-tant place in the social tasks which are being accomplished in the course of the advance to communism.

Although socialism, as pointed out in Chapter 24, makes woman equal in rights with man politically and socially, nevertheless traces of woman’s inequality remain. This is connected in the main with the fact that the entire burden of housework falls on the woman. In the first years after the Revolution Lenin wrote that “petty housework crushes, strangles, stultifies, and degrades her, chains her to the kitchen and to the nurs-ery, and wastes her labour on barbarously unproductive, petty, nerve-racking, stultify-ing, and crushing drudgery. The real emancipation of women, real communism, will be-gin only where and when a mass struggle begins (led by the proletariat wielding the power of the state) against this petty domestic economy, or rather when its wholesale transformation into large-scale socialist economy begins”.409

The period of transition to communism opens up the broadest opportunities for car-rying out the Leninist programme for the complete emancipation of women.

In this connection the Programme of the C.P.S.U. envisages extensive measures to be carried out in the next two decades. The main thing here is utmost development of various establishments performing welfare services and children’s institutions of all types. When society offers its citizens cheaper and tastier food and in greater variety than they get at home, when many household needs are undertaken by communal estab-lishments, then woman will be able, at long last, to get rid of burdensome housework. As society takes over a big share of the cares for education and maintenance of children, the position of the woman in the family will be radically lightened. New prospects will be opened before women for mastering knowledge and displaying all their talents and capabilities.

Equalisation of woman with man in social production does not at all mean that she will be expected to perform arduous “man’s” jobs. Lenin pointed out that when equality of woman is spoken of “it is not a matter of equalising women in productivity of labour, amount of labour, its duration, labour conditions, etc”.410 A woman remains a woman with her great social mission of motherhood. Communism, as no other social system, elevates the dignity of woman, carefully takes account of her interests, and provides all the opportunities for the development of her personality.

5. Further Development of Socialist Democracy

The complete and final victory of socialism in the political life of society, as already mentioned in Chapter 24, is marked by the development of the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat into a socialist state of the entire people, and by the development of

proletarian democracy into nation-wide socialist democracy. Since the working class is the foremost and best-organised force of socialist society, it plays its leading role also in the period of full-scale construction of communism.

This conclusion, which is drawn in the Programme of the C.P.S.U., is of immense theoretical and political significance, and represents an important contribution to the development of the theory of the proletarian dictatorship, and of the building of social-ism and communism. The theses of the Programme relating to this subject are important not only for correctly understanding what took place during the transition from capital-ism to socialism, but also for elucidating the chief political tasks confronting the Party and the people in the period of building communism.

The Programme of the C.P.S.U. has confirmed in the most convincing way that the leading political tendency during this period is the steady development and deepening of democracy. This process begins with the establishment of the dictatorship of the work-ing class, which for the first time in history transfers power to the majority of the work-ing people, and culminates in the withering away of the state, whose place is taken by communist public self-government. A very important stage along this road is that of the socialist state of the whole people. Being the organ of the whole people it can, of course, develop only in the direction of the further perfection of socialist democracy.

Main Direction of Development of Socialist Statehood

The main direction of development of socialist statehood in the period of communist construction is defined in the Programme of the C.P.S.U. as follows: “All-round exten-sion and perfection of socialist democracy, active participation of all citizens in the ad-ministration of the state, in the management of economic and cultural development, im-provement of the government apparatus, and increased control over its activity.”411

This definition expresses the specific features of socialist democracy. On the one hand, it differs radically from bourgeois democracy in that it rests not on formal factors or institutions, but on actual participation of the people in the administration of society’s affairs and the state. On the other hand, it differs also from proletarian democracy, which, despite containing from its inception features of universal, socialist democracy, nevertheless insofar as these have not become decisive, remains class democracy, not democracy of the whole people.

The Programme of the C.P.S.U. indicates concrete measures for ensuring the expan-sion of democracy during the transition to communism. These measures, while taking into account existing conditions in the Soviet Union, at the same time express the gen-eral laws of the political evolution of the society which is building communism.

It is specially important, in particular, to strengthen the role of the representative organs of government—the various Soviets, from local Soviets to the Supreme Soviet. Their powers will be expanded, and they will thereby become still more the “working corporations" which Marx and Lenin had in mind when analysing the nature of real peo-ple’s power. Many questions that are at present within the competence of the executive bodies of government and administration will be settled directly by the Soviets and their

committees.

The reasons for the enhanced role of the Soviets during the transition to communism are obvious. These government bodies have the closest ties with the people, unite the whole people and not just a part, and are an all-embracing organisation of the nation, the embodiment of its unity. Combining the features of a government body and a mass or-ganisation of the people, the Soviets operate more and more like social organisations, with the masses participating extensively and directly in their work.

The C.P.S.U. considers it essential to perfect the forms of popular representation and promote the democratic principles of the electoral system. The really best representa-tives of the people should be elected to the Soviets and the constant influx of fresh forces into them ensured by systematically renewing the body of deputies (at least one-third at each election time). As a result, fresh millions of working people will learn to govern the state.

The Party attaches great importance to the perfection and undeviating observance of the principles of socialist democracy in the work of the Soviets, such as the electors’ control over their deputies, regular reporting by the deputies to the electors, the right of the electorate to recall ahead of term any deputy who has not justified the confidence placed in him, publicity for their activities, and increased role of their standing commit-tees.

The participation of social organisations and associations of the working people in the legislative activity of the Soviet state will be extended: mass social organisations will be given the right of legislative initiative, draft laws and other decisions of state or local importance will be put before the working people for discussion, while the most important draft laws will be put to a nation-wide referendum.

The Programme of the C.P.S.U. stresses the need to enlarge the rights of local Sovi-ets (local self-government). They will take final decisions on all questions of local sig-nificance. As collective-farm-cooperative property draws closer to public property, a single democratic body administering all enterprises, organisations and institutions in the localities will gradually take shape.

All this means bringing leadership closer to the masses, laying the chief stress on places where the fate of economic plans is being decided. The close proximity of gov-ernmental bodies to the population makes it easier to draw the working people into solv-ing problems, of state life and to exercise control over persons in official positions, mak-ing the administrative methods themselves more democratic..

Besides an increase in the role of representative bodies, the transition to communism requires constant improvement of the work of the government and economic apparatus, the development of their democratic and social bases. The apparatus of Soviet, eco-nomic and, other bodies must become still more simple, inexpensive and efficient, and respond in a timely and sensitive way to the demands of Soviet citizens.

In this connection the Party sets the task of completely eradicating all relics of the past, such as bureaucracy, heartlessness, formalism and red tape, employing all methods of influence, both social and administrative, going as far as judicial prosecution of offi-

cials who are guilty of a bureaucratic attitude to the needs of the working people. An important means of accomplishing this task is constant governmental and social control.

The C.P.S.U. in keeping with Lenin’s directives, especially stresses the need for the permanent functioning of control bodies that would combine state control with public inspection at the centre and in the localities. Inspection by people’s control, drawing large sections of the working people into the management of state affairs, is an effective means of perfecting the administrative apparatus and eradicating bureaucracy. People’s control is a concrete expression of the fact that the socialist state apparatus serves the people and is accountable to it.

In developing democratic principles in administration, the Party sets as the aim that the principle of electivity and accountability to representative bodies and the electorate should be extended to all leading officials of the state apparatus.

One of the main trends in improving the state administration lies in ensuring that the salaried staff is reduced and that ever larger sections of the people learn to take part in administration. Work in the government apparatus will eventually cease to be a special profession and all citizens will be drawn into administering the affairs of society.

In the course of building communism, economic bodies must undergo the same evo-lution as the political bodies, drawing as close as possible to production and widely enlisting the working people in their activities. Leninism teaches us that the management of the economy must proceed on ever more democratic principles.

The re-organisation of the system of economic management carried out in the Soviet Union in 1957 is in accord with this demand. After the formation of the Economic Councils, which control industry and building, large technical and economic boards be-gan to function under them. In the country as a whole these boards contain tens of thou-sands of front-rank workers, engineers, technicians and scientists. Standing production conferences at the enterprises acquire great significance, being given extensive rights and the opportunity of actively influencing all aspects of life of their enterprises.

A vital feature in developing democratic principles of state administration is the training of all personnel in a truly socialist style of work, a style combining personal responsibility for matters entrusted to them with collective leadership and the ability to listen to and take account of the opinions of others. This is the democracy that is insepa-rably connected with undeviating observance of comradely discipline, modesty, extreme conscientiousness and other truly communist characteristics that are essential to every worker whatever the post he occupies.

An important aspect of the development of socialist democracy along the road to communism is the fullest extension of personal freedom and of the rights of citizens.

During this period society strengthens social law and order, ensures strict obser-vance of legality, and improves the judicious systems by developing its democratic foundations. In this way the rights of citizens are firmly guaranteed, while severe pun-ishment is meted out to persons who commit crimes dangerous to society, violate the rules of the socialist community, or refuse to live by honest labour. In this connection, main attention is devoted to the prevention of crime.

The society that is building communism sets before itself a lofty ideal—gradually to do away with all compulsion and administrative regulation of relations between people, replacing them by measures of social influence and education. Only such a society is able to achieve the task of eradicating all violations of law and order and abolishing crime for it creates the necessary conditions for this by ensuring the growth of material security and a rise in the level of culture and political consciousness among the working people.

Voluntary, conscientious fulfilment of their duties becomes a rule for all. At the same time, the rights, freedom and opportunities of all members of society become wider and wider. In the final analysis, the rights and duties of citizens are organically merged to form single standards of communist behaviour.

Increased Role of Social Organisations

One of the important trends of development of socialist democracy is the increased role of social organisations: trade-union, youth, co-operative, cultural and educational (on the growing role of the Communist Party see Section 8).

The trade unions, which Lenin called a school of administration and economic man-agement, a school of communism, acquire particular importance. The trade unions have to raise the communist consciousness of the masses, organise emulation for communist labour, and help the working people in learning to manage the state and social affairs. They must encourage the activity of factory and office workers in the efforts for techni-cal progress, for higher labour productivity, for the fulfilment and over-fulfilment of plans and assignments. The trade unions have big tasks in regard to protecting the inter-ests and rights of the working people, raising their skill and improving working and liv-ing conditions. The trade unions have the function also of controlling the use of public consumption funds and the work of all enterprises and institutions serving the working people.

An increasing part is played by the independent young communist organisations. They help the Party to train the rising generation to become harmoniously developed, politically conscious people, who will live, work and manage public affairs under communism.

An important part in the transition to communism will be played by the co-operatives—collective farms, consumers’, housing and other co-operative organisations. This is one of the important forms by which the masses are drawn into communist af-fairs and communist education, and is one of the important schools of public self-government. The Party attaches great importance to the development of such social as-sociations as scientific and scientific-technical societies, organisations of rationalisers and inventors, associations of writers, art workers and journalists, cultural-educational organisations, sports societies, etc.

The role of social organisations particularly increases owing to the gradual transfer to them of some functions of the state. In the Soviet Union today many matters relating to cultural services to the population, public health, health resorts, and the movement for

physical culture, already come within their accomplishments. Social organisations take an active part in promoting law and order.

Wide prospects are opened up for the transfer of certain functions of the state to so-cial organisations. This transfer paves the way for communist self-government of the people.

Under socialism, social methods in many cases have a much greater effect than ad-ministrative, state methods. Social methods are based on the initiative of the population; they assume that people act on the basis of their own decisions, arrived at collectively. Clearly, people more willingly, consciously and readily carry out decisions which have been drawn up with their participation and knowledge, and which take into considera-tion their interests and proposals. Hence the transfer of state functions to social organisa-tions begins with matters where independent initiative is particularly valuable and can yield the best results (cultural services, sport, rest and recreation, etc.).

Naturally, it would be wrong to counterpose methods based on the people’s inde-pendent initiative to administrative methods. The main thing in the activities of the so-cialist state is conviction, appeal to the political consciousness of the citizens, drawing them into administration. In this respect the state and public organisations do not differ in principle, but actually supplement each other.

The transfer of state functions to the public organisations makes important demands on them. Bureaucracy and formalism must be eliminated from their activities, and all their work must be based on the principle of the broad initiative and independent activity of the working people, on the utmost development of democratic principles.

Conditions for the Development of Statehood into  Communist Public Self-Government

The development of socialist democracy is simultaneously a process that prepares the conditions for the withering away of the state. The question of the withering away of the state was for the first time raised by Marx and Engels. They proved that the state is not an eternal institution. Having come into being as a result of the division of society into hostile classes, it must vanish with the building of classless communist society. This will happen, the founders of Marxism stressed, not as a result of a single action, but gradually as the social conditions and the consciousness of people change. “The state is not ‘abolished’. It withers away,” Engels wrote.412

It is to this that the development and perfection of socialist democracy leads, being a path along which statehood is naturally transformed into communist public self-government. If the masses are drawn ever more widely into administering the state and production, if ever more functions of the state are transferred to public organisations, it is clear that the need for a special state machinery will continuously diminish and will in time disappear altogether. The need for compulsion will also gradually cease. All citi-zens, without any administrative regulation, will discharge their duty in productive work, and observe the standards and rules of the socialist community.

The withering away of the state does not, however, mean that in future there will be

no administrative bodies of any kind. No, the need for administering social production and some other social affairs will always remain, only it will be fulfilled not by the state but by the organs of public self-government. “In the light of dialectics the withering away of the state,” N. S. Khrushchov said in his report to the Twenty-First Congress of the C.P.S.U., “implies the development of the socialist state into communist public self-government.”413

Public self-government will arise as a result of the development and perfection of so-cialist democracy. That is why one can say that the process of the withering away of the state is, in effect, already going on. State bodies are gradually being transformed into bod-ies of public self-government. On the other hand, the transition to self-government is being prepared by the activity of the existing social organisations. It is quite possible that in fu-ture a new type of social organisation will arise which will incorporate the best elements accumulated in the work of Party, governmental, and trade-union organisations.

The withering away of the state, its conversion into communist public self-government, is a lengthy process which will be completed, as Lenin said, only when “people gradually become accustomed to observing the elementary rules of social inter-course that have been known for centuries and repeated for thousands of years in all copybook maxims, when they become accustomed to observing them without force, without compulsion, without subordination, without the special apparatus for compul-sion which is called the state”.414 Until this time comes the state will continue to be nec-essary and will have important internal functions, which are dealt with in Chapter 24.

The question of the withering away of the state cannot be analysed without consider-ing the international conditions as well. These conditions cannot abolish the internal processes which lead to the withering away of the state. But they can compel society to preserve, for a more or less long time, the functions, and therefore the state bodies, that deal with the country’s defence, the safeguarding of peace and security, and the ensuring of peaceful coexistence.

The Programme of the C.P.S.U. pays great attention to the tasks of strengthening the armed forces and defence capacity of the Soviet Union. It points out that from the stand-point of internal conditions the Soviet Union needs no army. But the threat of war, ema-nating from the imperialist camp, makes it necessary to maintain the defensive power of the country and the combat readiness of its armed forces at a level ensuring the decisive and complete defeat of any enemy who dares to encroach upon the Soviet land.

Thus, the withering away of the state is a complex and contradictory process. Its dia-lectics consists in some functions of the state gradually changing or disappearing, while others are preserved and even reinforced. However, the strengthening of particular func-tions of the socialist state does not amount to enlarging and consolidating the adminis-trative machinery, particularly, the organs of coercion. In this respect the socialist sys-tem differs radically from the bourgeois system. The strength of a socialist state does not lie only in organs of coercion and defence. Its strength lies first of all in the stability of its social basis, the devotion of the people to the cause of socialism. “The bourgeoisie,” Lenin said, “admit a state to be strong only when it can, by the whole might of the gov-

ernment apparatus, throw the masses wherever the bourgeois rulers want. Our idea of strength is a different one. Our idea is that a state is strong by the consciousness of the masses. It is strong when the masses know everything, can form an opinion of every-thing and do everything consciously.”415

Such a strengthening of the state is not contrary to its withering away but, in fact, prepares the condition for this, for its conversion into communist public self-government.

6. Towards Ever Closer Association of the Nations

During the transition from socialism to communism profound and important proc-esses take place in the sphere of national relations. The nature of these processes can be judged from the considerable and many-sided experience of the Soviet Union—a multi-lateral state which was the first in the world to re-organise relations between nations on a socialist basis. A theoretical generalisation and creative development of this experi-ence is given in the new Programme of the C.P.S.U., which outlines the policy of the Party in the national question during the building of communism. It is a policy for the further economic and cultural development of the Soviet Republics, for the still closer, all-round association of the nations.

The Programme states: “Full-scale communist construction marks a new stage in the development of national relations in the U.S.S.R., in which the nations will draw still closer together and complete unity between them will be achieved.”416

The gradual drawing closer together of the nations is not something imposed from the outside, but is an objective process and corresponds to the needs and laws of devel-opment of society that is building communism. This process is primarily a natural result of the fact that the development of all the nations takes place on a single, socialist basis. All of them live and develop under homogeneous conditions of socialist economy and under the same political system, strive for common aims and are inspired by a single ideology; their culture, while remaining national in form, becomes increasingly imbued with a single, socialist content.

All this causes the nations to draw closer together to an unprecedented degree and develops in them many common features of social and cultural make-up.

Further, the closer association of the nations under socialism promotes increasing economic, cultural and other co-operation between them, and also extensive intercourse between the different nations and the disappearance of all the barriers that previously divided them. Closer intercourse between the nationalities in the Soviet Union was as-sisted in no small measure by the realisation of such gigantic national-economic projects as the development of the virgin lands, the construction of large hydropower stations in thinly populated places, etc. By bringing together tens and hundreds of thousands of people of different nationalities, uniting them in joint labour, the construction projects of communism at the same time influence national relations in the country, accelerating the overcoming of survivals of national narrow-mindedness among people and promoting the most rapid development of common features of their spiritual make-up.

Intercourse between the different nations is greatly facilitated by the wide acquaint-ance with the Russian language in the national republics. In the Soviet Union all peo-ples, great and small, are guaranteed free development of their language and national culture. No restrictions are imposed, there is no compulsion to use any particular lan-guage. Every citizen is free to speak any language and to teach it to his children. If the Russian language is widespread it is not because it has any privileged position, but ow-ing to the needs of life itself. Many millions of people learn Russian because they regard it as a means of acquainting every nation and nationality with the cultural achievements of the Russian people and all the other peoples of the U.S.S.R., and with world culture.

The trend towards ever greater association between the nations does not lead to any limitation of national statehood. On the contrary, the rights of the Union and Autono-mous Republics undergo extension within the framework of the Soviet principles of fed-eration and autonomy, and they play an increasing part in economic management. The economy of the Republics develops in a complex manner as an inseparable part of the single economy of the Soviet Union, while at the same time due regard is paid to their internal needs.

Although the need for closer association of the nations is part of the very nature of communist construction, this does not mean that national relations during this period are formed spontaneously, in an automatic way. The rate at which this process takes place depends on the correctness of the Party’s national policy. The Party therefore never loses sight of questions arising during the building of communism that concern the mutual relations of nations, and it solves them from the standpoint of socialist internationalism, on the basis of the Leninist principles of national policy.

The Programme of the C.P.S.U. indicates the following main directions of the Party’s activities in this sphere of national relations.

First of all, the all-round economic and cultural development of all the Soviet na-tions will be continued, A correct economic policy is the key to consolidating co-operation of the nations. The Party will continue its policy of ensuring the actual equal-ity of all the nations and nationalities, paying special attention to those regions of the country that are in need of more rapid development, for it is only on this basis that the process of closer association of the nations can successfully develop. On the threshold of communism, the increased social homogeneity within the nations as distinctions be-tween classes become obliterated must be accompanied by abolition of differences in the level of development of their economies and cultures due to historical, geographical and other causes.

The conditions of the Soviet multi-national state require that side by side with the harmonious development of the individual republics there should be a constant im-provement in the division of labour between them. Hence, the setting up of inter-Republican economic agencies (especially for such matters as irrigation, power grids, a common transport system, etc.) is envisaged at the same time as extension of the rights of the Union Republics. This will further assist in consolidating co-operation between the Republics and in overcoming tendencies to parochialism and national narrow-

mindedness.

During the transition to communism the Party sets itself the aim of assisting the fur-ther mutual enrichment and rapprochement of the cultures of the peoples of the U.S.S.R., the strengthening of their international basis, and thereby the development of a future single culture of communist society. During this process the cultural treasures common to all the Soviet nations will be augmented, while the finest, progressive na-tional traditions will be assimilated by all and become the common property of all.

The C.P.S.U. takes into account that in a multi-national state individual manifesta-tions of nationalism and chauvinism, tendencies towards national narrow-mindedness and exclusiveness, are possible in this period too, for survivals of this kind are very per-sistent, Hence the Party must continue to be ready to resist all manifestations of nation-alism, to see to the strengthening of friendship between the peoples, and to promote ex-change of cultural wealth and cadres among them. The Party will not allow national pe-culiarities to be either ignored or exaggerated, for in either case the only result can be to harm the cause of strengthening friendship among the peoples and the building of com-munism.

Only the policy outlined above is the true path to an ever closer association of the nations and their complete merging in the future.

7. Communist Education of the Working People

During the building of socialism society already achieves important successes in educating the new man. At the same time, however, survivals of capitalism which retard the advance of society persist in the minds and behaviour of people. Their abolition and the further development of the new spiritual and moral qualities engendered by social-ism constitute the essence of the process by which communist man is moulded.

This is a great and complex task but it is within the power of the society which is building communism.

The point is that “human nature”, which bourgeois theorists declare eternal and im-mutable, is in reality the product of social relations. Hence, when social conditions change, people’s minds and morals also change. In the course of the transition to com-munism all the working people become more and more imbued with the ideas and moral principles of this new society. “Joint planned labour by the members of society,” states the Programme of the C.P.S.U., “their daily participation in the management of state and public affairs, and the development of communist relations of comradely co-operation and mutual support, recast the minds of people in a spirit of collectivism, love of labour, and humanism.”417

Of course, the way of life, and labour and social relations, play a decisive part in de-veloping people’s social consciousness and high moral qualities. But it would be incor-rect to make everything depend on objective factors alone. Communist education of the working people is an incessant concern of the Party, the state, mass organisations, and collectives. An important part is played here by the press, radio, cinema, television, lit-erature, theatre, and graphic arts. Skilful use of all these media can greatly accelerate the

law-governed process of the development of communist consciousness and morality, and therefore the transition to communism.

Rise of Education and Culture

The communist education of the working people involves raising the whole of pub-lic education to a new level.

Education is the basis of man's development, of his vocational, cultural and political growth. A higher level of education is required in view of the scientific and technologi-cal revolution that is taking place in our time, and in view also of the tasks involved in abolishing the differences between workers by hand and brain.

The actual paths of development of public education may differ in different coun-tries. They depend on the level of education already reached under socialism, the needs of the national economy, the country’s material potentialities, and other factors. But cer-tain general tasks confronting all countries can be established on the basis of the experi-ence of the Soviet Union and the laws of the transition to communism revealed by Marxist-Leninist science.

One of these tasks is to ensure that all citizens without exception receive a secon-dary education, which will become compulsory. In the Soviet Union, during the decade 1961-70 compulsory secondary general and polytechnical 11-year education is to be in-troduced for all children of school age and 8-year education for young people engaged in the national economy. In the subsequent decade (1971-80) it is planned that everyone shall have the possibility of receiving a complete secondary education. At the same time the aim is set of raising the quality of education. It has to be reconstructed in such a way that the rising generation during their instruction obtain a solid knowledge of the funda-mentals of science, master the principles of the communist world outlook, acquire a la-bour and polytechnical training, and also receive a moral, aesthetic and physical educa-tion.

Another task arising in the sphere of education is to strengthen social principles in the upbringing of children of pre-school and school age, the means for which include the setting up of the appropriate pre-school institutions and boarding-schools, which chil-dren can enter at the desire of the parents. In this way the influence of the family on children is brought into ever greater harmony with their public upbringing. At the same time, all children, irrespective of their family or other circumstances, have a real oppor-tunity of obtaining a secondary education.

Further, the rapid progress of science and technology confronts society with the task of further developing higher and secondary specialised education for training highly-skilled specialists. There will be a steady, rapid increase in the proportion of such spe-cialists among the personnel in all branches of the economy, administration and culture.

In the socialist countries, people say: “Our whole nation is studying.” In actual fact, study is becoming not only the right but the lofty duty of every member of society. This is still more true in the period of full-scale communist construction, when all forms of instruction—general, specialised, industrial and vocational—embrace a vast and con-

tinually growing section of the population.

In this connection yet another important task—the combination of instruction with participation of the mass of the citizens in material production—becomes particularly urgent. Rational ways of accomplishing this task have already been found. One of them consists in organising secondary education in such a way that the pupils not only receive vocational training but also take part in socially-useful labour to the extent of their physical capacity. Another consists in the development of a wide network of evening schools, higher and secondary specialised educational institutions for evening and corre-spondence courses, people’s universities, etc., providing an education in off-work hours. This will provide everyone who desires to study with the opportunity to receive any kind of education, particularly in view of the favourable conditions for study in off-work hours due to the reduction of the working day, the considerable rise in the standard of living, and the system of special privileges for those studying by correspondence.

Besides a rise in the level of education, the Programme of the C.P.S.U. envisages an intensive development of the cultural life of society.

A general rise in culture during the transition to communism is of decisive impor-tance in many fields. On it depends to a very great extent the development of the pro-ductive forces, the advance of technique and of the organisation of production, increased social activities of the working people, and a communist re-shaping of daily life. At the same time the rise in culture leads to a rapid, all-round development of the individual, making the life of every person more meaningful, richer and more vital.

All this requires in the first place a further extension of the material basis of cul-ture—the development of book publishing, enlargement of the network of libraries, theatres, clubs, cinemas, houses of culture, improvement of the radio diffusion network and the construction of television centres, the organisation of an extensive system of generally accessible scientific and technical laboratories, and of art and cinema studios for the use of all who desire it, and the wide development of amateur cultural organisa-tions of the most varied kinds.

Necessary too is the creative development of literature and art, those two great edu-cators of the new man. They must attain new heights of ideological content and artistic mastery by strengthening their links with the life of the nation, basing themselves on socialist realism, devotion to the people and partisanship.

A characteristic feature of the cultural life of the society that is building communism is the combination of mass amateur activities in all spheres of spiritual life with profes-sional art, literature and science. This combination promotes the development and en-richment of the artistic treasures of society, and also the cultural development of all its members and the formation of fine artistic tastes and cultural habits.

Communist culture is profoundly international. Hence it includes the development of cultural ties with the socialist countries and other countries for the purpose of ex-changing scientific and cultural achievements and bringing about mutual understanding and friendship among the peoples.

Learn How to Live and Work in the Communist Way

To build communism means to work well, to work ever more productively. For this it is necessary not only steadily to raise the professional knowledge of the workers, peasants, and intelligentsia, but also to develop in people the communist attitude to la-bour. The Party makes the development of a highly conscious attitude to labour the pivot of its educational work, striving that labour as the creator of all material and cultural values should become life’s prime want for all people. “Labour for the benefit of society is the sacred duty of everyone,” the Programme of the C.P.S.U. states. “Any labour for society, whether physical or mental, is honourable and commands respect.”418

The communist attitude to labour means above all a willingness and a desire to work well not because someone is driving the worker and not only because earnings depend upon it, but also owing to a high degree of social consciousness and a sense of moral duty. It is, moreover, a dynamic, creative, pioneering attitude to work, a constant search for ways to raise labour productivity, improve quality, and reduce production costs.

As society draws nearer to communism not only front-rankers in production, but also the main mass of the working people will become imbued with a conscious, truly communist attitude to labour. This, of course, does not mean that material stimuli can simply be abolished and replaced by moral ones. Material incentive has been, and re-mains, an important motive force in raising labour productivity. But during the transition to communism it will be increasingly supplemented by moral stimuli until the latter be-gin to predominate. Many measures of socialist society are designed to create the condi-tions necessary for this. Some of them are aimed at eliminating the last remaining rea-sons that prevent people from liking work. They include the gradual transfer to machines of all physically arduous, unpleasant and, even more so, harmful jobs, reduction of the length of the working day and the working week, etc. Other measures are designed to raise still higher the glory of the workingmen, to educate all working people through the finest examples. Such measures include, in particular, the award of Orders, medals and certificates of merit to the best factory workers, collective farmers and office employees, their election to central and local government bodies and leading posts in public organi-sations, and, lastly, the attention paid every day to the people of labour by the press, ra-dio, publications and art.

Especially characteristic is the concern shown by the working people themselves to ensure that more and more people work in a communist way. Evidence of this is seen, in particular, in the movement of teams and shock workers of communist labour in the So-viet Union, who set themselves precisely this task.

This movement undertakes another task as well: to teach people to live in a commu-nist way! To live in such a way that relations in the family and in everyday contacts with other people are in accord with the lofty demands of communist morality! This slogan finds its expression in the concern of the members of society themselves for the most rapid development of the communist way of life.

The Programme of the C.P.S.U. defines as follows the moral principles contained in the moral code of the builders of communism:  

devotion to the communist cause; love of the socialist motherland and other socialist countries;

conscientious labour for the good of society—he who does not work, neither shall he eat;

concern on the part of everyone for the preservation and growth of public wealth;

a high sense of public duty; intolerance of actions harmful to the public interest;

collectivism and comradely mutual assistance: one for all and all for one;

humane relations and mutual respect between individuals—man is to man a friend, comrade and brother;

honesty and truthfulness, moral purity, modesty, and unpretentiousness in social and private life;

mutual respect in the family, and concern for the upbringing of children;

an uncompromising attitude to injustice, parasitism, dishonesty, careerism and money-grubbing;

friendship and brotherhood among all peoples of the U.S.S.R.; intolerance of na-tional and racial hatred;  

an uncompromising attitude to the enemies of communism, peace and the freedom of nations;

fraternal solidarity with the working people of all countries, and with all peoples.419

The moral principles of communism include therefore also the fundamental norms of human morality which the masses of the people have evolved in the course of thou-sands of years of struggle against social oppression and vice. Communism makes these norms, which were distorted or shamelessly flouted under the rule of the exploiters, in-violable, vital rules for relations between people. The revolutionary morality of the working class is, naturally, of particular importance to the moral advancement of soci-ety. It includes such norms as collectivism and comradely mutual aid in struggle and labour; fraternal solidarity with all peoples; intolerance of oppressors, social injustice and parasitism; and a lofty sense of social duty.

Communist morality comes into being in the struggle against the survivals of capi-talism in people’s daily life, minds and morals. Such survivals persist long after the so-cial system which gave rise to them. But the period of the transition from socialism to communism must become a period of the complete elimination of the survivals of the past in the minds and behaviour of people.

This is the task that is set by the Programme of the C.P.S.U., which considers that the struggle against manifestations of bourgeois ideology and morality, against remnants of private-owner psychology, superstitions and prejudices is an integral part of its com-munist educational work.

It is clear, for example, that educating the working people in the spirit of friendship and brotherhood of peoples, proletarian internationalism and socialist patriotism is un-thinkable without a persistent struggle against the ideology of reactionary bourgeois na-tionalism, racism and cosmopolitism. Educating people in the communist attitude to la-bour, collectivism, scrupulous care for public property, and consciousness of social duty,

can proceed successfully only on condition of eliminating individualism, private-owner psychology and the desire to live at the expense of society. Religious prejudices must be overcome by teaching the masses the scientific materialist world outlook. This involves painstaking explanatory work, which has to be carried out without offending the feelings of religious believers.

The most serious survivals of the past, particularly leading to crime and infringe-ments of legality, require also administrative measures. But the chief influence will be increasingly that of the general public, public opinion, and the development of criticism and self-criticism. The power of example in public affairs and in private life, in the per-formance of public duty, acquires immense educational significance.

As society advances towards communism, it will make increasing demands on its citizens as regards their attitude in production, in public, in the family, and in daily life. But, as already mentioned, these demands will be increasingly based on methods of moral influence and persuasion, and not on administrative measures. That is why the part played by moral principles as the basis of conscious self-discipline leading to the consolidation and further development of the fundamental rules of the communist way of life steadily increases during the transition to communism.

The chief part in communist education will more and more pass directly to the col-lectives. The social practice of the socialist countries has already shown that the most effective means of struggle against egotistic individualism, which is the main opponent of communist morality, lies in counterposing active collectivism to it. Collectivism, like humanism, most of all accords with communist ideals. For as the highest standard of behaviour it affirms service to the benefit of society. At the same time it is most of all in accord with the interests of the individual, inculcating in him the loftiest human quali-ties.

That is why during the transition to communism the Communist Party attaches deci-sive importance to educational work in the primary Party and trade-union organisations, and —in the case of the rising generation—the Young Communist League and Pioneer organisations, as well as the production collectives that are the immediate scene of peo-ple’s activities. The socialist collective exerts a tremendous influence capable in case of need of re-educating and turning into useful members of society even the most appar-ently incorrigible persons.

Enhancement of Communist Ideology

Communist ideas by taking possession of the masses, become a mighty force in so-cialist society. But the transition to communism requires that communist ideology—this inexhaustible source of revolutionary energy—should be raised still higher.

Communist ideology has nothing in common with unthinking faith. To be devoted to the ideas of communism means to be profoundly convinced of their correctness, and such conviction is based on knowledge. What is required from the builders of commu-nism, and still more from members of communist society, is not mere compliance with established regulations, but initiative, creative activity and the ability not only to work

intelligently at one's place of work, but also to take part in deciding matters of state and public affairs.

The scientific world outlook of Marxism-Leninism is the indispensable basis of knowledge of the surrounding world. Hence in the period of transition to communism the Party sets the task of making its scientific world outlook the possession not only of the vanguard, the foremost section of the workers, peasants and intelligentsia, but of the whole people. The achievement of this task leads the nation as a whole to the integral Marxist-Leninist world outlook, which in turn makes possible the further union of work-ers, collective farmers and intellectuals, their gradual merging into a single collective of working members of communist society.

The acquisition of theoretical and political knowledge by the working people is an important but by no means the only aspect of the work connected with enhancing the communist ideology of the masses. As stressed in the Programme of the C. P. S. U., “communist ideas should be harmoniously combined with communist deeds in the be-haviour of every person and in the activities of all collectives and organisations”.420 The consolidation of communist ideology takes place primarily during the practical building of communism, which is the best school of communist ideology.

Educational work is not conducted in a vacuum, but is a struggle in which the Party is faced with serious opponents. This refers, above all, to bourgeois ideology. It must be remembered that the socialist countries are not separated from the capitalist world by an impenetrable wall. Bourgeois ideas, views and customs, decadent sentiments that per-meate the culture of contemporary capitalism, penetrate from the capitalist world by the most diverse channels.

The fact that the socialist states stand for peaceful coexistence with capitalism does not warrant the conclusion that it is possible to declare a “truce” in the struggle of the proletarian world outlook against the bourgeois world outlook. On the contrary, this struggle frequently becomes ever sharper, because the imperialist bourgeoisie, unwilling to reconcile itself to the loss of its political and ideological positions, intensifies the ideological offensive against the socialist countries.

8. The Marxist-Leninist Party in the Period of Full-Scale Communist Construction

Along what principal lines will the Communist Party develop in the period of full-scale communist construction? Answering this question in his report on the Programme of the C.P.S.U. at the Twenty-Second Congress, N. S. Khrushchov said:

“We consider that it will be along the lines of:  

“further enhancing the role of the Party as the highest form of social and political organisation, and increasing its guiding influence in all spheres of communist construction;

“strengthening .the unity between the Party and the people, extending the variety of forms of Party ties with the non-Party masses, raising ever larger sections of working people to the level of Party members in political consciousness and activeness;

“further promoting inner-Party democracy, enhancing the significance of the name

of Party member, rousing all Communists to still greater activity and initiative, strength-ening the unity and solidarity of Party ranks.”421

The fundamental idea underlying the development of the Party is that a higher stan-dard of the Party's political work and organisational leadership should correspond also to the period of full-scale building of communism.

As pointed out earlier, the building of communist society, although it proceeds on the basis of objective laws, does not take place spontaneously, automatically. The con-scious and purposeful activities of the working people, inspired by their single will in conformity with plans drawn up in advance, play an ever greater part in it. In this period it is more than ever necessary to have a deep knowledge of the laws governing social development and to take very carefully into account the experience of the millions of the working people.

This gives rise to the need for the further growth of the leading role of the Marxist-Leninist party, which personifies the conscious element and guiding force in building communism. It is the Party, armed with scientific theory and attentively heeding the voice of experience, that most fully, comprehensively and deeply learns the objective tendencies of reality itself and, on this basis, directs and organises the constructive, pur-poseful activities of the broadest masses.

The role of the Party also increases in view of the shifts in the mutual relations of the state and public organisations and the further development of socialist democracy.

As the state gradually transfers many of its functions to public organisations, the Party increasingly comes to the forefront as the leader of all of society and the guiding force among the public organisations. The Party directs both the process of the withering away of the state and the activities of the trade unions and other public organisations, helping them to assume the new place which they are called upon to take with the ap-proach to communism.

Moreover, without the uniting leadership of the Party, the extension of local rights and gradual decentralisation of administration could lead to some adverse consequences for society, in particular to the growth of departmental and parochial tendencies. They are harmful because the interests of “one’s own” department or of “one’s own” area could be counterposed to the general state and general national interests, and harm the accomplishing of common tasks. But the Party is an organisation that does not depend on any departmental or parochial influences, it always thinks in terms of the interests of all the people and approaches each specific question from this viewpoint. This is espe-cially important in such a multi-national country as the Soviet Union, The Party cements the Soviet system. Its unity, based on the community of communist aims and ideology, and its democratic centralism impart unprecedented strength to the society which is building communism.

The role of the Party is enhanced also because the importance of communist educa-tion of the working people is immensely increased in the period of full-scale communist construction. This education does not consist in abstract preaching of communist moral-ity but takes place in the course of daily struggle and constructive work, where the Party

more and more acts not only as the collective leader and organiser of the masses, but as a collective educator.

Thus, enhancement of the role of the Party is a process necessary for society as a whole that is in the interests of its further development and of communist construction, which is expanding all the time and the tasks of which are becoming more complex.

It is clear that the growing role of the Party makes greater demands on the Party it-self. As regards the aspects of its activities that acquire especially great importance, this can be judged from the experience of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the first Marxist party that has had to direct the building of communism.

To direct such a complex undertaking as the building of communism requires the ability creatively to explore the new, the ability resolutely to replace obsolete forms of organisation and methods of work which no longer conform to the situation. This quality is particularly valuable, because those who like an easy life are often tempted to use over and over again the methods which were suitable yesterday or the day before yesterday, but which today clearly need to be replaced by new, more advanced methods.

To go forward with the maximum speed and with the minimum cost in outlays, to disclose and utilise daily all the potentialities and advantages of the socialist system—this is what spells success.

The Party does not allow anyone to rest on his laurels. It calls for ever going for-ward, calls for trail-blazing and sets an example of it, without concealing the difficulties to be overcome, without keeping silent about shortcomings, and concentrating the ef-forts of all the people on solving urgent problems. Such leadership multiplies the crea-tive powers of the people tenfold and ensures the gradual development of socialist soci-ety into communist society.

As ever deeper advances into the new formation are made, the Party is confronted by more and more questions and problems that the theory of Marxism-Leninism did not encounter at all in the past, or solved only in the most general outline. In these condi-tions bold creative endeavour in the sphere of theory becomes an indispensable prereq-uisite of progress. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union is solving with credit the most complex problems presented by life. Suffice it to point to the contribution made to Marxist-Leninist theory by the recent Congresses of the C.P.S.U. and by its Programme.

The activities of the C.P.S.U. clearly demonstrate that the development of theory consists not in the mechanical stringing together of quotations, as skilfully performed by all kinds of dogmatists, mentally lazy people, but in deep study and generalisation of the experience of life itself. The main thing now is not to limit oneself to the propaganda of the theory of communism, but to concentrate efforts on the creative application of the principles of Marxism-Leninism in practice, on the solution of the problems of commu-nist construction. The unity of theory and practice in these conditions is more important than ever before.

A most important feature of the political life of the society that is building commu-nism is that the role of the Party does not grow at the expense of the role of the Soviets, trade unions and other public organisations, or by curtailing social initiative, but by

these undergoing a tremendous development. Is there any contradiction here? Can the enhanced role and initiative of public organisations be combined with the simultaneous growth of the leading role of the Party? There is no contradiction here and such a com-bination is quite natural. The crux of the matter is that the methods of the Party’s leader-ship do not remain the same; they undergo considerable alteration during the transition to communism. The Rules of the C.P.S.U. adopted by the Twenty-Second Congress give an idea of the direction along which these methods must evolve. The Rules stress that Party organisations must not act in place of government, trade-union, co-operative or other public organisations, that they must not allow any merging of their functions. The Rules make obligatory a broad enlistment of the working people in the activities of these organisations, the development of the initiative and activity of the masses as an essential condition for the gradual transition from socialist statehood to communist public self-government.

To guide the building of communist society concretely, the Party must have quali-fied people who know all the fine points of their job. That is why the C.P.S.U. directs its organisations and all its members to make a specific study of the economy and technol-ogy, of the economic laws and the ways in which they are manifested. This is inconven-ient only for those who would like to limit themselves to agitation for communism “in general”, who do not understand that in the period of the full-scale building of commu-nism men of action are needed, men capable of leading the masses to accomplish the great tasks of our time.

This is bound up with the great importance acquired by organisational work in this period. When the political line has been mapped out, the centre of attention shifts to the selection of leaders, to the proper organisation of the endeavours of thousands and mil-lions of people, to working out specific measures capable of ensuring the smooth opera-tion of industrial enterprises, the growth of the social economy of the collective farms and the incomes of their members, and an advance in the culture and political con-sciousness of the working people. It is such an approach to its leading role, not merely proclaimed but backed by dynamic practical work, that is characteristic of the Commu-nist Party of the Soviet Union.

The further consolidation of its links with the masses continues to be a prime con-cern of the Party. The development of new forms and methods of strengthening the Party’s links with the masses has been dealt with earlier (p. 560). The political direc-tives, the plans of building communism elaborated by the Party are carried out all the more successfully, the more fully they take into account the opinion of the people and incorporate their wisdom and creative initiative, the more fully they grip the minds of the millions of working people and become a cause that is dear to them.

The Party is able to head the constructive activities of the masses and guide the de-velopment of socialist democracy because it develops democracy within its own ranks. The sharp turn to the Leninist principles and standards of Party life effected by the C.P.S.U. in recent years was not only due to the specific requirements of the moment, it had in view wider prospects as well. It will be recalled that in its activities the Party re-

lies not on compulsion, but on persuasion, political education, and explanation, and in this sense the methods of work devised by the Party serve as a prototype of the methods of leadership in communist society.

Being the vanguard of the people building communist society, it is stated in the Pro-gramme of the C.P.S.U., the Party must also be in the van in the organisation of the Party’s internal life and serve as an example and model in developing the most advanced forms of communist public self-government.422

The systematic renewal of all elected Party bodies—from primary organisations to the Central Committee—put into practice by the C.P.S.U., is of great practical and theo-retical importance. The renewal takes place in definite proportions, which ensures conti-nuity of leadership. Thanks to the fact that at each election time a considerable section of new people comes into the leadership, there is a constant influx of fresh vigorous forces into Party work and the necessary conditions are established for advancing the youth. This practice, the Programme and Rules of the C.P.S.U. emphasise, is important because it precludes the possibility of an excessive concentration of power in the hands of indi-vidual officials and so weakening the collective’s control over each leader.

During the transition to communism the Party must also set an example in develop-ing communist relations in its own ranks and in fostering in Party members a high com-munist consciousness, and traits of character and norms of behaviour that anticipate many traits of the man of communist society. As time goes on the ideology of the Party, its principles and standards of life will become the possession of all of society. Actually, every person will then become a conscious Communist.

Overt and covert enemies of communism eagerly desire the Communist Party to curtail its activities in leading society. But they will never live to see this! The interests of communist construction demand not the weakening, but, on the contrary, the strengthening of the Party’s leading role, the utmost perfection of its activities in all spheres of social life: politics and economics, science and culture, literature and art.

9. International Significance of Communist Construction in the U.S.S.R.

The building of communism in the Soviet Union is proceeding under conditions when two world social systems exist. Hence economic and technical achievements, an advance of the living standard, the development of democracy—all of them are impor-tant not only for the Soviet people, but also for the course and outcome of that peaceful competition between the two systems which is the main content of the struggle between socialism and capitalism in the international arena.

Communist Construction in the Soviet Union Is a Component of Building Communist Society in the Whole Socialist Community

The material prerequisites for communist construction are created by the labour of the people of each socialist country and the constant enlargement of its contribution to the common cause of consolidating the socialist system. No country can receive com-munism as a “gift” from another; communism is built by the country’s own workers,

peasants and intelligentsia.

Nevertheless, the building of the new society—first socialist and then communist—is by no means an isolated, narrowly-national affair of each nation. There was a time when the possibility of building socialism in one country taken separately was a subject of debate in the communist movement. History has answered this question. Socialism, which was victorious in one country, the Soviet Union, became a mighty bulwark for a large group of People’s Democracies developing along the road to socialism. As a result, all grounds for raising the question of building socialism in isolation have now disap-peared. This holds good even more for communist construction, which for the majority of countries would not merely be severely retarded, but in fact prove simply impossible apart from the world socialist community. Within the framework of the world socialist system, on the other hand, the victory of communism is fully assured. “The combined forces of the socialist camp,” states the Programme of the C.P.S.U., “are a sure guaran-tee for each socialist country against encroachments by imperialist reaction. The con-solidation of the socialist countries in a single camp, its increasing unity and steadily growing strength, ensure the complete victory of socialism and communism within the framework of the system as a whole.”423

Guided by the principles of socialist internationalism, by the consciousness of its historic responsibility to the international working class, the C.P.S.U. affirms in its Pro-gramme that it regards communist construction in the Soviet Union as a component of the building of communist society by the peoples of the entire world socialist system.

The building of communism in the U.S.S.R. is in the interests of all the socialist countries. It strengthens the economic might and defence capacity of the world socialist camp, and creates increasingly favourable opportunities for developing economic and cultural co-operation between the U.S.S.R. and other socialist countries, for affording them help and support. In building communism, the Soviet people are laying down new roads for the whole of mankind, testing their correctness by their own experience, bring-ing out difficulties, finding ways and means of overcoming them, and selecting the best forms and methods of communist construction. This is a most valuable contribution to the building of communism by other nations, since the basic laws of communist con-struction are alike for all countries.

It is known that owing to the socialist revolution taking place at different times in different countries, and their dissimilar levels of economic and cultural development, the completion of socialist construction and entry into the period of communist construction does not take place simultaneously in these countries. Nevertheless, the fact that the so-cialist countries are developing as members of a single world socialist system and utilis-ing the objective laws and advantages of this system enables them “to reduce the time necessary for the construction of socialism and offers them the prospect of effecting the transition to communism more or less simultaneously, within one and the same histori-cal epoch.”424

The thesis of the more or less simultaneous transition of the socialist countries to communism, first formulated by the C.P.S.U., is based on a profound analysis of the

specific features of socialist economy and the socialist type of relations between nations.

This conclusion takes into account, above all, the high rate of development of social-ist economy. Its planned nature allows it to assign annually large sums for capital con-struction and modernisation of equipment. Experience has shown that on this basis countries whose economy lagged behind can develop their economies at an accelerated pace. Naturally, the leap from backwardness to progress requires an all-out effort but, as the history of the industrialisation of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries has shown, the results fully justify it.

Further, the countries whose economies have lagged behind can rely on the up-to-date technical basis which the industrially developed socialist countries are helping them to construct. Moreover, bringing the lagging countries up to the level of the advanced ones does not result in rivalry between them, but creates the most favourable conditions for accelerating the common advance, for a rapid growth of the world socialist economy as a whole.

Important advantages are afforded also by the system of specialisation and co-operation which is taking shape within the socialist community. Large-scale production, capable of satisfying the needs not of the producing country alone but also those of the fraternal countries, makes possible a wider adoption of advanced methods and the most up-to-date technology, particularly automation, so that the level of labour productivity approaches that of the advanced socialist countries.

Lastly, fraternal mutual aid of the socialist countries helps to eliminate differences in the level of economic development. All forms of mutual aid play their part here—credit grants, supplies of equipment, free transfer of technical data, assistance in training per-sonnel, and exchange of experience. The mutual aid of the socialist countries is of such a nature that it primarily promotes the industrialisation and development of the economic resources of each country. Aid from other countries, of course, does not rule out but, on the contrary, presupposes the need for each country to make its own efforts to accelerate the rate of its advance to communism.

The objective laws of the development of the productive forces, and the vital interests of the peoples of the socialist countries, determine an increasing affinity of the national economies. As Lenin foresaw, development proceeds towards the future creation of a world communist economy regulated by the victorious working people according to a sin-gle plan. In order to give scope to these tendencies, and to ensure the rapid development of the socialist camp as a whole along the road to communism, it is necessary to strengthen the unity of this camp and vigorously check any manifestations of nationalism.

The C.P.S.U. has outlined in its Programme the tasks whose accomplishment in co-operation with the Communist Parties of the other socialist countries will pave the way for the victory of communism on the scale of the world socialist system as a whole. These tasks are:

in the political field, the utmost strengthening of the world socialist system; promotion of fraternal relations between the socialist countries on lines of complete equality and vol-untary co-operation; political consolidation of the countries of the socialist community for

a joint struggle for universal peace and for the complete triumph of communism.

in the economic field, expansion of trade between the socialist countries; develop-ment of the international socialist division of labour, increasing co-ordination of long-range economic plans of the socialist countries to ensure a maximum saving of social labour, the promotion of scientific and technical co-operation;

in the cultural field, steady development of all forms of cultural co-operation and in-tercourse between the peoples of the socialist countries; exchanges of cultural achieve-ments; encouragement of joint creative effort by workers in science, literature and art; active promotion of measures to ensure the mutual enrichment of national cultures and bring the mode of life and the spiritual cast of the socialist nations closer together.

Prospects of Economic Competition of the U.S.S.R. with the  Most Developed Capitalist Countries

While advancing to communism, the Soviet Union has to surpass in a historically brief period the most developed capitalist countries—the U.S.A., Britain, West Ger-many, and France—as regards per capita output.

The outcome of the economic competition between the two systems depends mainly on how long it will take the Soviet Union to overtake and outstrip the U.S.A., the most powerful capitalist country. To exceed the indices of the U.S.A. means to surpass the highest achievements of capitalist production, the “ceiling” that capitalism has been able to reach as a social and economic system.

At the present time the attainment by the U.S.S.R. of the level of production of the U.S.A. is no longer a remote prospect as it might have seemed even a decade ago. Whereas in 1950 industrial output in the U.S.S.R. was only about 30 per cent of that of the U.S.A., at the end of 1961 it already amounted to over 60 percent. The economy of the U.S.S.R. is developing much faster than that of the U.S.A. During 1954-60, for ex-ample, the average annual growth of industrial output in the U.S.S.R. was 11.1 per cent, whereas that of the U.S.A., 2.5 per cent.

Moreover, a very important fact is that the U.S.S.R. considerably exceeds the U.S.A. not only in the rate of increase of industrial output but in the absolute amount of in-crease. The average annual increase of industrial output during 1954-60 in absolute fig-ures was approximately twice as great in the Soviet Union as in the United States.

All this has enabled the C.P.S.U. to put forward the task of outstripping the U.S.A. in per capita output as an immediate task. Already during the present decade the Soviet Union will surpass the existing level of U.S. industrial production and in the course of 20 years it will leave it far behind. Labour productivity in the Soviet Union after 20 years will be approximately twice the existing level in the U.S.A., and for productivity per hour—owing to the shortened working day in the U.S.S.R.—it will be considerably more than that.

Calculations based on comparing average annual figures of development of the economies of the U.S.S.R. and of the U.S.A. over a long period show that in 1980 the national income per capita in the Soviet Union will exceed the U.S. future average na-

tional income per capita by at least 50 per cent.

This, of course, is not the final limit for the Soviet Union. Communist construction will continue to stimulate the further rapid development of the economy after the U.S.S.R. has outstripped the U.S.A.

Capitalism has no prospect of success in peaceful competition with socialism owing to causes inherent in the capitalist system itself. It cannot set itself the task of continu-ously increasing production and still less can it be guided by the aim of increasing the well-being of the people. The sole aim of capitalism is to make profits. What and how much is produced depends solely on whether its production brings a profit. The endeav-our to achieve a constant increase of production, which is so natural, for the socialist countries, is out of the question for the capitalist monopolies. On the contrary, they often find it profitable to restrict production if this leads to higher prices and increased profits.

The capitalists have nothing that they can set against the scientifically substantiated prospects of a rising living standard of the working people put forward in the Pro-gramme of the C.P.S.U. Consumption by the workers under capitalism is determined by the narrow bounds of the value of labour-power and cannot exceed these restricted lim-its. The natural endeavour of the capitalists is wherever possible to reduce wages and lower the living standard of the working people.

Nor can capitalism reduce the working day in a planned fashion, as naturally hap-pens in the socialist countries. The working people of the capitalist countries are well aware that they cannot achieve a reduction of the working day without a stubborn strug-gle, except in those cases where it is accompanied by a reduction of wages and is in fact a sinister sign of unemployment, of which it is a concealed form.

Can capitalist governments consistently lower taxes and later completely abolish them? They cannot. On the contrary, growth of taxation is an inseparable feature of modern capitalism. The state budget, which is continually inflated by the imposition of taxes, is the main financial source for the development of state-monopoly capitalism.

Can the bourgeois state provide the working people with rent-free housing and free communal services? Of course not. In a society where both housing and communal ser-vices are a source of profit such measures are economically impossible.

All these defects of the capitalist system, as also the advantages of socialism, be-come fully manifest during the peaceful competition of the two systems. That is why the bosses of monopoly capital are so afraid of peaceful coexistence. In the attempt to frus-trate it they try to frighten the working people of their countries by depicting the social-ist countries’ proposal of peaceful coexistence as some kind of “diabolical conspiracy” calculated to do irreparable harm to the peoples of the Western world. Such an idea seems quite natural to the monopolists, who are accustomed to regard all emulation as merely rivalry, capitalist competition, in which the gain of one side means the loss of the other. But the Communists have in mind quite a different kind of emulation, one from which all nations and the working people of all countries can gain.

Is there any threat to the peoples of the capitalist countries in the fact that the social-ist countries want to have the shortest working day in the world, well-built housing,

well-organised public catering and welfare services, children’s institutions and schools? Are the Soviet Union and other socialist countries trying to achieve this at the expense of other nations, by means of war and violence? On the contrary, they are persistently striving to safeguard peace, which is essential for the accomplishment of their grandiose economic plans. Moreover, they are unselfishly helping the underdeveloped countries to overcome their economic backwardness. They are waging a stubborn struggle for com-plete and general disarmament, which would free vast sums for fighting starvation, dis-ease and illiteracy, for the economic and cultural development of all countries, for in-creasing the well-being of the working people.

Whether it pleases the monopolists or not, economic competition between socialism and capitalism is already taking place in the world arena and is of direct advantage to the working people of the capitalist countries.

Influence of the Successes of Communist Construction in the U.S.S.R.  on World Development

The successes of communist construction in the Soviet Union, as also the achieve-ments of the People’s Democracies, exert a growing influence on world developments. “The main distinguishing feature of our time is that the world socialist system is becom-ing a decisive factor in the development of human society.”425

The strength of the world socialist system creates, above all, tremendous opportuni-ties for solving the paramount problem of our time—that of saving mankind from the menace of a nuclear war. The world socialist camp, which is advancing in the van of all peace-loving mankind, has a sobering influence on the aggressive imperialist circles. As further successes of communist construction are achieved, the socialist countries’ mis-sion of salvation will stand out ever more vividly.

As a result of the steady shift of the relationship of forces in the world arena in fa-vour of peace and socialism, war can he banished from the life of the nations even be-fore the complete victory of socialism throughout the globe. Of course, this will not come about of itself; it requires immense efforts: incessant struggle and the vigilance of the peoples towards the intrigues of the warmongers. But the prospects of putting an end to wars cannot fail to inspire all peoples and strengthen their struggle for safeguarding universal peace. This, too, is the great service rendered by the world socialist camp.

Lenin pointed out that socialism exerts its chief influence on international develop-ment by its economic successes. From the very first days of the Soviet power he at-tached this significance to the force of example of the socialist system. “Socialism has the force of example,” he said, “the significance of communism has to be shown in prac-tice, by example.”426 However, the Soviet Union’s economic and cultural backwardness, which it inherited from capitalism, for a long time did not allow full development of the strength of the new system. Later on, too, imperialism by its aggressive policy caused the socialist countries to expend much money and efforts on strengthening their defence capacity, repelling military attacks and eliminating the consequences of war.

That is why the bourgeoisie could still on some occasions speculate on the difficulties

and defects of the new society. The successes of communist construction in the Soviet Un-ion, as also those of the People’s Democracies, are putting an end to the opportunities for such speculations. The day is not far distant when the working people of the Soviet Union will have the highest living standard in the world. For the working people of all countries this will be the most easily understood and convincing demonstration of the advantages of the socialist system. Together with the successes in the development of socialist democ-racy and culture, it will still further increase the attractive power of Marxism-Leninism, winning new millions of people to its side. All this will greatly extend and strengthen the front of the forces advocating a change to a new social system. The social emancipation of the working people will go forward at a more rapid rate. In particular, the prospect of a peaceful transition to socialism will become even more feasible.

“When the Soviet people will enjoy the blessings of communism, new hundreds of millions of people on earth will say: 'We are for communism! It is not through war with other countries, but by the example of a more perfect organisation of society, by rapid progress in developing the productive forces, the creation of all conditions for the happi-ness and well-being of man, that the ideas of communism win the minds and hearts of the masses.” (From the Programme of the C.P.S.U.)427

Every success of communist construction in the Soviet Union undoubtedly has a profound influence, too, on the underdeveloped countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The assistance rendered them by the socialist camp in overcoming their eco-nomic and cultural backwardness is becoming still more effective. The peoples of the socialist countries regard such assistance as fulfilment of their international duty to that section of the world’s working people which capitalism doomed to the most grievous torments of forced labour, poverty, starvation and national humiliation.

The future victories of communism will exert a tremendous influence on the peoples of the liberated countries in choosing the paths of their historical development. The work-ing people and all national and democratic forces in these countries will become increas-ingly convinced that genuine independence, deliverance from poverty, and true democracy can be won only by following the road which the scientific socialism of Marx, Engels and Lenin has pointed out to the whole of oppressed and exploited mankind.

Such, then, are the inspiring historic prospects opened up by the successes of com-munist construction of the U.S.S.R.

“The achievement of communism in the U.S.S.R. will be the greatest victory man-kind has ever won throughout its long history. Every new step towards the bright peaks of communism inspires the working masses in all countries, renders immense moral support to the struggle for the liberation of all peoples from social and national oppres-sion, and brings closer the triumph of Marxism-Leninism on a worldwide scale” (From the Programme of the C.P.S.U.)428

That is why the building of communism in the U.S.S.R., which is in the vital inter-ests of the Soviet people, is at the same time its great international task. For all the working people in the Soviet Union this is a powerful additional stimulus in the struggle to build the most just and happy society in the world—communist society.

CHAPTER 27

ON COMMUNIST SOCIETY

Defining the conditions in which the higher, communist, phase of the new society will be established, Marx wrote: “...After the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can... society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”429

These conditions, named by Marx, are gradually taking shape in the socialist coun-tries, the Soviet Union in the first place, as a result of the development of tendencies discussed in the previous chapter. Ultimately these conditions with natural historical inevitability will bring about the complete victory of communism.

The birth of this new, higher system is a matter of the not very distant future. Hence, in our day the question as to what communism is has become of great practical interest for millions of working people. They want to know, and should know, what kind of a society will arise as a result of their efforts, their day-to-day endeavours— big and small, heroic and prosaic.

Can social science satisfy this interest? It doubtlessly can, if we are concerned not with details, but with the general outlines of the new society.

It should, of course, be borne in mind that the victory of communism does not mean a halt in historical development: communist society will change and improve continu-ously. It is impossible therefore to predict precisely what it will be like after a number of centuries, and still less after thousands of years. But to the question what communism will look like to many of our contemporaries, what the communist system will be like in the first stages of its development—to this question a quite definite answer can already be given. It is given by Marxist-Leninist theory.

In doing so, Marxism-Leninism does not try to fit communism into some kind of pre-conceived pattern, but proceeds wholly from an analysis of the tendencies of pre-sent-day life, from which the communist future of mankind arises directly.

The most complete expression of modern Marxist ideas of communism is to be found in the Programme of the C.P.S.U. adopted by its Twenty-Second Congress. It con-tains a detailed description of the fundamental features of communist society, its mate-rial and technical basis, social relations, and the moral qualities of communist man.

A generalised definition of communism is formulated in the Programme as follows:

“Communism is a classless social system with one form of public ownership of the means of production and full social equality of all members of society; under it, the all-round development of people will be accompanied by the growth of the productive forces through continuous progress in science and technology; all the springs of co-operative wealth will flow more abundantly, and the great principle ‘From each accord-

ing to his ability, to each according to his needs' will be implemented. Communism is a highly organised society of free, socially conscious working people in which public self-government will be established, a society in which labour for the good of society will become the prime vital requirement of everyone, a necessity recognised by one and all, and the ability of each person will be employed to the greatest benefit of the people.”430

1. A Society of Universal Sufficiency and Abundance

Communism is a society that puts an end to want and poverty once and for all, as-suring the well-being of all its citizens. The working people’s age-old dream of abun-dance comes true.

Thinking of communist abundance, today we no longer have to dream of fabulous lands flowing with milk and honey. It is enough to think of the benefits which people will be given in the near future by the latest achievements of socialist science and tech-nology, and by the successes of social production, freed by socialism from the fetters that had hindered its rapid and continuous advance.

These successes make it possible to construct a mighty material and technical basis, to raise labour productivity to an unprecedented level, and to achieve a very high degree of planned organisation of the entire social economy, which will ensure the most effec-tive and rational utilisation of material wealth and manpower resources. As a result, man’s mastery of nature will attain vast heights. The elemental forces of nature will in-creasingly be more fully utilised in the interests of man, who will at last be able to solve problems which preceding generations attacked in vain.

Worry over his daily bread has always been man’s prime care. Communism will solve this problem fully and for all time. In communist society, agricultural labour will become a variety of industrial labour; agriculture will be amply provided with the most diverse up-to-date machines and will be based on the most advanced scientific methods. This will bring about an unprecedented rise in its productivity and enable all members of society to have an abundance of healthy, tasty, and varied food.

This task is fully feasible. The present achievements of agronomy and biology and successes in the mechanisation of agricultural production are already laying a solid foundation for its accomplishment. If all these achievements could be applied in all countries, this alone, scientists estimate, would make it possible fully to meet the scien-tifically based food requirements not only of the present population of the world, but of one many times greater.

The higher the level of civilisation, the wider and more diverse the range of things and services that people need. The conception of well-being today already includes not only good food, but also convenient and spacious homes, high-quality beautiful clothes, diverse household articles which make daily life more comfortable and beautiful. It also includes convenient means of transport and articles needed for cultural recreation (books, wireless and TV sets, musical instruments, athletic gear), and many other things.

Communism aims at fully satisfying people’s needs for all these things and services. Present-day achievements of science, technology, and the organisation of production

make this aim fully realisable.

What indeed can prevent the accomplishment of this task, despite its complexity?

A shortage of raw material? Depletion of the storehouses nature has prepared for mankind? It is already quite clear that this danger does not threaten man. The advance of agriculture opens up huge sources of raw material for the production of consumer goods. Colossal wealth still lies concealed in the bowels of the earth and the ocean depths. But perhaps still greater promise is held out by the manufacture and utilisation of synthetic materials which, far from being inferior in quality, even exceed natural raw materials in many respects. Man has learned to make remarkable new materials from coal and natu-ral gas, oil, and by-products of wood, sea-water, and even air. It is along these lines that mankind will be able radically to solve the raw material problem in the near future.

Nor can a shortage of labour-power become an obstacle to abundance, for there is no limit to the productivity of human labour. People have already learned to harness such mighty forces of nature and to create such machines that the productivity of man’s la-bour can be multiplied thousands of times. They have discovered inexhaustible sources of energy in nature itself—in water, in the air, deep in the earth and, lastly, in the atom. They have learned to make very clever automatic machines which in the relatively near future will be able to give humanity an abundance of all the things it needs for its life.

The achievements of modern science and technology, and the discoveries that they are on the threshold of making, provide tangible and real prospects of satisfying all the needs of the members of society not only as regards prime necessities but also as regards goods and services that are considered luxuries today.

Scientific communism, therefore, regards the problems of universal sufficiency and abundance in inseparable connection with the problems of developing socialist produc-tion and raising the productivity of labour. This undoubtedly is the only practicable ap-proach. It distinguishes Marxists from all supporters of so-called “consumer commu-nism” who, discussing the path to abundance, have laid emphasis not on production, but on the distribution of material benefits. Their ideal was simple division, the distribution between members of society of all the accumulated riches, both possessed individually and those concentrated in the hands of society, which should be utilised for the devel-opment of production. But such a division could only create a brief illusion of general well-being. Then it would inexorably lead not to abundance, but to impoverishment, not to equality in wealth, but to equality in poverty. A just system of distribution, according to the deep conviction of Marxists, which is confirmed by experience, can be of benefit only if it rests on powerful, continuously expanding production, if society thinks not only of how to divide the available benefits, but also of how to augment them con-stantly.

Hence, the way to create communist abundance is further to develop the large-scale machine industry of socialist society at a rapid pace. That this is the natural path of de-velopment is self-evident today. But in the period when Marx and Engels drew this con-clusion and made it part of the basis of scientific communism it was a cardinal discovery of socialist thought. At that time, the most widely held views were those of the represen-

tatives of utopian socialism who thought that the well-being of the people could be achieved only by going back from large-scale machine industry that arose in the epoch of capitalism to small-scale production. Can anyone today doubt that such a path would ultimately lead to the restoration of the capitalist order of things, to the regress, and not to the progress, of mankind.

By regarding large-scale modern production, and technical and scientific progress as the only possible basis for the creation of abundance, Marxism-Leninism by no means makes the solution of this problem dependent only on production, on technology. No, this problem has a no less important social aspect. Its solution is quite impossible with-out the social conditions formed after the victory of socialism. No technical or scientific progress under capitalism can ensure abundance for all members of society. A vivid ex-ample is furnished by the United States, the richest and most developed country in the capitalist world, where the high level of production, it would seem, could ensure a com-fortable life for the entire population, but where despite this, there are millions of people who are undernourished, live in bad conditions and lack the bare necessities of life.

This means that it is only in combination with the principles of socialism that a high technology of production can provide genuine abundance for all the people. It is only after the social system, and the production and distribution of material and spiritual val-ues, have been remade along socialist, and then along communist lines, that this abun-dance begins to yield its fruit for every member of society.

2. From Each According to His Ability

Under communism, as under any other social system, human labour remains the necessary source of all values. “Communism will bring man not a lordly life in which laziness and idleness prevail, but a life of labour, an industrious, cultured and interesting life!” (N. S. Khrushchov).431

Hence, whatever the development of technology, whatever the victories of science, people will have to work and the slogan “from each according to his ability” will remain the immutable principle of the communist system.

It is well known that this principle already prevails under socialism, proclaiming the duty of all members of society to work to the full measure of their abilities. Commu-nism, however, introduces deep changes into the content of the formula “from each ac-cording to his ability”.

Firstly, by ensuring the all-round development of the individual, the conditions of the communist system lead to the flowering of all the abilities of man and thereby make labour performed to the full measure of his ability much more productive. Secondly, owing to the abolition of the old division of labour, all the necessary conditions will gradually be created for each person to do the work for which he is best fitted by ability and inclination, and which will be for him his favourite occupation. Thirdly, the fulfil-ment by each person of his duty to work according to his ability is ensured under com-munism by different methods than under socialism. As we know, in socialist society ma-terial stimuli (payment according to work), operating in combination with moral stimuli,

are of decisive significance. Under communism, all members of society will work, prompted solely by moral stimuli, a high degree of social consciousness. In other words, this will be labour without payment, and the satisfaction without payment of all the needs of the workers.

“Communist labour in the narrower and stricter sense of the term,” Lenin wrote, “is labour performed gratis for the benefit of society, labour performed, not as a definite duty, not for the purpose of obtaining a right to certain products, not according to previ-ously established and legally fixed rates, but voluntary labour, irrespective of rates, la-bour performed without expectation of reward, without the condition of reward, labour performed out of a habit of working for the common good, and out of a conscious reali-sation (become a habit) of the necessity of working for the common good—labour as the requirement of a healthy organism.”432

It is clear that labour can become a habit, life’s prime want of each person, not only when the consciousness of people reaches great heights, but also when the very nature of labour itself changes.

One of the prime conditions for this exists already under socialism: the exploitation of man by man disappears. Other conditions are created in the period of transition to communism. Human labour is replaced by machines wherever excessive physical exer-tion is required, wherever work is monotonous and exhausting. The time spent working in material production is steadily reduced. Lastly, there is abolished the old division of labour which crippled man, chained him for life to one trade, barring the road to the de-velopment of his capabilities and inclinations.

Thus, the labour activities of people are transformed on the basis of the technical re-equipment of industry and the wide application to it of the achievements of science, on the basis of the social and cultural progress of the new society. Under communism hu-man labour will be entirely freed from everything that made it an onerous burden for thousands of years. It will become not only free, but also genuinely creative. In the automated production of communist society an ever greater place in man’s work will be assumed by the functions which no machine is capable of performing, i. e., primarily the creative functions associated with the design and improvement of machines, their ad-justment, and the compilation and control of programmes and regimes of technological processes.

An approximate picture of what labour will be like under communism can be drawn by bearing in mind its main features, which are as follows:

each worker, both as regards skill and the nature of his labour, performs functions for which trained engineers and technicians are required in present-day production;

people work 20-25 hours a week (i. e., approximately 4-5 hours a day) and, in time, even less;

each person can choose an occupation in conformity with his or her inclinations and abilities and change it at will;

all talents and abilities inherent in people are fully developed and applied either in their production activities or in their free time;

while working, a man does not have to think about his livelihood, or how much he will get for his labour, because society has assumed all responsibility for satisfying his requirements;

labour enjoys the highest respect in society and becomes in the eyes of all the chief measure of man’s worth.

Under such conditions, labour naturally turns into a free, voluntary matter, into an inner urge and habit of all members of society, because creative labour is liked by every normal human being and is, as Engels put it, “the highest enjoyment known to us”.433

For labour to give people happiness, it need not be converted into a sort of entertain-ing game that requires no exertion of physical or mental effort, as some utopian social-ists imagined. Polemising against such naive views, Marx wrote that “free labour, for example the labour of the composer, is at the same time a devilishly serious matter, a most intensive strain”. No less serious a matter is the labour of a designer, inventor or writer, in a word, every genuinely creative labour. But does the exertion which it in-volves make such labour less attractive?

Free creative labour under communism will give the members of society such deep satisfaction that the conception of leisure will not be associated in their mind with the conception of complete idleness. Besides their main production activities, which will take up only a small part of the day, many people will undoubtedly engage in science, invention, art, literature, etc. The general cultural level and the special knowledge of millions of people will be so high that all these forms of “amateur” activities will repre-sent a constantly growing contribution to the development and prosperity of society.

Communism will gradually make the supreme joy of free and creative labour avail-able not only to a few but to all; the time spent working, which throughout the centuries was considered lost by the millions, will become time that makes life fuller.

That will be a great achievement of communist humanism. Its results will be felt in all spheres of society's life, giving rise to new relations between people, creating prereq-uisites for the unprecedented development of the personality and ensuring conditions for the firm establishment of the new, communist mode of distribution.

3. To Each According to His Needs

Communism makes possible and necessary a mode of distribution of material and spiritual benefits which is based on the principle “to each according to his needs”. In other words, everyone, irrespective of his position, of the quantity and quality of labour he can give society, receives from society gratis everything he needs.

It is easy to understand that this means not only a very great revolution in views on labour which, as shown above, ceases to be a mere means of earning a livelihood. To-gether with the disappearance of the need to control the amount of labour and consump-tion, together with the abolition of money and the disappearance of commodity-money relations, the very nature of the connections between man and society are radically changed. These connections are completely freed from selfish considerations, from eve-rything introduced in them by the quest for an income, for material gain.

The opportunity to obtain gratis at any time from the public stocks everything needed for a cultured and carefree life will have a wholesome effect on man’s mind, which will no longer be weighed down by concern for the morrow. In the new psychol-ogy and the new ethics there will be no room for thought of income and private prop-erty, the quest for which constitutes the entire meaning and purpose of life for many people under capitalism. Man, at long last, will receive the opportunity to dedicate him-self to lofty interests, among which social interests will take a foremost place.

Distribution according to needs is introduced under communism, however, not only out of humane considerations and not only out of a desire to free all members of society from concern for the morrow. It takes place also owing to a direct economic necessity which arises at this high stage in the development of social production. Distributing ma-terial and spiritual benefits in conformity with the requirements of people, the commu-nist system thereby creates the best conditions for the further development of its main productive force, the working man, for the flowering of all his abilities. This will benefit both the individual and society in equal measure. Pointing to this circumstance, Engels wrote that “distribution, in so far as it is governed by purely economic considerations, will be regulated by the interests of production, and that production is most encouraged by a mode of distribution which allows all members of society to develop, maintain and exercise their capacities with maximum universality”.434

Some non-too-clever critics of Marxism try to prove the unfeasibility of the ideals of communist society by raising various “tricky” questions. If all benefits are distributed gratis, will not everyone want to get every day not only a new suit of clothes but also a new automobile? and what if each member of society demands for himself a palace with scores of rooms, or wants to get a collection of jewellery and unique works of art?

The authors of such absurd suppositions slander the citizens of the future communist society, to whom they ascribe their own failings. The communist system naturally can-not undertake to satisfy all whims and caprices. Its aim, as Engels stressed, is the satis-faction of the reasonable needs of people in an ever-increasing measure.435 Does this mean that instead of money relations some other forms of a forcible regulation of con-sumption will be needed? No, under communism, it should be expected, there will in general be no need to determine which needs are reasonable and which are not. People themselves will be sufficiently cultured and conscious not to make obviously unreason-able demands on society. As Lenin wrote in 1917, communism “presupposes not the present productivity of labour and not the present ordinary run of people, who, like the seminary students in Pomyalovsky’s* stories, are capable of damaging the stocks of public wealth ‘just for fun’, and of demanding the impossible”.436

• N. Pomyalovsky, a Russian writer of the nineteenth century, described the strict regime which prevailed in seminaries and the coarse customs of their students.—Ed.

Naturally, a certain amount of time will be needed to develop in all citizens a rea-sonable attitude to consumption, but the society of the future with its abundance of ma-terial and spiritual benefits and high level of consciousness of the citizens can fully cope

with this task. And if nevertheless there are some people with unjustifiably high claims, they will not be able to disorganise the communist system of distribution. Society will be able to give people with an inordinate appetite ... a double portion,437 Engels wrote. But in communist society this will only place such people in a ridiculous light before public opinion. After that, hardly anyone would want to repeat such an experiment.

It will be all the easier for people to get used to communist forms of consumption since it does not require of them any artificial self-restriction or asceticism, or an austere way of life. In general, the preaching of asceticism is alien to scientific communism, which sees the aim of social production precisely in the full satisfaction of the material and spiritual requirements of all members of society. Moreover, communist society itself from the very beginning will be sufficiently rich to satisfy generously all the needs of the citizens for food, clothing, shelter, and other prime necessities, and also to place at their disposal everything an intelligent and cultured person needs for a full and happy life. Under such conditions of general sufficiency and abundance there is hardly likely to be anyone who will think of accumulating wealth and multiplying articles of personal consumption in excess of his needs and the amount freely provided him by society.

Under communism, moreover, there will be radical changes in forms of consump-tion. It has already been mentioned that during the transition to communism an ever-increasing part of people’s needs will be met from public funds. These needs will be, in the first place, those whose satisfaction in an individual way (if it is a matter of all mem-bers of society) presents the greatest economic difficulty. Convenient public transport instead of private cars; rest homes, boarding-houses, country hotels, etc., instead of per-sonal country cottages; model public dining rooms and kitchens providing ready-made meals; clubs, crèches and kindergartens; places for rest and recreation, libraries, and so on, which will do away with the need for continually increasing the size of flats and dwellings—all this is not only a great economy for society, but has many advantages for the consumer, saving him from irrational expenditure of time and labour, and at the same time providing a reliable guarantee against private-property hoarding tendencies.

Undoubtedly, under communism, consumption itself will rise to a higher level, the tastes of people will develop and become more refined. Communist social relations will educate a man who will abhor depraved tastes and requirements, characteristic of past epochs when possession of things and the level of consumption were primary criteria of man’s position in society. Instead of luxury, the main criteria of the value of things will become convenience and real beauty: people will cease to see in things an object of vainglory and a measure of success in life, will cease to live for the sake of amassing things, and thereby will restore to things their real purpose: to ease and beautify man’s life.

It may be assumed that the laws governing mass production—and production of all the main articles will be such under communism—will operate in the same direction. Of course, in time communist society will become so rich that it will be able to satisfy the highest requirements of people. But it will also be so rational that it will not waste hu-man labour and public wealth. More rational and worthier application will always be

found for both. It will involve, of course, not the lowering of aesthetic demands, but the rise of new higher aesthetic criteria, corresponding to the entire pattern and way of the new life.

Thus, “for all their diversity, the requirements of people will express the sound, rea-sonable requirements of the fully developed person”. (From the Programme of the C.P.S.U.)438

All this shows that the realisation of the communist principle, “to each according to his needs”, will be a tremendous achievement of mankind. There is no point in trying to guess what concrete form these needs will take. One thing is clear—they will be much higher and more diverse than at present. Human wants are not something petrified and immutable, they are developing all the time. Under communism, this process will be particularly rapid. That is why the communist system sets itself the task of satisfying the constantly rising needs of all members of society.

4. The Free Man in the Free Society

“Communism,” states the Programme of the C. P. S. U., “accomplishes the historic mission of delivering all men from social inequality, from every form of oppression and exploitation, from the horrors of war, and proclaims Peace, Labour, Freedom, Equality, Fraternity and Happiness for all peoples of the earth.”439 What mankind has dreamed of during hundreds and thousands of years will become a reality under communism.

Equality and Freedom

Equality and freedom have always been the ideal of the progressive part of mankind. Many social movements of the past developed under this banner, including the bour-geois revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But in a society founded on private ownership of the means of production and divided into classes of exploited and exploiters, oppressed and oppressors, this ideal remained unrealisable.

It is only when the means of production become public property and exploitation of man by man is made impossible that a way is opened to actual, not simply formal, equal-ity of people, to their real emancipation.

This historic task is fully accomplished by communism. Universal actual equality of people is one of its main social principles.

Equality is achieved in the first place by the fact that communism is a classless soci-ety in which the last remnants are abolished of the social distinction and attendant ine-quality still preserved under socialism, including the distinctions between town and country, between manual workers and brain workers.

The disappearance of these distinctions in no way signifies a levelling of individu-alities, a uniformity of human capabilities and characters. Communism is not a barracks inhabited by persons who lack individuality, Such a caricature of the future society can be painted only by incorrigible vulgarisers or deliberate slanderers. In reality this society opens up boundless scope, which has never existed in the past, for the all-round devel-opment of the human personality in all its limitless diversity.

Communist equality presupposes the eradication not of all distinctions between peo-ple, but only of such distinctions and such conditions as would give rise to a difference in the social position of people. Irrespective of a person’s origin and position, irrespec-tive of his contribution to social production, under communism he will receive equal opportunities with all others to decide common affairs, will receive opportunities for self-improvement and the enjoyment of all the good things of life. It is one of the salient features of communism that it ensures that highest degree of equality under which, as Marx said, even “distinction in activity, in labour does not involve any inequality, any privilege in the sense of possession and consumption”.440 Herein lies the great social significance of the mode of distribution of material and spiritual values which the com-munist system introduces.

At the same time communism also brings with it the final triumph of human free-dom. Already in the first, socialist phase of development of the new society people re-ceive the most important of all the freedoms, freedom from the need to work for exploit-ers. The fact that the working people are at the helm in socialist society gives true mean-ing to democracy, i. e., the principle of rule by the people. Communism goes farther, creating for the first time the conditions under which all need for coercion disappears.

Why does this become possible under communism, although in past history no society could even dream of renouncing coercion? The point is that for thousands of years social conditions prevailed that made irreconcilable contradictions, the clash of interests of indi-viduals and entire classes, inevitable. It is this division of society that gave rise to coercion, bringing into being a special machine of class violence and also a system of legal stan-dards imposed on people by a force concentrated in the hands of the ruling classes.

Such division of society is abolished already with the victory of socialism. Commu-nism, transforming production, distribution and labour, at the same time ensures the full fusion of the social and economic interests of all members of society. As a result, the grounds for any measures of coercion disappear. The relations of domination and subor-dination are finally replaced by free co-operation. There is no need for the state. The need for legal regimentation withers away. For cultured people imbued with lofty ideas and high moral standards, as people will be under communism, the observance of the norms of human behaviour in the community becomes a habit, second nature. In these conditions, Engels wrote, “the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production”.441

The disappearance from public life of all compulsion will transform not only the so-cial conditions of future society, but also man himself, who in everything will act freely in accordance with his convictions and his moral duty.

All-Round Development of the Personality

The supreme goal of communism is to ensure full freedom of development of the human personality, to create conditions for the boundless development of the individual, for the physical and spiritual perfection of man. It is in this that Marxism sees genuine freedom in the highest meaning of this word.

Universal sufficiency, an improved system of social hygiene and health services and a rational mode of life in communist society will ensure man’s health, longevity and physical perfection. The mode of distribution inherent in communism will free people for ever from care for their daily bread. Free, creative labour, the opportunity to engage in a congenial occupation, far from suppressing, will, on the contrary, develop man’s versatile capabilities.

The cultural life of society will attain an unprecedented level of development. The Programme of the C. P. S. U. states in this connection:

“Absorbing and developing all the best that has been created by world culture, communist culture will be a new, higher stage in the cultural progress of mankind. It will embody the versatility and richness of the spiritual life of society, and the lofty ide-als and humanism of the new world. It will be the culture of a classless society, a culture of the entire people, of all mankind.”442

Leisure time will increase greatly. Let us recall the great significance that Marx at-tached to this. He said that under communism the wealth of society will be measured not by the amount of working time but by the free time of its members. Leisure means not only time for rest, the restoration of man’s strength, but also, to use the words of Marx, space for the development of his personality.

The members of the new society, cultured people of versatile development, will un-doubtedly find rational and worthy ways of filling this “space”. Study will become just as much an integral element of each man’s way of life as work, rest, and sleep. The enjoy-ment of all kinds of cultural benefits will rise immeasurably. Society, becoming richer, will be able to assign ever more resources and labour for the production of these benefits.

The development and improvement of the individual will also be facilitated to a great extent by the fact that communist society will ensure boundless opportunities for the display of all man’s abilities and, as is known, talents need to be used in order to flourish and become perfected.

With the creation of all these prerequisites the full power of the human intellect will be developed. The cultivation of people’s characters and sentiments will also attain im-mense heights. The new conditions of life will fully develop new moral stimuli: solidar-ity, mutual good will, a deep sense of community with other people, members of the single human family. All this will open before mankind boundless opportunities to enjoy life, to partake of its pleasures in full.

At the same time the all-round development of the individual will be a powerful fac-tor in the further rapid progress of communist society. For the intellect, talents, and abilities of people are the greatest of all the riches any society possesses. But in the past, owing to social conditions, this wealth was utilised only to a minimal extent. What boundless prospects will open up when the abilities and talents of each man are fully developed and when they are utilised fruitfully and not wasted!

An Organised Community of People of Versatile Development

The freedom that communism gives man will not mean the disintegration of society

into separate communities and still less into individuals who do not recognise any social ties.

Such a conception of freedom is entertained only by the followers of anarchism and petty-bourgeois individualism. For them freedom consists in the rupture of all social ties and the abolition of any social organisation. But such “freedom” cannot be of benefit to people.

Society needs a perfected form of organisation for social production to function normally and develop, for culture and civilisation to advance, ensuring all people well-being, and a free and happy life. “Communism,” the Programme of the C.P.S.U. stresses, “represents the highest form of organisation of public life.”443 That is why the place of the state is taken not by the reign of universal anarchy, but by a system of pub-lic self-government.

It is pointless to guess at the definite forms this system will assume, but some of its general outlines can be discerned with a considerable degree of certainty.

Public self-government under communism is an organisational system embracing the entire population, which will directly administer its affairs with the help of this sys-tem. The Programme of the C.P.S.U. draws the conclusion that the Soviets, trade-union, cooperative and other mass organisations of the working people will be united in such self-government. In this way the active participation of all members of society in the management of public affairs will be ensured. The Programme points out: “Public func-tions similar to those performed by the state today in the sphere of economic and cul-tural management will be preserved under communism and will be modified and per-fected as society develops. But the character of the functions and the ways in which they are carried out will be different from those under socialism. The bodies in charge of planning, accounting, economic management, and cultural advancement, now govern-ment bodies, will lose their political character and will become organs of public self-government. Communist society will be a highly-organised community of working men. Universally recognised rules of the communist way of life will be established whose observance will become an organic need and habit with everyone.”444

The atmosphere in which the activities of public self-government will be carried on will also be different. Public self-government presupposes not only full publicity and knowledge of society’s affairs, but also a very high degree of civic activity of people, their deep interest in these affairs. To take part in administering the affairs of society will become the inner need and habit of everyone just as much as socially useful labour. Most likely a public discussion of society’s affairs will involve disputes. This, however, will not be an obstacle, but on the contrary will help to find the most correct solution of problems. Insoluble contradictions, as experience shows, arise on the basis of irreconcil-able interests and ignorance. These causes will be ruled out under communism; conse-quently, only differences in experience, in degree of knowledge, in approach to some particular questions will remain. But it will not be difficult to resolve such divergences in conditions of a deep-seated community of interests, aims, and world outlook.

All these features of communist public self-government will make communism the

highest form of organisation of social life, in which all production units, all self-governing associations, will be harmoniously dovetailed in a general planned economy, in a single rhythm of social life.

Of course, public self-government presupposes a different type of man and, in turn, creates him. The communist man is not an egotist and not an individualist. He will be distinguished by high communist consciousness and organisation, love of labour, hon-esty and discipline. But those qualities will be ensured not by compulsion but because they have become his inner duty, the expression of his morality. The mainspring of this morality is devotion to the collective, readiness and ability sacredly to observe the public interests. It is these qualities of the free and equal citizens of the new society that will make communism a highly-organised and harmonious community of people, real mas-ters of creative communist labour.

5. Peace and Friendship, Co-operation and Rapprochement of the Peoples

Communism means new relations between the peoples.

They will arise as a result of the further development of the principles of socialist in-ternationalism, which today constitute the basis of relations between the countries of the socialist world system.

The victory of the socialist revolution abolishes the social and economic causes which give rise to wars between states and makes peace and friendship the basis of rela-tions between the peoples who are building the new society. Communism still further reinforces these relations, a result which follows from the very essence of the communist system. “…In contrast to old society, with its economical miseries and its political delir-ium,” Marx wrote prophetically about communism, “a new society is springing up, whose international rule will be Peace, because its national ruler will be everywhere the same—Labour!”445

We see that today, too, the principle of equality of nations, irrespective of their size and level of economic and cultural development, prevails in relations between the so-cialist countries. The victory of communism raises this principle to a new, higher level, ensuring the actual equality of countries where the new system has been established. Already during the transition to communism all of them are .brought up to the level of the advanced ones and they will more or less simultaneously enter the communist era.

The creation of a world socialist system has brought with it the close co-operation and mutual assistance of the liberated peoples. Communism means the further consoli-dation and advance of this co-operation, the increasing all-round association of the na-tions on the basis of common economic, political, and spiritual interests, fraternal friendship and co-operation. Such association will serve to promote the most rapid and successful development of each nation and, at the same time, of communist mankind as a whole.

All these changes are an inalienable part of the communist remaking of society, which will result in the disappearance of all traces of disunity and isolation in the rela-tions between peoples.

Nations and, therefore, also national cultures and languages will, of course, continue to exist for a very long time after the victory of communism. But life and the contacts of various peoples will be freed from everything that gives even the least pretext for enmity and discord, isolation and estrangement, national egoism and exclusiveness.

This will be a colossal gain for mankind. The abolition of only one such wasteful, savage, and bloody form of international “contact” as war, even at the present level of economic development, would make it possible to accomplish gigantic tasks. It has been calculated, for example, that the resources swallowed up by the Second World War were enough for building a five-room house for each family in the world and also a hospital in each town with a population of over 5,000 people and to maintain all these hospitals for ten years. Thus, the resources wasted on one world war would be enough for radically solving the housing and health problems that today are so acute for the majority of man-kind.

What treasures could be created by employing for constructive purposes the funds now spent on the arms race, the energies of tens of millions of people now serving in the armed forces or working in war industry!

The economic drawing together of the communist countries, the development of their economy along the lines of a world communist system, will also bring tremendous benefits to the peoples. Broad co-operation and specialisation will open up new oppor-tunities to save human labour and increase the output of all goods. On this basis, rates of economic growth will be accelerated to an unprecedented degree.

Boundless possibilities are opened up under communism for the cultural advance-ment of mankind as well. The cultures of different peoples, national in form, will be in-creasingly imbued with a single communist content. Their drawing together on this basis will provide a mighty stimulus to the mutual enrichment and development of national cultures and in the long run will lead to the formation of a single, deeply international culture which will be truly the culture of all mankind. The rates of scientific progress will be greatly accelerated because it will become possible to co-ordinate the efforts of scientists on an international, and then on a world-wide, scale. The contacts of people of different countries and nationalities will be on an unprecedented scale. They will know each other better, learn from each other and increasingly feel that they are members of one human family.

It may be said that communism will impart a new, lofty meaning to the very concept of “mankind”, turning the human race which for thousands of years was torn asunder by discord, quarrels, conflicts and wars, into one world-wide commonwealth.

6. Future Prospects of Communism

So far we have discussed primarily the immediate prospects of communism, the prospects in store for the first generations of people who will have the good fortune of living in that society. Even its general contours show that the communist system from its very first steps realises the most cherished aspirations of mankind, its dream of general sufficiency and abundance, freedom and equality, peace, brotherhood, and co-operation

of people.

This is quite natural because the ideal of communism goes back deep into history, into the very depths of the life of millions of the working people. Dreams of this ideal can already be found in folk tales about the “Golden Age” that were composed at the dawn of civilisation. The liberation movements of the working masses in antiquity and the Middle Ages put forward many demands which were communistic in their sub-stance. At the boundary between the two epochs, feudal and capitalist, the outstanding thinkers of those days, the utopian socialists, Moore, Campanella, Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen, and the Russian revolutionary democrats Herzen, Chernyshevsky, Belinsky and Dobrolyubov, made the communist ideal the corner-stone of their doctrine of the perfect society. True, those thinkers could not divine the secret of the laws of social develop-ment, could not give a scientific justification of the real possibility and historic necessity of communism. Only Marxism turned communism from a utopia into a science, while the merging of scientific communism with the growing working-class movement created that irresistible force which is moving society to the next stage of social progress, from capitalism to communism.

By merging with the working-class movement, communism did not lose its great general human content. Engels was profoundly right in pointing out that “communism is a question of humanity and not of the workers alone”.446 The victory of communism will mean the realisation of the dream of all working mankind. For the communist system signifies the triumph of humanity, the complete victory of real humanism, as Marx said.

What makes communist humanism practicable is not only the fact that the creation of an interesting, happy, and joyous life for all becomes a mighty, all-conquering motive of human activity. Of decisive significance is the fact that under communism society will at long last have the full opportunity of attaining such a goal. A powerful basis for production, greater power over the forces of nature, a just and rational social system, the social consciousness and lofty moral qualities of people—all this makes it possible to realise the most radiant dreams of a perfect society.

It is with the victory of communism that the real history of humanity in the loftiest meaning of this term begins. Man differs fundamentally from all living creatures in that his intellect and labour save him from having to adjust himself passively to his environ-ment, enable him to remake this environment in conformity with the interests and needs of mankind. And although mankind has existed for many thousands of years, it is only communism that ushers in the era of its full maturity and ends the prolonged prehistory when the life of each man individually and the life of society as a whole were shaped by alien forces, natural and social, which were beyond man’s control. The victory of com-munism enables people not only to produce in abundance everything necessary for their life, but also to free society from all manifestations of inhumanity: wars, ruthless strug-gle within society and injustice, ignorance, crime and vice. Violence and self-interest, hypocrisy and egoism, perfidy and vainglory, will vanish for ever from the relations be-tween people and between nations.

This is how Communists conceive the triumph of the genuine, real humanism which

will prevail in the future communist society.

But even after attaining that summit, people will not stop, will not be idle, will not give themselves over to passive contemplation. On the contrary, their energies will mul-tiply tenfold. Solved problems will be replaced by new ones; in place of the attained goals, new ones, still more entrancing, will arise. The wheels of history will continue to revolve.

Herein, if we think of it, is the greatest good fortune for mankind, a pledge that it will never be deprived of the supreme satisfaction and happiness resulting from creative labour, active endeavour, and the bold overcoming of obstacles.

Exceptionally rapid, practically boundless development is indeed a salient feature of communist society. Even after the victory of communism, life will confront people with ever new problems, whose solution will require the creative effort of each succeeding generation.

First of all, it is clear that the development of social production will never come to a stop. Its continued progress will stimulate the growth of people’s needs in communist society, especially the needs for new cultural values, contacts between people and na-tions, and so on.

It is not difficult to foresee that the development of production itself will call for the solution of many very complex problems connected with the improvement of production organisation, the training of highly-skilled personnel, the invention and application of all kinds of technical innovations.

Science, which will take an outstanding place in communist society, will be faced with ever new problems. Today it is already clear that their dimensions will be truly grandiose. The conquest of outer space that has already begun shows convincingly that the one task alone of mastering the secrets of distant worlds and penetrating ever farther into the Universe affords boundless scope for human thought and creation. Yet this is only one of numerous future tasks.

Academician V. A. Obruchev, the well-known Soviet scientist, reflecting on what people have a right to expect of science, wrote: “It is necessary:

“to prolong man’s life to 150-200 years on the average, to wipe out infectious dis-eases, to reduce non-infectious diseases to a minimum, to conquer old age and fatigue, to learn to restore life in case of untimely, accidental death;

“to place at the service of man all the forces of nature, the energy of the sun, the wind and subterranean heat, to apply atomic energy in industry, transport and construc-tion, to learn how to store energy and transmit it, without wires, to any point;

“to predict and render completely harmless natural calamities: floods, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes;

“to produce in factories all the substances known on earth, up to most complex—protein—and also substances unknown in nature: harder than diamonds, more heat-resistant than firebrick, more refractory than tungsten and osmium, more flexible than silk and more elastic than rubber;

“to evolve new breeds of animals and varieties of plants that grow more swiftly and

yield more meat, milk, wool, grain, fruit, fibres, and wood for the needs of the national economy;

“to reduce, adapt for the needs of life and conquer unpromising areas, marshes, mountains, deserts, taiga, tundra, and perhaps even the sea bottom;

“to learn to control the weather, regulate the wind and heat, just as rivers are regu-lated now, to shift clouds at will, to arrange for rain or clear weather, snow or hot weather.”447

It goes without saying that even after coping with these magnificent and sweeping tasks, science will not have reached the limits of its potentialities. There is no limit, nor can there be any, to the inquiring human mind, to the striving of man to put the forces of nature at his service, to divine all nature’s secrets.

Nor will man ever cease his efforts to improve the structure of the society in which he lives, the forms of public self-government, the way of life, the norms of human be-haviour and contact in the community.

What a boundless field of activity will be open before communist society in the de-velopment of the abilities and personality of ail its members, in achieving the physical and spiritual perfection of the people themselves!

The advance to the shining heights of communist civilisation will always engender in people unusual power of will and intellect, creative impulses, courage, and life-giving energy.

LIST OF QUOTED LITERATURE

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

1. K. Marx, Briefe an Kugelmann, Berlin, 1927, S. 27-28

PART I

Chapter 1

2. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 69, Foreign Languages Publishing House (F.L.P.H.),* Moscow, p, 69

• Lenin’s works are cited from the English edition unless otherwise specified.

3. Ibid., pp. 260-61

4. F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 65

5. Ibid., p. 80

6. I. P. Pavlov, Works, Vol. Ill, Book 2, Moscow-Leningrad, 1951, pp. 409-10

7. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 244

8. Hegel, Werke, Sechster Band, Berlin, 1840, S. 323

9. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 227

10. Ibid,, p. 227

11. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union {The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 497)

12. Werner Heisenberg, Philosophic Problems of Nuclear Science, New York, 1952, p. 55

13. James Jeans, Physics and Philosophy, Cambridge, 1948, p. 216

14. Pascual Jordan, Physics of the 20th Century, New York, 1944, p, 160

15. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 358

16. Arnold J. Toynbee, Civilisation on Trial, New York, 1948, p. 94

17. John E. Russell, Science and Modern Life, London, 1955, p. 101

18. V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. 1, Part 2, p. 314

19. La Pensée, N. 41, Paris, 1952, 112

20. Dunham, Giant in Chains, Boston, 1953, pp. x-xi

21. Yanagida Kenjuro, Evolution of My World Outlook, Moscow, 1957, p. 161

22. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 313

Chapter 2

23. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, F.L.P.H., 1961, p. 20

24. L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, London, 1955, p. 108

25. F. Engels, Dialectics of Nature, F.L.P.H., 1954, p. 305

26. V. L Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 160

27. V. L Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 156

28. V. L Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 360

29. Ibid., p. 359

30. F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 474

31. V. L Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 360

32. Ibid.

33. Lenin Miscellany XI, Russ, ed., Moscow-Leningrad, 1931, p. 357

34. N. S. Khrushchov, Forty Years of the Great October Socialist Revolution, Report to the Jubilee Session of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. on November 6, 1957, F.L.P.H., p. 35

35. K. Marx, Die Moralisierende Kritik und die Kritisierende Moral, MEGA, 1. Abt., Bd. 6,

Moscau-Leningrad, 1933, S. 303-304

36. F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 194

37. V. L Lenin, The Tasks of the Youth Leagues, F.L.P.H., 1951, p. 11

38. V. L Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 226

39. F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, F.L.P.H., 1962, pp. 186-187

40. V. I. Lenin, Marx-Engels-Marxism, F.L.P.H., 1951, p. 26

41. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 362

42. Declaration. Meeting of Representatives of Communist and Workers’ Parties of Socialist Countries, Held in Moscow, November 14 to 16, 1957, Peace Manifesto, F.L.P.H., 1957, p. 17

Chapter 3

43. V. L Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 142

44. V. I. Lenin, Collected Vol. 38, p. 212

45. N. S. Khrushchov, For Victory in the Peaceful Competition with Capitalism, F.L.P.H., p. 446

46. K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1958, Vol. II, p. 100

47. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 122

48. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 171

49. V. I, Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 178

50. Ibid., p. 119

51. Ibid., p. 133

52. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 171

53. F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, F.L.P.H., 1962, pp. 120-121

54. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 195

55. V. L Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 137

56. Ibid,, p. 133

57. Ibid., p. 135

58. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 4, pp. 211-212

59. V. I. Lenin, The State, F.L.P.H., 1954, p. 34

60. K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1958, Vol. II

61. William James, A Pluralistic Universe, London, 1909, p. 309

PART II

Chapter 4

62. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 1, pp. 140-141

63. K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1958, Vol. I, p. 351

64. V. I. Lenin, The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism, F.L.P.H., 1959, p. 9

65. K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1958, Vol. II, p. 255

66. K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1958, Vol. I, pp. 362-363

67. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 13, p, 36

68. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 328

69. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 20, p. 182

70. F. Engels, Einleitung Zur Erinnerung fur die deutschen Mordspatrioten 1806-1807, von Sigismund Borkheim, Zurich, 1888

Chapter 5

71. V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. II, Part 2, p. 224

72. F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, F.L.P.H., 1959, p. 250

73. K. Marx, F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, F.L.P.H., p. 46

74. K. Marx, Capital, F.L.P.H., 1961, Vol. I, p. 763

75. K. Marx, F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, F.L.P.H., 1959, p. 59

76. V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution, F.L.P.H., 1958, p. 12

77. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed.. Vol. 17, p. 368

78. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 4, p. 215

79. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 2, pp. 112-113

80. V. L Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 412

81. V. L Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 19, pp. 97-98

Chapter 6

82. K. Marx, F, Engels, The Labour Standard, August 6, 1881, London, p. 4

83. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 9, p. 113

84. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 4, p. 370

85. K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1958, Vol. II, p. 392

86. K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected Correspondence, F.L.P.H., 1956, p. 550

87. V. L Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ. ed., Vol. 36, pp. 544-546

88. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 2, p. 412

89. Ibid., p. 524

90. V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. II, Part 1, p. 446

91. V. L Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ. ed., Vol. 26, p. 364

Chapter 7

92. F. Engels, Anti-Dühring. F.L.P.H., 1962, pp. 388-89

93. K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1958, Vol. II, p. 325

94. K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1958, Vol. I, p. 359

95. K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1958, Vol. I, p. 358

96. V. 1. Lenin, The State and Revolution, F.L.P.H., 1958, p. 159

97. K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1958, Vol. II, p. 377

98. V. I. Lenin, On Britain, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 187

99. K. Marx, Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie, Deutsche-Französiscke Jahrbucher, Paris, 1844, S. 72

PART III

100. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 3, pp. 62-63

101. K. Marx, Capital, F.L.P.H., 1961, Vol. 1, p. 15

102. Ibid.

Chapter 8

103. K. Marx, Capital, F.L.P.H., 1961, Vol. I, p. 760

104. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 360

105. K. Marx, Capital, F.L.P.H., 1961, Vol. I, p. 39

106. Ibid., p. 46

107. F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, F.L.P.H., 1962, pp. 282-283

108. K, Marx, F. Engels, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1958, Vol. II, p. 29

109. K. Marx, Capital, F.L.P.H., 1962, Vol. I, p. 525

110. K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1958, Vol. I, p. 446

111. K. Marx, Capital, F.L.P.H., 1959, Vol. III, p. 194

112. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 90

113. V. I. Lenin, Marx-Engels-Marxism, F.L.P.H., 1953, p. 39

114. K. Marx, Capital, F.L.P.H., 1962, Vol. II, p. 186

115. K. Marx, Capital, F.L.P.H., 1962, Vol. I, p. 644

116. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 29, p. 81

117. K. Marx, Capital, F.L.P.H., 1962, Vol. I, p. 763

Chapter 9

118. V. I. Lenin, On Britain, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 310

119. V. 1. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, F.L.P.H., 1959, p. 143

120. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 18, p. 375

121. V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, F.L.P.H., 1959, p, 142

122. V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. II, Part 1, p. 367

123. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 24, p. 426

124. V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, F.L.P.H., 1959, p. 45

125. Ibid., p. 73

126. Ibid., p. 71

127. Ibid., p. 97

128. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 22, pp. 94-95

129. V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, F.L.P.H., 1959, p. 132

130. Ibid., p. 11

131. V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, F.L.P.H., 1959, p. 160; On Britain, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 311

132. V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, F.L.P.H., 1959, pp. 160-161

133. Ibid., p. 184

134. Ibid., p. 202

135. V. I. Lenin, On Britain, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 322

136. Ibid., p. 312

137. V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, F.L.P.H., 1959, pp. 206-207

138. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 28, pp. 99-100

Chapter 10

139. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union {The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, pp. 470-471)

140. Ibid., p. 471*

• References marked with an asterisk indicate that italics in the passage quoted have been in-serted by the authors of this volume.

141 V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution, F.L.P.H., 1961, p. 52

142 Archives of Marx and Engels, Russ, ed., Vol. IV, 1935, p. 29  

143. Hyman Lumer, War Economy and Crisis, New York, 1954, p. 57

144. N. S. Khrushchov, Control Figures for the Economic Development of the U.S.S.R. for 1959-1965, F.L.P.H., 1960, p. 77

145. V. I. Lenin, Against Revisionism, F.L.P.H., 1959, p. 117

146. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union {The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 472)

147. Ibid., p. 472*

148. V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. II, Part 1, p. 158

149. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 26, p. 143

150. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union {The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 480)

PART IV

Chapter 11

151. K. Marx, F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, F.L.P.H., pp. 56, 66

152. Ibid., p. 63

153. Ibid. p. 64

154. V. I. Lenin, Against Revisionism, F.L.P.H., 1959, p. 140

155. V. I. Lenin, Marx-Engels-Marxism, F.L.P.H., 1953, pp. 333-334

156. V. L Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 18, p. 68

Chapter 12

157. V. I. Lenin, On Britain, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 395

158. K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected Correspondence, F.L.P.H., 1956, p. 374

159. V. L Lenin, Against Revisionism, F.L.P.H., 1959, p. 229

160. V. L Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 3, p. 599

161. V. L Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 18, p. 113

162. V. 1. Lenin, Socialism and War, F.L.P.H., 1952, p. 25

163. V. L Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 1, p. 299

164. V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. II, Part 1, p. 164

165. Albert Rhys Williams, Through the Russian Revolution, London, 1923, pp. 150-151

166. V. L Lenin, Against Revisionism, F.L.P.H., 1959, p. 576

167. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 29, p. 292

168. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 31, p. 423

169. Mao Tse-tung, On the Dictatorship of People's Democracy, Moscow, 1949, pp. 5-6

170. V. I. Lenin, The National-Liberation Movement in the East, F.L.P.H., 1957, p. 243

171. J. Nehru, The Discovery of India, New York, 1946, p. 17

172. Sukarno, “Influence of the October Revolution on the Awakening of the Peoples of Asia” (New Times, No. 43, 1956, p. 5)

173. V. I. Lenin, Articles and Speeches on Anniversaries of the October Revolution, F.L.P.H., 1957, p. 63

174. V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. II, Part 2, p. 341

175. N. S. Khrushchov, Forty Years of the Great October Socialist Revolution, F.L.P.H., p. 7

176. V. I. Lenin, The National-Liberation Movement in the East, F.L.P.H., 1957, p. 173

Chapter 13

177. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 19, pp. 367-368

178. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed.. Vol. 32, p. 222

179. V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution, F.L.P.H., 1961, p. 41

180. V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. II, Part 2, p. 344

181. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 478

182. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 10, p. 47

183. Protocols of Meetings and Conferences of the C.P.S.U.(B.). Tenth Meeting of the R.C.P.(B.), March 1921, Moscow, 1933, p. 585

184. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 19, p. 361

185. V. I. Lenin, On Britain, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 529

186. V. L Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 426

187. V. L Lenin, Against Revisionism, F.L.P.H., 1959, pp. 324-325

188. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 19, p. 368

189. V. L Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 8, p. 454

190. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 15, p. 325

191. V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. II, Part 2, p. 427

192. V. I. Lenin, Marx-Engels-Marxism, F.L.P.H., 1953, p. 54

193. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 9, p. 22

194. Ibid., p. 100

195. Ibid,

196. J. Stalin, Problems of Leninism, F.L.P.H., 1954 (The October Revolution and the Tactics of the Russian Communists, Chapter III; The Foundations of Leninism, Chapter VII)

197. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 24, p. 457

198. V. L Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. II, Part 2, p. 349

199. V. I. Lenin, The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government, F.L.P.H.,

1955, p. 65

200. V, I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 33, p. 271

201. V. I. Lenin, Against Revisionism, F.L.P.H., 1959, p. 185

202. Programme Documents of the Struggle for Peace, Democracy and Socialism, Moscow, 1961, p. 15

203. Ibid., p. 82

204. N. S. Khrushchov, Control Figures for the Economic Development of the U.S.S.R. for 1959-1965, F.L.P.H., 1960, p. 111

205. Programme Documents of the Struggle for Peace, Democracy and Social- ism, Moscow, 1961, p. 20

206. Ibid., p. 83*

207. Ibid., p. 82

208. Ibid.

209. Ibid., p. 83

Chapter 14

210. N. S. Khrushchov, Report of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to the 20th Party Congress, F.L.P.H., 1956, pp. 23-24

211. Programme Documents of the Struggle for Peace, Democracy and Socialism, Russ, ed., Moscow, 1961, p. 76*

212. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 29, p. 497

213. N. S. Khrushchov, Report of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to the 22nd Party Congress (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 36)

214. Programme Documents of the Struggle for Peace, Democracy and Socialism, Russ, ed., Moscow, 1961, p. 75

215. Problems of History, Moscow, 1958, No. 4, p. 51

216. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 33, p. 297

217. V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. II, Part 2, p. 396

Chapter 15

218. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 15, p. 100

219. K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1958, Vol. I, p. 213

Chapter 16

220. K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1962, Vol. I, p. 356

221. V. I. Lenin, The National-Liberation Movement in the East, F.L.P.H., 1957, p. 310

222. V. I. Lenin, The National Liberation Movement in the East, F.L.P.H., 1957, p. 109

223. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 31, p. 423

224. V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. I, Part 2, p. 337

225. V. 1. Lenin, The National-Liberation Movement in the East, F.L.P.H., 1957, p. 43

226. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism,

F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 496)

227. Ibid., p. 490

228. V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. I, Part 2, pp. 322-323

229. N. S. Khrushchov, Report of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to the 22nd Party Congress (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 32)

230. Programme Documents of the Struggle for Peace, Democracy and Socialism, Moscow, p. 66

231. Ibid., pp. 67-68

232. Ibid,, p. 68

233. N. S. Khrushchov, Report of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to the 20th Party Congress, F.L.P.H., p. 27

234. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 797)

Chapter 17

235. Programme Documents of the Struggle for Peace, Democracy and Socialism, Moscow, 1961, p. 43

236. V. I. Lenin, On Britain, F.L.P.H., pp. 251-252

237. F. Engels, .ber die Gewaltstheorie, Gewalt und .konomte bei der Herstellung des neuen Deutschen Reiches, Berlin, 1946, S. 13

238. K. Marx, F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, F.L.P.H., p. 40

239. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ. ed., Vol. 22, p. 132

240. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ. ed., Vol. 15, pp. 171-172

241. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ. ed., Vol. 35, p. 200

242. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 503)

243. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ. ed. Vol. 30, p. 420

Chapter 18

244. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 23, p. 31

245. Ibid., p. 13

246. V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution, F.L.P.H., 1961, p. 158

247. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 4, p. 213

248. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ. ed., Vol. 23, p. 13

249. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 22, p. 133

250. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 23, p. 31

251. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ. ed., Vol. 17, p. 57

252. V. L Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, F.L.P.H., p. 38

253. V. L Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 17, p. 50

254. Programme Documents of the Communist and Workers’ Parties of the European Capitalist Countries, Moscow, 1960, p. 396

255. Ibid., p. 279

Chapter 19

256. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism., F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 503)

257. V. I. Lenin, Socialism and War, F.L.P.H., 1952, p. 13

258. V. L Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 21, p. 264

259. Programme Documents of the Struggle for Peace, Democracy and Socialism, Moscow, 1961, p. 74

260. N. S. Khrushchov, For New Victories of the World Communist Movement, Moscow, 1961,

p. 33

261. Programme Documents of the Struggle for Peace, Democracy and Socialism, Moscow, 1961, p. 9

262. Ibid., p. 52

263. N. S. Khrushchov, On the Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p, 281)

264. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 505)

265. On the Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 280)

266. Programme Documents of the Struggle for Peace, Democracy and Socialism, Moscow, 1961, p. 89

267. N, S. Khrushchov, Report of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to the 22nd Congress of the C.P.S.U., (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 14)

268. F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 229

269. N. K. Krupskaya, Lenin, Moscow, 1960, pp. 40-41

270. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 33, p. 236

271. N. S. Khrushchov, On the Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p, 283)

272. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 502)

273. Ibid., p. 506

274. The Third Session of the Fifth Supreme Soviet of the l/.S.S.R. (October 27-31, 1959), Stenographic report, 1959, p. 626

275. Programme Documents of the Struggle for Peace, Democracy and Socialism, Moscow, 1961, p. 77

276. N. S. Khrushchov, On Peaceful Co-existence, F.L.P.H., 1961, p. 83

277. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 31, p. 426

278. Programme Documents of the Struggle for Peace, Democracy and Socialism, Russ. Ed. Moscow, 1961, p. 59

Chapter 20

279. Programme Documents of the Struggle for Peace, Democracy and Socialism, Russ. Ed. Moscow, 1961, p. 39

280. V. I. Lenin, The National-Liberation Movement in the East, F.L.P.H., 1957, p. 176

281. Ibid.

282. V. L Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. II, Part 2, p. 424

283. Ibid., pp. 424-425

284. Ibid., p. 426

285. Ibid., p. 421

286. Programme Documents of the Struggle for Peace, Democracy and Socialism, Moscow, p. 704

287. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 483)

288. Programme Documents of the Struggle for Peace, Democracy and Socialism, Moscow, 1961, p. 72

289. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 483)

290. K. Marx, F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, F.L.P.H., p. 103

291. K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected Correspondence, F.L.P.H., 1956, p. 111

292. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 10, p. 241*

293. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 484)

294. V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. I, Part 2, p. 585

295. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 485)

296. V. I. Lenin, Against Revisionism, F.L.P.H., 1959, p. 228

297. V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. II, Part 2, p, 421

298. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 4, p. 276

299. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ. ed.. Vol. 24, p. 382

300. V. 1. Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. II, Part 1, p. 187

301. V. I. Lenin, Against Revisionism, F.L.P.H., 1959, p. 409

302. V. I. Lenin, Against Revisionism, F.L.P.H., 1959, p. 506

303. V. 1. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ. ed., Vol. 27, p. 310

304. Resolutions of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, F.L.P.H., p. 13

305. V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.IL, 1952, Vol. II, Part 2, p. 420

PART V

Chapter 21

306. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ. ed., Vol. 29, p. 387

307. V. I. Lenin, Against Revisionism, F.L.P.H., 1959, p. 410

308. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ. ed., Vol. 29, p. 350

309. V. I. Lenin, Against Revisionism, F.L.P.H., 1959, p. 322

310. V. L Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ. ed., Vol. 29, p. 188

311. Herbert Wells, Russia in the Shadows, London, pp. 27-28

312. V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. II, Part 2, p. 367

313. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ. ed., Vol. 31, p. 325

314. V. I. Lenin, Against Revisionism, F.L.P.H., 1959, p. 500

315. V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution, F.L.P.H., p. 54

316. V. I. Lenin, Articles and Speeches on Anniversaries of the October Revolution, F.L.P.H., 1957, p. 62

317. V. I. Lenin, Against Revisionism, F.L.P.H., 1959, p. 390

318. V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution, F.L.P.H., 1961, p. 56

319. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ. ed., Vol. 29, pp. 350-351

320. V. I. Lenin, To the Population and Others, F.L.P.H., 1955, p. 40

321. V. L Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 27, pp. 180-181

322. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ. ed., Vol. 32, pp. 406, 407

323. V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. II, Part 2, pp. 621-622

324. V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. II, Part 2, p. 367

325. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ. ed., Vol. 32, p. 79

326. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ. ed., Vol. 33, p. 199

327. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ. ed., Vol. 26, pp. 235-236

328. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 462)

329. V. I. Lenin, Against Revisionism, F.L.P.H., 1959, p. 323

330. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism,

F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 486)

331. V. I. Lenin, Against Revisionism, F.L.P.H., 1959, p. 576

Chapter 22

332. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 486)

333. V. I. Lenin, The National-Liberation Movement in the East, F.L.P.H., 1957, p. 279

334. V. L Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 32, p. 300

335. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 33, pp. 151-152

336. K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1958, Vol. II, p. 433

337. V. I. Lenin, Alliance of the Working Class and the Peasantry, F.L.P.H., 1959, p. 390

338. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ. ed., Vol. 32, p. 434

339. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 459)

340. V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. II, Part I, p. 38

Chapter 23

341. V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. II, Part I, p. 420

342. Lenin Miscellany XI, Moscow-Leningrad, 1931, p. 382

343. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 460)

344. K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected Correspondence, F.L.P.H., 1956, p. 251

345. F, Engels, Anti-Dühring, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 391

346. V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution, F.L.P.H., 1961, p. 161

347. K. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, F.L.P.H., p, 186

348. K, Marx, Theorien über den Mehrwert, Berlin, 1923, Bd. III, S. 305

349. K. Marx, Capital, F.L.P.H., 1962, Vol. III, p. 830

350. V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. II, Part 2, pp. 213-214

351. K. Marx, Capital, F.L.P.H., 1961, Vol. I, p. 40

352. K. Marx, Capital, F.L.P.H., 1962, Vol. III, p. 255

353. N. S. Khrushchov, Report of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to the 22nd Party Congress (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 159)

Chapter 24

354. V. L Lenin, Against Revisionism, F.L.P.H., 1959, p. 500

355. K. Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, F.L.P.H., 1954, p. 41

356. V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution, F.L.P.H., 1961, p. 159

357. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 547*)

358. Ibid., p. 547

359. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 22, p. 132

360. Ibid., pp. 135-136

361. V. I. Lenin, The National-Liberation Movement in the East, F.L.P.H., 1957, p. 309

362. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 461)

363. V. L Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., Vol. II, Part 2, p. 465

364. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 29, p. 52

365. N. S. Khrushchov, For the Victory in the Peaceful Competition with Capitalism, F.L.P.H., 1959, pp. 308-309

366. V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. II, Part 2, pp. 624-625

367. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ, ed., Vol. 27, p. 376

368. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union {The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 460)

369. N. S. Khrushchov, “For Closer Ties of Literature and Art with the Life of the People”, Soviet Literature, No. 10, 1957

370. K. Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, F.L.P.H., 1959, pp. 138-139

371. K. Marx, F. Engels, The Holy Family or Critique of Critical Critique, F.L.P.H., 1956, p. 176

372. V. L Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. II, Part I, p. 367

373. F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 403

Chapter 25

374. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 464)

375. Programme Documents of the Struggle for Peace, Democracy and Socialism, Moscow, 1961, p. 49

376. N. S. Khrushchov, On the Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 257)

377. V. I. Lenin, Selected F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. II, Part 2, p. 420

378. V, I. Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. II, Part 2, p. 467

379. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 469)

380. Programme Documents of the Struggle for Peace, Democracy and Socialism, Moscow, 1961, p. 53

381. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p, 466)

382. N. S. Khrushchov, Control Figures for Economic Development of the U.S.S.R. for 1959-1965, F.L.P.H., 1960, p. 56

383. V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. II, Part 2, pp. 465-466

384 N. S. Khrushchov, Report of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to the 22nd Party Congress (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 19)

Chapter 26

385. V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. II, Part 1, pp. 56-57

386. N. S. Khrushchov, On the Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 194)

387. Programme Documents of the Struggle for Peace, Democracy and Socialism, Moscow, 1961, pp. 83-84

388. N. S. Khrushchov, Report of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to the 22nd Party Congress (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 126)

389. N. S. Khrushchov, On the Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 188)

390. Ibid., p. 189

391. Ibid,, p. 190

392. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, pp. 513-514)

393. Bolshevik, Moscow, 1939, No. 11-12, p. 61

394. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 576)  

395. Ibid., p. 536

396. V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution, F.L.P.H., 1961, p. 170

397. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism,

F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 538)

398. Ibid., p. 537

399. Ibid., p. 545

400. Ibid.

401. V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. II, Part 2, p. 235

402. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 546)

403. N. S. Khrushchov, For Fresh Progress of Railway Transport, Moscow, 1962, pp. 62-63.

404. N. S. Khrushchov, On the Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 230)

405. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 523)

406. Ibid., p. 524

407. Ibid., p. 529

408. V. I, Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. II, Part 2, p. 624

409. Ibid,, pp. 233-234

410. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ. ed., Vol. 30, p. 25

411. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 548)

412. F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 385

413. N. S. Khrushchov, Control Figures for Economic Development of the U.S.S.R. for 1959-1965, F.L.P.H., 1960, p. 56

414. V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution, F.L.P.H., 1962, pp. 152-153

415. V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. II, Part 1, pp. 336-337

416. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 559)

417. Ibid., p. 564

418. Ibid., p. 565

419. Ibid., pp. 566-567

420. Ibid., p. 565

421. N. S. Khrushchov, On the Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 305)

422. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union {The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 584)

423. Ibid., p. 465*

424. Ibid., p. 579

425. Programme Documents of the Struggle for Peace, Democracy and Socialism, Moscow, 1961, p. 39

426. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th Russ. ed., Vol. 31, p. 426

427. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 588*)

428. Ibid., p. 558*

Chapter 27

429. K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1962, Vol. II, p. 24

430. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 509)

431. N. S. Khrushchov, Educate Active and Politically Conscious Builders of Communist Society, Moscow, 1958, pp. 11-13

432. V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1952, Vol. II, Part 2, p. 339

433. K, Marx, F, Engels, On Britain, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 152

434. F. Engels, Anti-Diihring, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 276

435. K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1958, Vol. II, p. 165

436. V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution, F.L.P.H., 1961, p. 166

437. F. Engels, Anti-Diihring, F.L.P.H., 1962, pp. 471-472

438.  Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism, F.L.P.H., 1962, p. 510)

439. Ibid., p. 439

440. F. Engels, Deutsche Ideologie, MEGA, 1. Abt., Bd. 5, Moscow-Leningrad, 1933, S. 526

441. K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1962, Vol. II, p. 151

442. Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (The Road to Communism. F.L.P.H., 1962, pp. 576-577)

443. Ibid., p. 511

444. Ibid., p. 556

445. K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected Works, F.L.P.H., 1962, Vol. I, p. 490

446. K. Marx, F. Engels, On Britain, F.L.P.H., 1953, p. 332

447. Science and Youth, Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 1958, p. 63

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