Socialist construction and the development of Marxist philosophy

DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT IN THE USSR
F. V. Konstantinov

from Development of Revolutionary Theory by the CPSU

Progress Publishers, 1971

Marxist-Leninist philosophy—dialectical and historical materialism as the general theoretical foundation of the Marxist-Leninist teaching—naturally, plays a crucial role in the contemporary ideological struggle. The fight for and against Leninism was started during Lenin's lifetime. But it acquired particularly acute forms after Lenin's death. The central issue was, of course, that of the ways and prospects of development in the Soviet Union and of the possibility of building socialism in the USSR when it was encircled by capitalist countries.

But this vast general problem contained a series of other problems: the ways and means of socialist industrialisation in, a country devastated by two wars; the problem of reorganising the scattered and backward peasant economy and turning it into a large-scale socialist co-operative economy; the problem of wiping out illiteracy, the problem of mastering the great cultural heritage of mankind; the problem of turning the USSR into a country with the most advanced socialist culture; the problem of preserving and consolidating the alliance between the workers and the peasants, an alliance that forms the political foundation of Soviet power; the problem of preserving and strengthening fraternal friendship among the numerous nations and nationalities inhabiting the USSR; the problem of how to direct these nations and nationalities to the road of successful socialist construction. After Lenin's death, the Soviet people and the Communist Party were confronted with these and numerous other challenging problems.

In tackling political, economic, social, ideological and military problems, the Central Committee, the theoreticians and the Leninist Party as a whole successfully upheld Marxism-Leninism as an integral teaching. They fought for Marxist philosophy, for revolutionary dialectics, for the creative development and implementation of Lenin's teaching, combating the Right and "Left" revisionists, those who sought to revise the basic principles of Leninism, and the dogmatists who were unable to apply revolutionary dialectics and turned it into scholasticism.

For decades and particularly in our day, in spite of facts, the opponents of Marxism, of dialectical and historical materialism, have endeavoured to prove that Marxism is a teaching of the 19th century, that it has grown obsolete and runs counter to the conditions, facts and reality of the 20th century, and to modern natural science.

Actually, it is the bourgeois philosophical and sociological theories that in their totality contradict the facts, reality and character of our epoch.

Marxism-Leninism is the only philosophy that has withstood the test of time, the test of the great events of our epoch.

Hegel called philosophy an epoch set in thought. This definition is extraordinarily profound. Marx called philosophy the spiritual quintessence of the epoch. But far from every philosophy fits into this lofty category. Every philosophy is the child, the creation of its times, but not every philosophy mirrors the substance, character, content and soul of its epoch.

In the capitalist world there are today many different philosophical schools and trends, major and minor. Each in its own way reflects some aspect of 20th-century life. Mostly, this is a misinterpreted, distorted or one-sided reflection, a tendentious reflection sustained by the viewpoint of one social group or another.

Today the whole world has been set in motion. And throughout the world all thinking people recognise that ours is an epoch of revolution: revolution in science and technology, and political, social and national liberation revolutions. The whole of spiritual life in the world is in the grip of revolution. Throughout the capitalist world people are re-assessing values. Revolutionary ideas have invaded 56 all spheres of human life in Europe, Asia, North and South America, and Africa.

What philosophy most adequately reflected and continues to reflect this revolutionary character, this revolutionary spirit of our epoch? Perhaps various positivist schools and trends appealing to experience, facts and phenomena but denying philosophy the right to get to the bottom of phenomena, the objective laws of movement and development operating independently of man? These trends deny science and philosophy the right of prevision. But this is a bad philosophy, a poor and unreliable guide in ordinary times, let alone in an epoch of revolution, in an epoch of great historical changes. In capitalist society considerable influence is wielded by neothomism, a religious philosophy that seeks to integrate theology with science. This is a philosophy of the past, not of the present or the future. It cannot serve as the ideological banner of progressive social forces.

Existentialism, a subjectivistic philosophy, has a very large following in capitalist society, chiefly among a section of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois intelligentsia. It comes forward under the banner of humanism and as its principal object of study it has selected man, the individual, regarding him abstractly, in isolation from the tasks and conditions that may lead to the individual's real emancipation from all forms of alienation, to genuine freedom. Existentialism is a pessimistic theory reflecting man's tragic destiny in the world of capitalism, in the world of alienated essences, of phenomena created by man and acting against him as a force alien and hostile to him.

Dialectical materialism, revolutionary dialectics is the only philosophy that adequately reflects the revolutionary character of the contemporary epoch. This philosophy is hostile to everything reactionary, conservative and outworn. It is an enemy of everything stagnant or fossilised. As the richest, most profound and comprehensive teaching of development in nature, society, thinking and cognition, materialist dialectics calls on people to move forward without resting content with what has been achieved. Dialectics requires a bold unearthing and settlement of the contradictions arising in life and in knowledge. It demands support for everything new, progressive and revolutionary against the old and outworn. Ultimately the new always vanquishes the old. Such is the inexorable law of development. As a method of cognition and action, dialectics is critical and revolutionary by nature, by all its inner substance. It regards human knowledge as an everlasting, living, mighty, omnipotent and insuperable onward movement from ignorance to knowledge, from shallow to deeper knowledge, from relative and objective truth to absolute truth, never fully and completely achieving it. It whips up the human mind, keeping it from resting content with what has been achieved; it awakens a craving for more knowledge.

Revolutionary dialectics is opposed to dogmatism, bigotry, complacency in science, and to claims to the attainment of absolute knowledge. What other philosophy conforms to and reflects to such an extent the revolutionary, dynamic spirit and steady, onward sweep of 20th-century science?

Revolutionary dialectics is the only philosophy that places a reliable theoretical weapon in the hands of all the Marxist-Leninist Parties. That is why Lenin, the Party and its Central Committee have unremittingly devoted so much energy and attention to the further all-sided elaboration of dialectics as a science, as a theory of knowledge, as a method of revolutionary action. That is why Lenin and the Leninists have always been so earnest in combating all forms of metaphysics, dogmatism, eclecticism and sophism, all forms of subjectivist play in dialectics. In a philosophical work headed On the Significance of Militant Materialism Lenin wrote that the development of dialectics as a science had to be furthered creatively. He recommended publishing excerpts from the works of Hegel with accompanying examples from the dialectics of the development of modern capitalism.

As a means of enlarging on dialectical materialism and preventing idealism and positivism from filtering into theoretical natural science, Lenin recommended an alliance between Marxist philosophers and modern materialist natural scientists. This alliance, he wrote, was needed equally by modern naturalists and Marxist philosophers. "It should be remembered," he pointed out, "that the sharp upheaval which modern natural science is undergoing very often gives rise to reactionary philosophical schools and minor schools, trends and minor trends. Unless, therefore, the problems raised by the recent revolution in natural science are followed, and unless natural scientists are enlisted in the work of a philosophical journal, militant materialism can be neither militant nor materialism." [58•*

After Lenin's death the development of philosophical thought in the USSR proceeded as a drive to carry out the tasks set by him.

Marxist philosophers devoted considerable time to a struggle against vulgar, mechanistic materialism, whose expounders included Lyubov Axelrod, I. Skvortsov-Stepanov, Alexander Varyash and A. K. Timiryazev. The principal expounder of mechanistic, anti-dialectical materialism was Nikolai Bukharin with his theory of equilibrium. For the Right opportunists this theory served as the philosophical foundation of their economic and political programme, as the philosophical basis for their theory of spontaneity, of spontaneous development. In philosophy and politics the struggle against mechanism naturally grew extremely acute. Crowded meetings at which heated debates took place and dialectics, Marxist philosophical materialism, was upheld in a struggle against simplified, vulgar materialism, were held in Moscow, Leningrad, Kharkov, Kiev and other cities. Marxist philosophical cadres grew, formed and became steeled in this tense situation. This struggle of Marxist philosophers against mechanism was reflected in extensive literature dealing with purely philosophical and sociological problems and with problems of the struggle against simplified, vulgar, anti-dialectical views in physics, chemistry, biology, political economy, historical science, literary criticism and aesthetics. Much was contributed to this struggle by the journal Pod znamenem marksizma {Under the Banner of Marxism], which carried articles devoted to philosophical problems of natural science. The alliance between Marxist philosophers and representatives of modern natural science was achieved and strengthened. The journal printed articles on problems of dialectics. But towards the beginning of the 1930s (in some cases even earlier) serious errors and distortions came to light in the work of the journal and in the school of A. M. Deborin, who headed the journal. Regrettably, the editors failed to cope with the task recommended by Lenin —that of giving a materialistic interpretation of Hegel's dialectics. On many issues they erased the border-line between the idealistic dialectics of Hegel and the materialistic 59 dialectics of Marx. This was the weak point of the Deborin school in the struggle against mechanistic materialism. A most serious retreat from the principles of materialism by the journal's editors was that they divorced philosophical theory from practice, from politics^

But the main failing of Deborin and his school was that in a number of works they belittled Lenin's contribution to the development of Marxist philosophy, overlooking the fact that Lenin had raised Marxist philosophy to a new, higher level.

When the adversaries of Marxism assert that Marxism which was evolved a hundred years ago is obsolete, they deliberately ignore the fact that in our 20th century the teaching and philosophy of Marx were all-sidedly developed by Lenin. Marxism has never been and cannot be stagnant. The struggle for Leninism in the sphere of philosophy has been part and parcel of the Party's general struggle to achieve socialism, to mobilise all forces and means to attain the greatest objective after the October Socialist Revolution. This struggle demanded a herculean effort from the working class, the working peasantry, the Soviet intelligentsia, the Soviet Government and the Communist Party, which is the collective leader and inspirer of the Soviet people. In this struggle, in this advance along unexplored paths the Soviet people and the Communist Party were pioneers. And this great work, this unparalleled feat of building a new society, would have been inconceivable without the creative application and development of Marxist-Leninist theory, Marxist philosophy and, in particular, materialistic dialectics.

Our ill-wishers abroad are the only people who are so blind as to speak and write of the stagnation of theoretical thought in the USSR in the period of socialist construction, during the grim years of struggle against the capitalist encirclement and during the years of the life-and-death struggle with nazism. It would be hard to list all the great, pressing political and theoretical problems that arose every year, every month, at every abrupt turn in history. It would be hard to list all the contradictions and difficulties that we had to surmount in practice by applying -theory, revolutionary dialectics.

After Lenin's death some mistakes were made in the course of socialist construction. The personality cult damaged the development of Marxist theory and philosophy. It fettered theoretical thinking, pushing it into dogmatism and reducing it to commentary. The Leninist Party and the Soviet people found in themselves the strength to surmount this phenomenon. Theoretical thought, including philosophy, cannot be stopped. Life, the practice of socialist construction and the extremely complex international situation demanded repeated analyses of events and the situation, and theoretical answers to new problems. These answers were furnished chiefly by the Party, by its Central Committee and theoretical cadres.

Is it possible to build socialism in one country taken separately? The theoretical answer to this question was furnished by Lenin. He formulated and theoretically substantiated the ways and means of fulfilling this task. His plan called for industrialisation, electrification and collectivisation. But in carrying out Lenin's plan the Party and the people encountered innumerable perplexing difficulties and innumerable enemies.

The Party and its theoretical cadres, philosophers among them, surmounted these difficulties. Perhaps, there was a better way of achieving this, with fewer sacrifices. But we were the pioneers and had no models, no historical examples to draw on. Besides, war clouds were gathering over our heads. We were not free to set the time-limit either for industrialisation or collectivisation. In ten years we had to achieve an industrial build-up which had taken other countries 100–150 years.

It is a complicated and difficult task to evolve the theory of dialectics. But the dialectics of history follows a path that is even more tortuous. And the difficulties besetting it are even more formidable. Here is one more example from the sphere of historical dialectics—the cultural revolution in a backward country such as Russia used to be, where prior to the Revolution 71.6 per cent of the population were illiterate. How was this revolution to be accomplished? How was it to be tackled? What had to be the attitude to the cultural heritage of the past? How was this heritage to be preserved, assimilated and enlarged? These were the problems that had to be resolved in theory and practice. They were coped with brilliantly by the Party and the Government. The proof of this is that today 56.4 per cent of the working population have either a secondary or higher education; there is a 27-million strong intelligentsia; the Soviet 61 Union has scored monumental achievements in science and technology; the world's first artificial satellites and spaceships were launched by the Soviet Union.

A new socio-economic system putting an end to mankind's prehistory and ushering in its real history, consciously made and directed by the people, can only emerge on a solid scientific foundation, on the foundation of MarxismLeninism, of research into the objective laws of social development. Dialectical and historical materialism were the theoretical weapons ably used by the Communist Party in changing the old world and creating the new, socialist world.

Without combating dogmatism and the various forms of revisionism the Soviet Union would have been unable to ensure the building of socialism. During the most difficult years of socialist construction, as in the period of the October Revolution, the Communist Party and its theoretical cadres waged a struggle against the decrepit dogmas of the West European and Russian Social-Democrats. The character, spirit and nature of the problems with which the Soviet people and the Party had to grapple demanded courageous innovation.

In a letter to Joseph Bloch, editor of the journal Sozialistische Monatshefte, Frederick Engels wrote that in view of the evolution of the materialistic, i.e., genuinely scientific understanding of history, human history from the most remote times to our day would have to be written anew. This applies not only to history but also to jurisprudence, literary criticism, aesthetics, ethnography and philology. For that reason one of the results of the development of Marxist philosophical thought in the USSR is that Marxist dialectics and historical materialism have become the method and soul of all the humanities.

During the years of socialist construction Marxist philosophical ideas penetrated deep into the thick of the masses: workers, intellectuals and collective farmers. Under Soviet power the entire country was turned into a mammoth university. The Revolution and the building of the new society awakened in the masses an insatiable craving for knowledge. Marxist-Leninist philosophy has been and continues to be studied not only in a huge number of institutions of higher learning, but also at numerous circles, seminars and courses at factories, research institutions and laboratories, and in towns and villages throughout the country.

One of the greatest victories of Marxist philosophy is that it liberated tens of millions of people from the hold of religious ideas and armed them with a progressive, scientific world outlook. Everybody knows of the importance Lenin attached to the struggle against religion, to atheistic propaganda and the moulding of a materialistic scientific world outlook. Much has been done in this direction, although religious ideas cling on tenaciously to this day among the backward section of the population. For that reason the drive for an atheistic world outlook must be continued.

What philosophical and sociological problems devoted to events of historic significance have been worked out and resolved by the Party after Lenin's death? In the Philosophical Notebooks and On the Significance of Militant Materialism Lenin set Marxists the task of comprehensively elaborating materialistic dialectics as a science, as the logic and theory of cognition. In the period of over 50 years since the Revolution Marxists have written works on the dialectics in Marx's Capital, on the problems of dialectics in the works of Lenin, on the dialectics of the development of modern capitalism, on the dialectics of the development of socialist society, on the system of categories of dialectics, on the theory of reflection and on individual laws and categories of dialectical logic. A six-volume history of world philosophy and a three-volume history of philosophy, published earlier, are fundamental Marxist treatises tracing the history of the struggle between materialism and idealism, between dialectics and metaphysics. The sixth volume of this work and the supplementing works on the history of philosophy and sociology in the USSR and in the European socialist countries deal with the development of philosophy, including dialectics, in the USSR after the October Revolution.

The first-ever five-volume encyclopaedia of Marxist philosophy has been brought out. Four volumes have been printed, and the last volume is to be printed shortly.

Philosophical problems of modern natural science occupy an important place in the work of Soviet philosophers. The significance of Soviet research into problems of the dialectics of nature of the 20th century is that it is being conducted by Marxist philosophers together with leading natural scientists.

At one time some philosophers committed the serious error of oversimplifying the approach to special problems of natural science (the theory of relativity, genetics and cybernetics) and thereby undermined the alliance between Marxist philosophers and materialistic natural scientists. This error has been rectified. Soviet natural scientists support and actively propagate dialectical materialism, and this is one of the finest achievements of our epoch.

In recent years researches, monographs and papers have .been written which in their totality give a fairly comprehensive picture of Lenin's contribution to the development of dialectical materialism. They are a gratifying result of our endeavour over many years, of the joint effort of prominent philosophers and natural scientists.

These works open the road for a further advance in this sphere. Nonetheless, they have not dealt with every aspect of Lenin's philosophical heritage. Unless Lenin's heritage is studied in its entirety the latest data of natural science cannot be profoundly comprehended philosophically. Precisely because during the initial decades of this century Lenin raised and resolved key problems of philosophical science, his thoughts, practical work and method live on and operate in. every sphere of modern knowledge and act as a powerful driving force of the contemporary development of dialectical, materialistic philosophy. There are, of course, natural scientists who maintain that Lenin's works do not influence the development of natural science because they deal solely with ideological questions. But these are not the claims that determine the true role played by Lenin's theoretical heritage.

Soviet philosophers and natural scientists, and also progressive scientists throughout the world draw on and shall go on drawing on the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin. But it is one thing to draw on an authoritative source and another to hide behind it. The modern scientific and technological revolution has raised questions which did not and could not confront the classics of Marxism-Leninism. Therefore, to believe that it is possible to go on living by relying solely on the conclusions of the classics of MarxismLeninism is to belittle the authority of Marxist-Leninist philosophy and of its founders. This makes it incumbent on us to develop Marxist-Leninist philosophy creatively and adhere to its revolutionary spirit, to go beyond the heritage left by the founders of Marxism-Leninism and stop living on philosophical rent.

As a scientific outlook, dialectical materialism helps natural scientists to steer clear of errors and avoid groping in the dark, serving them as a reliable compass in their quest for truth. Marxist-Leninist philosophy does not force on the natural sciences any ready-made, everlasting truths and does not attempt to resolve the specific problems confronting natural scientists. By emancipating the mind, by freeing it from dogmas, prejudices, "eternal truths" and so on, it gives the scientist a method of scientifically understanding reality, a method specified by natural science in its application to special fields of knowledge. Lenin defined science and historical development "as living, many-sided knowledge (with the number of sides eternally increasing), with an infinite number of shades of every approach and approximation to reality". [64•*

The classics of Marxism-Leninism have left us a priceless philosophical heritage. Time cannot change it. On the contrary, with every new discovery of the natural sciences we get a profounder understanding of the fundamental principles of philosophical materialism. These principles are part of the treasure-store of Marxist-Leninist philosophical science and of the treasure-store of the methodology of the natural sciences. Renunciation of the principles of dialectical materialism is tantamount to renunciation of MarxismLeninism.

Recent years have witnessed the accumulation of vast new theoretical and experimental material and the appearance of new sciences and new scientific trends. These are the achievements in the study of the atomic nucleus and the use of thermonuclear energy, the exploration of outer space, progress in cybernetics, electronics, chemistry, molecular biology, and so on. Physics, biology and other natural sciences are again confronted with extremely complex fundamental problems, which evidently cannot be resolved without changing the established systems of scientific concepts in the way that they were changed in connection with the revolution in physics early in the 20th century.

A creative solution of these problems requires the further development, above all, of hilosophical science itself. In the field of dialectical materialism we are now faced with similarly difficult and similarly impressive tasks as had faced Lenin in his day. Engels, it will be recalled, suggested that philosophical materialism had to change its form with every major, epoch-making discovery by natural science. Under the modern revolutionising discoveries of science, this suggestion receives profound concretisation and creative embodiment.

The cascade of astounding discoveries in the physics of elementary particles, the philosophical problems raised by the development of cybernetics, the quests for a new definition of the substance of life and the philosophical problems of chemistry, the science of the earth, astronomy and other fields of knowledge not only demand a philosophical, dialectical-materialist assessment but raise the question of the further development of philosophy. The solution of all these problems would mark the beginning of a new stage in the development of dialectical materialism. Interesting fragments of this general picture have been produced, for instance, by the researches into the classification of sciences and by a philosophical analysis of the principle of causality, the principle of conformity in modern science, the new categories of the element of structure, symmetry and asymmetry, and so forth.

New problems are constantly arising before Soviet philosophers. These are problems of the contemporary stage of the interaction between mathematics and natural science, the role played by mathematics in the formation of new, more profound and generalising concepts, the modern definition of the essence of life, the methodology of the interaction of the entire range of sciences in the study of the Earth and outer space, general problems of the development of science as a large and complex system, and so on.

Differentiation between the sciences is one of the fundamental laws of the development of all sciences, including Marxist philosophy. For example, empirical sociology, ethics, aesthetics and scientific communism have evolved into distinct spheres of philosophical knowledge. The problems of scientific communism have been studied by economists ( problems of political economy), sociologists and representatives of the juridical sciences. During the past few years the need for teaching and developing Marxist science has led to the singling out of the socio-political problems of communist construction into a sphere of their own—scientific communism. Here we do not, of course, have a precise and strict demarcation between the problems of the political economy of socialism, sociology and juridical sciences, but this should not affect research. Life demands comprehensive sociological investigations of the socio-political problems of the development of socialist society. This approach ensures the most allembracing, objective research and makes it possible to give practical effect to its results.

Naturally, during these years Soviet philosophers and sociologists have devoted special attention to the problem of unravelling new laws and motive forces of the development of socialist society. The general sociological problem of the socio-economic system as such was tackled in this connection and on this basis. Bourgeois sociology and economic science continue, as they have always done, to regard capitalism and its laws as something natural, eternal and immutable. Marx creatively refuted this metaphysical view. The October Revolution, the triumph of socialism in the USSR and the formation of the world socialist system have in practice disproved the theories of the bourgeois sociologists and economists. But the task has arisen of revealing and showing the new laws and motive forces of society that have ousted capitalism.

Bourgeois sociologists and economists, Walt Rostow and Raymond Aron among them, and also revisionists and the Maoist dogmatists (revisionists of the Right and revisionists-dogmatists of the "Left" display a touching unity here) try to prove that Soviet socialist society, the world socialist system and modern capitalist society are nothing more than varieties of one and the same industrial society. Meanwhile, the so-called theory of convergence, expounded by some bourgeois philosophers and sociologists, seeks to prove that the Soviet and capitalist societies are both developing in one and the same direction and that at some point they will merge into a single society. Marxists hold that capitalism is fraught with revolution and that sooner or later it will evolve into socialist society through revolutionary transformation. The exponents of industrial society and of the theory of convergence (Mao Tse-tung, for instance) believe that socialist society will turn into a single industrial society. We thus have two opposing concepts, two opposing outlooks.

Socialist society is the first, lowest phase of the new, communist socio-economic system. It is founded on the integration of producers with the means of production, on the socialist mode of production, on public (state) and co– operative ownership of the means of production, and on conformity of the relations of production to the character of the new productive forces. Socialism puts an end to exploitation of man by man and to the subjugation of people by the productive forces and relations of production created by them. This has opened up unlimited scope for the development of the productive forces and of man himself. Planned development not only of production but of society is one of the cardinal laws of socialism as a whole. In socialist society the balance between spontaneity and consciousness has changed fundamentally in favour of the latter. Under socialism not only economic but also social development is planned and directed, but elements of unenvisaged and unplanned development also continue to exist. However, the general direction of development is determined by the Marxist policy of the Party and the Government, a policy resting on the objective laws of social progress.

The law of development of all antagonistic formations, of capitalism in particular, is that all contradictions and antagonisms grow increasingly more acute: the antagonism between exploiters and the exploited, between the rich and the poor, between mental and physical work, between man and machinery, between the colossal socialisation of production and private ownership, and so on and so forth. In socialist society, on the other hand, the advance is towards the steady erasure of the distinctions between classes, towards increasing social homogeneity, towards communist equality. This is a complex, difficult and contradictory process and it takes much longer than we sometimes supposed. The abolition of all distinctions between the working classes, between mental and physical work and between town and countryside, and the attainment of complete social equality require the creation of the appropriate material and technical basis, the utilisation of all the finest achievements of modern science and technology and a level of labour productivity that would ensure an abundance of material blessings.

A fundamental law of socialism and of the future communism is the provision of all facilities for the development of the talents and gifts of every member of society. Much has already been done in this sphere. But still more is to be done. The maxim, law and purpose of socialist and of communist society is: All for man, for the sake of man, for his welfare and happiness and for the all-round development of his abilities.

One of the most important problems of Marxist philosophy and sociology, to which the works and researches of Soviet philosophers and sociologists are devoted, is that of man, of socialist humanism. This problem receives considerable attention also from modern bourgeois philosophy and sociology in the West. It is the central problem of existentialism, too. Some foreign philosophers seek to supplement Marxism with existentialism. After the publication of Marx's Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, some "Marxists" turned from the mature Marx, the author of the Manifesto and Capital, to the young Marx. Much in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 is valuable and brilliant. These works and the ideas expounded in them should not be consigned to oblivion or, much less, farmed out to bourgeois ideologists. But it is a cruel mistake to think that the entire range of Marx's humanism is contained in these early works, when he had not yet shaken off the influence of Hegel and Feuerbach and was still making such wide use of the category of alienation, which occupies a much more modest place in his own classical works and in the works of Engels and Lenin. The reason it occupies such a modest place is not that they had ceased to be humanists. On the contrary, genuine humanism permeates the entire teaching of scientific communism, the whole of Marxist-Leninist philosophy and political economy. It should not be forgotten that in Capital Marx exposes the inhumanity of the economic and social system of capitalism and comes to the revolutionary conclusion that this inhuman system has to be destroyed. Love of man has been preached for hundreds and thousands of years by religious and atheistic humanists, by philosophers and sociologists, but the man of labour remained chained and fettered. Marxism was the only philosophy that showed the real way to destroy all forms of slavery, oppression and alienation and build a society where the free development of each person would be the condition for the free development of all. In the Marxist-Leninist theory of the class struggle, in the theory of the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat there is a hundred times more humanism than in all the bourgeois and revisionist writings taken together.

Soviet philosophers, sociologists and psychologists have lately been making a special study of the problems of the personality and of the problems of socialist and bourgeois humanism. To change the nature of man that took many millennia to form is an extraordinarily intricate and lengthy process. Nevertheless, the new man of Soviet, socialist society is no longer a dream but an historical reality. This new man—a collectivist, an internationalist, a fighter against imperialism, a revolutionary and humanist, a man armed with the most progressive world outlook of our age—already exists. He accomplished the October Revolution. While changing the old world of social relations and building the new world, he changed his own character. He defeated nazism, mankind's deadliest enemy. This was a great feat requiring love of the socialist motherland and of mankind, courage, valour, heroism and staunchness. The victory over nazism was not merely a military victory. It was a victory of the Soviet socialist system over the capitalist, nazi system; it was a victory of the Soviet man armed with the socialist ideology of internationalism over the brutal ideology of racism and nationalism. A contribution to this victory was also made by Marxist philosophical thought, which through the Leninist Party educated and inspired Soviet people, giving them faith in victory.

True, the Soviet man is not yet completely free of the birthmarks of the old system, of some backward ways of thinking. These ways manifest themselves, above all, in everyday life. But all this is surmountable.

One of the tasks that Lenin had set representatives of the humanitarian sciences, including Marxist sociologists, was to conduct concrete social researches. The aim of these researches was to throw light on the mechanism governing the operation of economic and social laws at a given time and place, sum up the advanced experience of communist construction, and expose and criticise negative phenomena hindering the development of the new. These studies were conducted over a period of many years by the Party and by Soviet economists and sociologists. But, as the practice of communist construction has shown during the past few years, the scientific administration of society requires further and broader sociological research in various fields by sociologists and also by economists and jurists. The development of Marxist sociology—historical materialism—also requires concrete sociological investigations. In this field some advance has already been made.

Mathematical methods of investigation are being employed on a growing scale in economics and sociology. But when mathematical methods are applied, theory and philosophy, i.e., the ideological aspect of science, must not be forgotten.

Bourgeois sociologists have begun to preach the deideologisation of science, of sociology in particular. They hold that in the 20th century sociology is giving way to technology, that technology is capable of resolving all contemporary problems while ideology only acts as a barrier, standing in the way of objective cognition.

The purpose of this theory is to disarm the Marxists and the working class ideologically. Bourgeois ideology is hostile to science, to objective scientific research. On the other hand, Marxist sociology and ideology are interrelated and inseparable.

A distinguishing feature of philosophical development in the USSR is that Marxist philosophy and Marxist ideas have been adopted by the broad masses. In the past philosophy was only accessible to individuals or a few selected schools and circles. The purpose of Marxist philosophy is to serve as a weapon of the working class and its Party in the revolutionary transformation of the world. A philosophy plays this role only when its ideas are embraced by the masses. In the Soviet Union the ideas of Marxism-Leninism have won the minds of millions of people.

The Communist Party has always been true to Marxist principles. It regards Marxism-Leninism as a monolithic, integral teaching moulded from a single piece of steel. It continues, as it has always done, to wage a determined struggle against dead dogmas and revisionism of all hues. Leninism is the supreme example of a bold, revolutionary attitude to theory, an example of how fidelity to the fundamental principles of Marxist teaching should be correctly and scientifically combined with the fearless, creative development and enrichment of this teaching. Theory is not a dogma but a guide to revolutionary action—such is the maxim of Lenin and the Leninist Party. To this attitude to theory the Communist Party and the working class owe their great achievements.

Deep-going changes and transformations are taking place in the world all the time. Much has taken place and continues to take place in the life of the peoples of all countries and continents: the might and influence of the world socialist system and of the world communist and working-class movement are growing; the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America are awakening to activity and beginning to make their own history; the scientific and technological revolution is spreading in breadth and depth and the social productive forces are growing; under capitalism these forces have acquired the nature of formidable destructive elements directed against mankind; parallel with the old deepening contradictions of modern capitalism, new contradictions have appeared and are growing. The socialist countries, the international working class and all mankind are confronted with great tasks, some of which have never been so pressing as today. The more difficult and impressive the tasks confronting the Party, the working class, the country and the world communist movement, the greater are the demands on the social sciences for further creative development and strict objectivity, for profound, accurate and scientific investigations of social processes, and for conclusions based on these investigations.

The fact that Marxist theory, the social sciences and Marxist philosophy comprise the theoretical foundation of the home and foreign policy pursued by the Communist Party and the socialist state and provide the guideline for the activity of the people devolves on scientists a tremendous responsibility for the accuracy and objectivity of theoretical studies.

Subjectivism, departures from objective truth, misrepresentation of historical truth and a time-serving approach to the study of social problems are alien to the spirit and substance of Marxism-Leninism and can harm our cause substantially. Lenin wrote: "The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true." [71•* This has always been the guideline of the Party and its Central Committee. It must always be an immutable law of the theoretical work of scientists.

The Party has set Soviet scientists great and responsible tasks in further enriching Marxist theory and sociology and conducting concrete social studies. These tasks derive from the demands of life, from the requirements of communist construction.

Lately, there has been an intensification of the attacks on Marxism-Leninism, and attempts are being made to belittle Lenin's role as a thinker, as a great theoretician, who raised Marxism to a new, higher stage and enriched all aspects and components of Marxism. Attempts are made to proclaim the theoretically immature writings of Mao Tse-tung as the Marxism of the present epoch.

There is in the world a category of people who, while claiming to develop Marxist philosophy have, in fact, betrayed it long ago. They reject dialectical and historical materialism and preach a variety of bourgeois and pettybourgeois humanism. They counterpose Engels to Marx, the young Marx to the mature Marx and, of course, reject Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism as an "obsolete" work.

These critics of Leninism consider that the cardinal problem of philosophy is not that of the relation of thinking to being, but the problem of man, the problem of the individual, as though it can be scientifically resolved outside dialectical and historical materialism, as though two outlooks— materialistic and idealistic—do not clash over the problem of man and humanism. The new-fledged critics of Leninism reject Lenin's theory of reflection in the sphere of the theory of knowledge as being allegedly a conformist, time-serving theory that fails to take the active role of knowledge and consciousness into consideration. The reader will say that this is quite absurd: Lenin and his (and, of course, Marx's and Engels's) theory of reflection—and passivity! These critics counterpose Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism to his Philosophical Notebooks where, reading Hegel, Lenin writes: "Man's consciousness not only reflects the objective world, but creates it." [72•* But consciousness and knowledge play a great creative, transformative role only when they faithfully, adequately and objectively reflect the world and reality. Otherwise they are nothing more than idealism, subjectivism and voluntarism.

Foreign opponents sometimes ask Soviet philosophers the ridiculous question: "What do you hold higher—Marxist orthodoxy or truth?" For creative Marxists-Leninists these have always coincided. Orthodox Marxism has always required a creative development of philosophical and sociological theory in accordance with reality. This is the teaching of Marxist dialectics. This was how Lenin had always acted. And this is how the Party, following Lenin, acts today.

At present the struggle for Leninism cannot be waged successfully without a simultaneous struggle against revisionism and also against die-hard dogmatism, which is actually open revisionism and a betrayal of the fundamental aspect of Marxism—its revolutionary dialectics—which requires a concrete historical approach to phenomena and events and binds us to look ahead, not back, to see the new developments in life and, accordingly, chart our strategy and tactics in the struggle for communism. In this lies the genuinely revolutionary spirit of Leninism.

In all fields of its activity the Communist Party is guided by the great teaching of Marxism-Leninism. Drawing upon revolutionary theory and the knowledge of the objective laws of social development, it formulates and implements its policy in economic, social and cultural life.

[58•*] V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, pp. 232–33.

[64•*] V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 362.
[71•*] V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 19, p. 23.
[72•*] V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 212.