Conditions for the material life of society

 from; Konstantinov F.V., Glezerman G.E., Gak G.M., Kammari M.D., Khrustov F.D., Yudin P.F.

Moscow. 1950. State publishing house of political literature.

 As shown in the previous chapter, social ideas, social theories, political views, forms of state and law cannot be derived and explained either from themselves, or from the actions of individuals, or from the so-called “folk spirit”, or from the “absolute idea” , none of the properties of a particular race.

The source of the emergence, change, development of social ideas, theories, political views, forms of state and law is rooted in the conditions of the material life of society.

What are the conditions of the material life of society, what do they consist of, and what are their distinctive features? The conditions of the material life of society include: 1) the geographical environment surrounding human society, 2) population, 3) the method of production of material goods.

 1. Geographic environment

Geographical environment as one of the conditions of the material life of society

The concept of "conditions of the material life of society" includes, first of all, the nature surrounding society, the geographical environment. What role does the geographical environment play in the development of society? The geographical environment is one of the necessary and constant conditions for the material life of society, and it undoubtedly has an impact on the development of society. This or that geographical environment is the natural basis of the production process. To a certain extent, especially at the early stages of the development of society, the geographical environment leaves an imprint on the types, branches of production, constituting the natural basis for the social division of labor. Where there were no animals suitable for domestication, cattle breeding could not, of course, arise. The presence of mineral ores in the area, minerals determines the possibility of the emergence of the relevant extractive industries. But in order for this possibility to become a reality, for this, in addition to natural wealth, appropriate social conditions are necessary, an appropriate level of development of the productive forces, first of all.

Marx divides the external, natural conditions of the life of society into two large categories:

The natural richness of the means of subsistence: the fertility of the soil, the abundance of fish in the waters, game in the forests, etc.

Natural wealth in sources of means of labor: waterfalls, navigable rivers, wood, metals, coal, oil, etc.

At the lower stages of the development of society, the first type of natural wealth, at the higher levels, the second type is of the greatest importance in the productive life of society.

For a primitive society with its primitive technology, waterfalls, navigable rivers, deposits of coal, oil, manganese or chromium ore were of no vital importance, did not affect the development of the conditions of its material life. The Dnieper rapids, the water energy of the Volga existed for many millennia, and they became the most important natural basis for the energy resources of society only at high levels of development of society, when socialism triumphed in the USSR.

Favorable geographical conditions accelerate the development of society, unfavorable geographical conditions slow it down. What geographical environment is the most favorable and which is less favorable for social development? What natural conditions slow down and what accelerate social development?

It is impossible to give an answer to this question that is suitable for all historical epochs in the development of society. As with all other issues, there must be a concrete, historical approach. The same geographical environment plays a different role in different historical conditions.

In countries with a tropical climate, the nature surrounding man is unusually generous. With a small amount of labor, it provided the primitive man with the means necessary for food. But too wasteful nature, says Marx, leads a person, like a child, on the harness. It does not make his own development a natural necessity. “... I cannot imagine a greater curse for the people,” writes one author quoted by Marx in Capital, “how to be thrown onto a piece of land where nature itself produces in abundance the means of life and food, and the climate does not require or does not allow significant care for clothing and protection from the weather ... ". (K. Marx, Capital, vol. I, Gospolitizdat, 1949, p. 517).

The harsh, monotonous and poor nature of the Far North, the polar and circumpolar countries, the tundra zone was also relatively unfavorable for the social development of primitive people. It required an incredible expenditure of energy from a person in order to save only life itself, and left little time and energy for the comprehensive development of abilities. Both in the tropics and in the circumpolar countries, social development was extremely slow. The inhabitants of these countries for a long time remained at the lower levels of historical development.

It is a historical fact that the greatest power of man over nature, the greatest successes in the development of productive forces and in social development as a whole, were achieved not in tropical countries and not in the far north, not in tropical forests and purulent desert expanses of Africa and not in severe cold tundra, and in that part of the globe where the natural conditions of social production are most diverse and differentiated. It is these conditions of the geographical environment surrounding man that at one time turned out to be the most favorable for the development of production and for social development as a whole.

“It was not the tropical climate with its mighty vegetation, but the temperate zone that was the birthplace of capital,” writes Marx. “It is not the absolute fertility of the soil, but its differentiation, the diversity of its natural products, that constitutes the natural basis of the social division of labor; due to the change in the natural conditions in which man has to conduct his economy, this diversity contributes to the multiplication of his own needs, abilities, means and methods of labor. The need for social control of any force of nature in the interests of the economy, the need to use it or subjugate it with the help of large-scale structures erected by the hand of man, plays a decisive role in the history of industry. An example would be the regulation of water in Egypt, Lombardy, Holland, etc., or in India, Persia, etc.; where irrigation with artificial canals not only delivers the water necessary for plants to the soil, but at the same time brings, along with silt, mineral fertilizer from the mountains. The secret of the economic flourishing of Spain and Sicily under the rule of the Arabs was artificial irrigation” (Ibid.).

Criticism of the geographical trend in sociology

Are not the natural conditions, the geographical environment, the determining force on which, in the last analysis, the development of society, its form, structure, and physiognomy depend?

Supporters of the geographical direction in sociology and historiography believe that it is the geographical environment - climate, soil, terrain, vegetation - directly or through food or occupation that influence the physiology and psychology of people, determine their inclinations, temperament, stamina, endurance, and through them and the entire social, political system of society.

French educator of the 18th century. Montesquieu believed that the morals and religious beliefs of people, the social and political system of peoples are determined primarily by the characteristics of the climate.

Montesquieu considered the temperate climate of the northern countries to be the most favorable for social development and the hot climate the least favorable. In his essay “0 Spirit of the Laws,” Montesquieu wrote: “Excessive heat undermines strength and vigor ... a cold climate gives the mind and body of people a certain strength that makes them capable of long, difficult, great and courageous actions.” “In the northern countries, the body is healthy, strongly built, but clumsy” finds pleasure in all activities” The peoples of these countries have “few vices, not a few virtues and a lot of sincerity and straightforwardness.” “The cowardice of the peoples of a hot climate almost always led them to slavery, while the courage of the peoples of a cold climate kept them in a free state,” such are the reasoning of Montesquieu.

But how can one explain the fact that in the same climatic conditions, in the same country, but at different times, there were different social and political orders? The climate of Italy from the time of the Gracchi, Brutus and Julius Caesar to the present day has hardly changed, and what a complex economic and political evolution ancient Rome and Italy experienced! Montesquieu feels that climate cannot explain this. And he, confused, resorts to the usual idealistic "explanation": he explains political and other social changes by legislation, by the free activity of the legislator.

The English sociologist Buckle, in his book A History of Civilization in England, made an attempt to give a more detailed explanation of the course of world history by the properties of the geographical environment. Unlike Montesquieu, Boccle believed that not only the climate, but also the characteristics of the soil, food, as well as the general appearance of the surrounding nature (landscape) have a decisive influence on the character of peoples, on their psychology, on their way of thinking and on the social and political system.

The formidable, majestic nature of tropical countries with frequent earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, storms, thunderstorms, downpours, Bokl writes, affects the imagination of people and gives rise to fear, superstition and causes a great influence of the "superstitious class" (clergy) in the life of society. The nature of such countries as Greece, England, on the contrary, contributes, according to Buckle, to the development of logical thinking, scientific knowledge. The significant role of the clergy and the prevalence of superstitions in Spain and Italy, Buckle explains earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, often occurring in these countries.

But after all, in the conditions of the same nature on the territory of Italy, the materialist Lucretius lived in antiquity, in the Renaissance - Leonardo da Vinci, the mocking anti-clerical author of the Decameron Boccaccio, the courageous fighter for science against the Catholic obscurantism of Giordano Bruno. How can one explain the difference in the worldview of people living in the same geographical conditions? This question cannot be answered from the positions of Bockl, from the positions of the geographical trend in sociology.

Buckle tried to explain the psychology and character traits of the people, allegedly determining the social system, by the peculiarities of the climate and the seasonality of agricultural work. Thus, comparing Norway and Sweden with Spain and Portugal, Buckle says that it is difficult to find a greater difference than that which exists in the laws, customs and religion of these peoples. But in the conditions of life of these peoples, he also notes something in common: both in the north and in the south, due to the peculiarities of the climate, continuous agricultural activity is impossible. In the south, the continuity of agricultural occupations is hindered by the summer heat and dry weather, and in the north by the severity of winter, the short duration of the day, and at some times of the year even the absence of light. That is why, writes Buckle, these four nations, for all their dissimilarity in other respects, are equally distinguished by weakness and inconstancy of character.

As we can see, about the character of the northern peoples, Bocle expresses an opinion opposite to that of Montesquieu. This shows that the conclusions of the supporters of the geographical direction in sociology are extremely arbitrary.

From the positions of Bockl and other supporters of the reactionary geographical direction in sociology, it is impossible to explain why in the same country, at the same time, there are opposite classes with different psychology, with opposite ideals. The political meaning of Buckle's thoroughly anti-scientific theory is to justify the colonial domination of the British bourgeoisie, to lay an ideological basis for this domination. In our time, the reactionary views of the representatives of the geographical school in sociology serve to obscure the real causes that cause the division of society into classes, to justify colonial oppression and the imperialist enslavement of peoples. Buckle's geographical views are linked with the savage racial theory, which endows the colonial peoples with supposedly "eternal" properties, dooming them to a slave position,

The geographical trend in sociology had its representatives in Russia as well. These include the well-known historian S. M. Solovyov (author of the multi-volume History of Russia), Lev Mechnikov (author of the book Civilization and Great Historical Rivers), and partly the historian V. O. Klyuchevsky.

The historian S. M. Solovyov tried to explain the peculiarity of the development of Russia, its political system, the nature and mentality of the Russian people by the conditions of the geographic environment of the East European Plain. Contrasting Western and Eastern Europe, he wrote:

“Stone, as we used to call mountains in the old days, stone divided Western Europe into many states, delimited many nationalities, Western men built their nests in stone, and from there the peasants ruled; the stone gave them independence; but soon the peasants, too, are surrounded by stones and acquire freedom and independence; everything is solid, everything is certain, thanks to the stone.

Otherwise, according to Solovyov, the situation is on the great eastern plain of Europe, in Russia. Here “... there is no stone: everything is even,” he writes, “there is no diversity of nationalities, and therefore one state of unprecedented size. Here, men have nowhere to build stone nests for themselves, they do not live separately and independently, they live in squads near the prince and always move across a wide boundless space ... In the absence of diversity, a sharp delineation of localities, there are no such features that would have a strong effect on the formation of the character of the local population , made it difficult for him to leave his homeland, resettlement. There are no solid dwellings that would be hard to part with ... cities consist of a heap of wooden huts, the first spark - and instead of them a heap of ashes. The trouble, however, is small ... a new house is worth nothing due to the cheapness of the material,

So from the peculiarities of the geographical conditions of Eastern Europe Solovyov derives the serfdom and the nature of the state in Russia. But such an explanation and opposition of Russia to the West is completely untenable. In reality, both the countries of Eastern and the countries of Western Europe, despite the peculiarity of their natural conditions, went through the feudal-serf system, through the domination of absolutism. And this means that the social and political structure of society is formed independently of natural conditions and cannot be derived from the characteristics of the geographical environment.

Solovyov's reasoning about the role of stone in Western Europe and wood in Eastern Europe is also incorrect. Until the 11th-19th centuries. not only in Russia, but also in France, Germany, England and Flanders, in the villages and in the cities, the buildings were mostly wooden. Even London at the beginning of the XIII century. was a wooden city.

One of the prominent representatives of the geographical direction in sociology, Lev Mechnikov tried to explain the development of society by the role of water, the influence of rivers and seas. In the book “Civilization and Great Historical Rivers”, L. Mechnikov wrote: “Water turns out to be an animating element not only in nature, but also a true driving force in history ... Not only in the geological world and in the field of botany, but also in the history of animals and water is a force that motivates cultures to develop, to move from the environment of river systems to the shores of inland seas, and from there to the ocean.

Mechnikov's views, his division of the history of mankind into river, Mediterranean and oceanic civilizations are unscientific.

GV Plekhanov made a gross theoretical and political mistake when he tried to bring Mechnikov's views closer to those of Marx and Engels. There is nothing in common between historical materialism and the geographical trend in sociology. Moreover, they are hostile to each other. The geographical direction, as one of the varieties of reactionary bourgeois sociological doctrines, is fundamentally contrary to Marxism.

In the era of imperialism, the geographical direction taken up by the ideologists of the reactionary bourgeoisie was and is being used to justify the aggressive policy of the imperialists of the USA, Britain, Germany and Japan. In fascist Germany, this direction was called "geopolitics". The Nazis elevated "geopolitics" to the rank of a state "science". This pseudoscience is a kind of mixture of racist "theory" with a geographical trend in bourgeois sociology and expresses the extreme degree of stupidity and intellectual degeneration of the modern reactionary bourgeoisie. Supporters of this delusional "geopolitical" pseudoscience (Gaushofer and others) argue that the policy of each state is determined by its geographical location. Openly defending the predatory, predatory policy of imperialism, they tried to "substantiate" the extravagant claims of German fascism for world domination. The main thing in this "geopolitical" mishmash - the demand for the so-called "living space for the German nation" - meant the demand for colonies, the desire to enslave other peoples and, above all, the peoples of the country of socialism - the USSR. This is the main political essence of fascist "geopolitics".

The supporters of this reactionary theory try to disguise the real internal and external contradictions in the social life of the capitalist countries, which are generated not by the "lack of living space" but by imperialism. The landlessness and lack of land of millions of peasants and farm laborers in the capitalist countries is the result of the concentration of the greater part and the best land in the hands of a handful of land magnates, big landowners. This is not the result of the "geographical deprivation of nations", but the result of the economic development of capitalism, as well as the remnants of feudalism.

After the defeat of Nazi Germany, which was the main reactionary force in Europe, the role of inspirer and leader of world reaction and pretender to world domination was taken by US imperialism. The imperialist appetites of the American bourgeoisie are boundless. It seeks to turn not only the western but also the eastern hemisphere into an object of its unrestrained expansion and exploitation. Turkey and Greece, the entire Middle and Far East, Europe and Africa are declared by the reactionary ideologists of American imperialism to be the "living space" of the United States. In accordance with this, American naval and air bases are being set up in all parts of the world. Through the mouths of its ideologists, the American bourgeoisie demands the destruction of national borders and the national sovereignty of peoples. "Geopolitics" is widely used to justify this predatory policy.

Once upon a time, ancient Rome, as a sign of its triumph over the conquered peoples, along with precious trophies and slaves, also captured images of the gods worshiped by these peoples. Images of the gods were placed in the Pantheon of Rome. But times change, tastes change. The American bourgeoisie exported from Germany to the USA, along with the gold reserves and jewels plundered by the Nazis from the peoples of Europe, also the stinking "theory" of geopolitics. Fascist geopolitics is being galvanized and placed at the service of US imperialism.

Reactionary bourgeois "sociology", which attempts to explain the structure and development of society by the properties of the geographical environment, was subjected to deadly criticism by IV Stalin in his work "On Dialectical and Historical Materialism".

Comrade Stalin gave a profoundly scientific explanation of the real role of the geographic environment in the development of society. The geographical environment is one of the necessary and permanent conditions for the material life of society, but it is relatively unchanging, constant; its natural changes take place on any significant scale over tens of thousands and millions of years, while fundamental changes in the social system take place much faster, over thousands and even hundreds of years. Therefore, such a relatively unchanging value as the geographical environment cannot serve as the determining cause of the change and development of society.

The facts show that different social forms existed in the same geographical environment. The same blue, cloudless sky rose above the Greece of the time of Pericles, the same sun shone as over Greece of the time of decline.

“For three thousand years in Europe,” writes I. V. Stalin, “three different social systems managed to change: the primitive communal system, the slave-owning system, the feudal system, and in the eastern part of Europe, in the USSR, even four social systems were replaced. Meanwhile, during the same period, the geographical conditions in Europe either did not change at all, or changed so insignificantly that geography refuses to even talk about it ...

But it follows from this that the geographical environment cannot serve as the main cause, the determining cause of social development, because what remains almost unchanged for tens of thousands of years cannot serve as the main cause of the development of something that undergoes fundamental changes in the course of hundreds of years. (I.V. Stalin, Questions of Leninism, ed. 11, pp. 548-549.).

The impact of society on nature

The bourgeois sociologists of the geographical school regard human society as something passive, only exposed to the influence of the geographical environment. But this is a fundamentally false idea of ​​the relationship between society and nature. The relationship between society and nature historically changes along with the development of social productive forces.

Unlike animals, social man does not simply adapt himself to nature, to the geographical environment, but through production he adapts nature to himself, to his needs. Human society constantly transforms the nature around it, forces it to serve man, dominates it.

By developing social production, people irrigate deserts, change the natural fertility of the soil, connect rivers, seas and oceans with the help of canals, move plant and animal species from one continent to another, change animal and plant species in accordance with their needs and goals. Mankind is moving from using one type of energy to another, subordinating more and more forces of nature to its power. From the use of the energy of domesticated animals, society has risen to the use of the power of wind, water, steam, and electricity. And now we are on the eve of the greatest of all technological revolutions - the use of intra-atomic energy in production. Interatomic energy can be used on a large scale for peaceful purposes only under socialist conditions.

The development of the productive forces of society leads to a weakening of the dependence of production on the presence or absence of certain natural resources in a given area. Already capitalism, with its world expansion, the world market, the international capitalist division of labor, and the enslavement of colonial peoples, has long gone beyond the local geographical conditions for the development of industry. Imperialist capitalism has turned every part of the globe accessible to it into an arena for its predatory exploitation. Thus, the cotton industry in England developed on the basis of imported Indian and Egyptian cotton grown by colonial semi-slave labor. Spanish or Malay iron ore is being processed in British factories, Indonesian oil and oil from the countries of the Middle East have been seized by the imperialists of the USA, England, Holland and exported far beyond Indonesia and the Middle East. Thanks to the discovery of a method for extracting synthetic rubber and gasoline, the dependence of the production of these products on the presence of rubber plants and oil deposits has weakened. The production of plastics and their widespread use in the production of many items, including tools, has also expanded the sources of raw materials and reduced the dependence of production on local natural sources of raw materials.

The scale and nature of society's impact on the geographic environment varies depending on the degree of historical development of society, on the development of productive forces, and on the nature of the social system.

With the destruction of capitalism, the predatory squandering of natural wealth is replaced by their planned use by socialist society for the needs of the working people. Using its richest natural resources, the Soviet Union, on the basis of the dictatorship of the working class and the socialist mode of production, in the shortest possible time turned from a technically and economically backward country into a first-class industrial power, into a country with the highest rates of economic development.

The diversity of the natural wealth of the Soviet Union has undoubtedly had and is having a favorable effect on the development of its productive forces. JV Stalin in 1931 in his speech “On the Tasks of Business Executives” said that for the development of the economy:

“First of all, sufficient natural resources are required in the country: iron ore, coal, oil, grain, cotton. Do we have them? There is. There are more than in any other country. Take, for example, the Urals, which represents such a combination of wealth that cannot be found in any country. Ore, coal, oil, bread - what is there in the Urals! We have everything in the country, except maybe rubber. But in a year or two we will have rubber at our disposal. (This prediction of Comrade Stalin was fully justified. Now the USSR is also provided with rubber. If back in 1928 100% of the rubber consumed in the country was imported, then already in 1937 76.1% of the rubber was produced in the USSR (see Directory "Countries of the World ”, 1946, p. 140)). From this side, from the side of natural resources, we are fully provided. (I.V. Stalin, Questions of Leninism, ed. 11, p. 324).

However, to explain the rapid development of the productive forces of the USSR only (or mainly) by favorable natural conditions would be a profound mistake. The same natural resources were in old Russia. But they were not only not used, but were even little known, not explored. Extensive and systematic scientific exploration of the subsoil on the vast territory of our country was organized for the first time only under the conditions of the Soviet system. It was only in the Soviet era that the peoples of the USSR truly learned what great, innumerable treasures lie in the bowels of our earth. The natural wealth of Russia in itself contained only the possibility of rapid economic development. But this possibility, under the conditions of old Russia, with its semi-serf survivals, with tsarism,

The richest deposits of minerals in the Urals, Siberia, Central Asia, the south and the Arctic have been placed by the Soviet state at the service of the people. In the mountainous regions and in the steppes, among the dense forests and in the semi-deserts, according to the plan of the Soviet socialist state, under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, new cities and towns, new mines, factories, plants were built. Agriculture during the years of Soviet power has moved far to the north. Many agricultural crops that were previously cultivated only in the middle lane or in the south of the European part of the country have been moved to the Urals, Siberia, the Far East, and Central Asia. The grandiose Stalinist plan to fight against drought and to ensure sustainable high yields by creating forest-steppe and steppe regions of the country of shelterbelts, reservoirs, and also through the introduction of all the achievements of agrobiological science into agriculture, it ensures the transformation of nature on an even more gigantic scale, the subordination of its forces to the power of society. Such a plan could only be adopted under socialism. Its implementation will not only increase the yield of fields, protect the soil from depletion and improve it, but will also change the climate. The construction of gigantic hydroelectric power stations on the Volga River testifies to the fact that, as the gradual transition from socialism to communism is carried out, the plans and practice of subordinating the forces of nature to society become more and more grandiose. Its implementation will not only increase the yield of fields, protect the soil from depletion and improve it, but will also change the climate. The construction of gigantic hydroelectric power stations on the Volga River testifies to the fact that, as the gradual transition from socialism to communism is carried out, the plans and practice of subordinating the forces of nature to society become more and more grandiose. Its implementation will not only increase the yield of fields, protect the soil from depletion and improve it, but will also change the climate. The construction of gigantic hydroelectric power stations on the Volga River testifies to the fact that, as the gradual transition from socialism to communism is carried out, the plans and practice of subordinating the forces of nature to society become more and more grandiose.

Soviet hydraulic engineers are developing majestic plans to change the course of the great Siberian rivers: the Ob and Yenisei will flow to the southwest, the mighty waters of these rivers will be used to generate electricity, to irrigate the desert regions of Central Asia, rich in sun, but suffering from a lack of moisture. Along the new course of these rivers, new factory centers and the richest areas of agriculture will arise. The implementation of these projects at the present level of science and technology is quite possible.

Thus, under socialism, a systematic change in the geographic environment is carried out; river flow, soil, its fertility, climate and even terrain. By becoming masters of their own social relations, people under socialism truly become masters of the mighty forces of nature.

The successes of the economic and cultural development of the USSR, and in particular of its outlying eastern republics, are shattering the imperialist geographical theories that explain the modern economic and cultural backwardness of the colonial countries by the peculiarities of their geographical environment.

The main reason for the economic and cultural backwardness of the countries of the East - India, Indonesia, Polynesia, Iran, Egypt and others - over the past two or three centuries is colonial and semi-colonial oppression, the plunder of these countries by the capitalist mother countries.

“The present state of India,” writes Palm Dutt, “is characterized by two peculiarities. The first is India's wealth: her natural wealth, her abundance of resources, her potential to fully provide for the entire population of India and even more of the population than India now has.

The second is the poverty of India: the poverty of the vast majority of its population...”. (Palm Dutt, India Today, State Publishing House of Foreign Literature, M. 1948, p. 22.).

The economic and cultural progress of the capitalist countries was carried out at the cost of enslavement, brutal exploitation and depletion of the colonies. The exploitation of the colonies is now one of the sources of strength for the imperialist states. In the colonial countries, imperialism artificially retards and hinders the development of native heavy industry and conserves backward, antediluvian economic forms and political institutions.

When India and Indonesia completely throw off the imperialist yoke and become politically and economically completely free, they will show how highly independent countries can achieve under the same geographical conditions.

The Chinese people, led by the Communist Party, have already thrown off the imperialist yoke, established a people's democracy dictatorship in the country, embarked on a revolutionary transformation of the economy, and successfully carried out anti-feudal agrarian reform. The near future will show what unprecedented economic prosperity, what comprehensive use of the country's natural resources, the liberated Chinese people can provide.

The geographical trend in sociology and historiography tries to instill in the colonial peoples the idea of ​​reconciliation with their servile lot, dooms them to passivity. It strives to justify colonial slavery, tries to remove the blame for the backwardness of the colonial countries from the imperialist powers and transfer this blame to nature and the geographical environment.

Marxism exposed these teachings as false, showed their theoretical groundlessness and their reactionary class content. And the rates of development unprecedented in history, the economic and cultural flourishing of the socialist Soviet republics, located in various natural conditions, practically refuted the pseudoscientific theories of the geographical trend in sociology and fully confirmed the truth of historical materialism.

Thus, we see that the geographical environment is one of the necessary and constant conditions for the material life of society. It speeds up or slows down the course of social development. But the geographical environment is not and cannot be the determining force of social development.

2. Population growth

Criticism of bourgeois theories on the significance of population growth in the development of society

The system of conditions for the material life of society, along with the geographical environment, also includes the growth of population, its greater or lesser density. People constitute a necessary element of the conditions of the material life of society. Without a certain minimum of people, the material life of society is impossible.

Isn't population growth the main force that determines the nature of the social system and the development of society?

Bourgeois sociologists and economists, supporters of the biological trend, are trying to find in population growth the key to understanding the laws and driving forces of social life. So, for example, according to the English bourgeois sociologist of the XIX century. Spencer, population growth, causing a change in the conditions of people's existence, makes them adapt to the environment in a new way, change social orders.

The French bourgeois sociologist Jean Stetzel writes: "It is no exaggeration to say that demography to a large extent governs social life."

The Russian bourgeois historian and sociologist M. Kovalevsky in his work “Economic Growth of Europe before the Emergence of the Capitalist Economy” stated: “The forms of the national economy do not follow each other in an arbitrary order, but are subject to a certain law of succession. The most important factor in their evolution is at each given moment and in each given country the growth of population, its greater or lesser density ... "

As we can see, both Spencer, and Stezel, and M. Kovalevsky see population growth as the root cause that encourages society to develop, pushing it forward. At the same time, population growth is attributed a decisive influence on the very structure of society.

Other representatives of bourgeois sociology, also considering population growth a determining factor, consider it, however, as a force hindering the development of society. These sociologists and economists try to explain the contradictions of capitalism, the growth of pauperism, unemployment, wars and other vices of capitalism by the excessive growth of population.

For example, the English economist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Pope Malthus proclaimed the "law" according to which the growth of population supposedly takes place in geometric progression, and the means of subsistence increase only in arithmetic progression. In this "inconsistency" between population growth and the means of subsistence, Malthus saw the cause of hunger, poverty, unemployment and other calamities of the working people.

Malthus's book "An Essay on the Law of Population" was published in 1798, at the height of the industrial revolution in England, when the artisans were rapidly ruined, poverty and unemployment were growing, and workers in factories and plants were subjected to unrestrained exploitation. The point of Malthus's book was directed against the French Revolution of 1789-1794. and at the same time served the interests of the English bourgeoisie; sanctimoniously, in words sympathizing with the oppressed, Malthus in fact "theoretically" justified the growing poverty and unemployment in England. Malthus tried to remove the responsibility for poverty and unemployment from capitalism and shift it to nature.

“A person who has been born already occupied with other people,” Malthus wrote, “if he has not received from his parents the means of subsistence on which he has the right to count, and if society does not need his work, he has no right to demand for himself what - or food, because it is completely superfluous in this world. At the great feast of nature, there is no device for him. Nature orders him to leave, and if he cannot resort to the compassion of one of the feasters, she herself takes measures to ensure that her order is carried out.

As the only means of getting rid of poverty and unemployment, Malthus sanctimoniously preached to the working people "abstinence" from marriage and childbearing.

Marx in Capital subjected the reactionary theory of Malthus to devastating criticism. “The great uproar caused by this pamphlet,” Marx wrote of Malthus’s book, “is due exclusively to party interests ... The “population principle”, slowly developed in the 18th century, then announced with trumpets and drumming in the midst of a great social crisis as an incomparable antidote against theory of Condorcet and others, was greeted with jubilation by the English oligarchy, which saw in him the great eradicator of all aspirations for further human development. (K. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, 1949, p. 622).

Marx proved that under capitalism the development of productive forces, technical progress is used by the bourgeoisie against the workers, accompanied by the expulsion of workers from production. As a result, relative overpopulation, a huge reserve army, an army of unemployed people are formed. This relative overpopulation is presented by the Malthusians as absolute overpopulation, supposedly representing the law of nature.

The development of productive forces in the XIX and XX centuries. testifies that, contrary to the so-called "law" of Malthus, productive forces and social wealth are growing faster than population. But the fruits of the growing productive power of labor are appropriated by the bourgeoisie. Therefore, the causes of the poverty of the masses, unemployment, hunger lie in the system of capitalism, and not in the laws of nature.

Despite the fact that life and practice have long since completely refuted the reactionary theory of Malthus, the ideologists of the imperialist bourgeoisie continue to use it to justify the contradictions and ulcers of capitalism and even as a justification for the external imperialist expansionist policy. Neo-Malthusian theories took on even more cynical and disgusting forms on American soil.

In 1948, the book of the fascist William Vogt "The Way to Salvation" was published in the USA. Vogt writes: “Humanity is in a difficult position. We need to understand this and stop complaining about economic systems, weather, bad luck, and heartless saints. This will be the beginning of wisdom and the first step on our long journey. The second step should be to reduce the birth rate and restore resources.” Vogt states that natural resources are limited and the birth rate is excessive. One section of his book is titled "Too Many Americans". Of the 145 million people in the US, Vogt writes, 45 million are superfluous. Vogt sees the source of China's misfortunes during the period of US imperialism's rule there not in imperialist oppression, but in overpopulation. “The most terrible tragedy for China,” writes the cannibal Vogt, “now would be a decrease in the death rate of the population ... Famine in China, perhaps,

Vogt also considers Europe to be overpopulated. As a condition for the provision of the so-called "assistance" under the "Marshall Plan", Vogt suggests that the Americans make a demand to European countries: to give up national sovereignty and carry out measures to reduce the birth rate, sterilization. And the most desirable means for reducing the population Vogt and the author of the preface to his book, an American financier, an advocate of nuclear war, Baruch consider war and epidemics. This is how the Malthusian theory looks today, placed at the service of American imperialism.

The extreme reactionary nature of the ideologists of the American bourgeoisie, the charlatan character of their "theories" are especially revealed when they begin to complain that in other countries the population is growing faster than in the USA. So, for example, Landis, a serf of the reactionary American imperialist bourgeoisie, in the spirit of fascist geopoliticians and racists, shouts about the danger to the United States from the so-called "prolific peoples." Hypocritical cries of danger from "the most prolific peoples" are an imperialist smokescreen designed to cover up Wall Street's piracy; these are old tricks used by the Nazis.

The imperialist bourgeoisie makes every possible use of Malthusianism in foreign policy to justify the appalling backwardness and poverty in the colonies. The English bourgeois expert economist W. Ansty writes: “Where is the Indian Malthus who would oppose the mass appearance of Indian children devastating the country?” L. Knowles echoes him: “India seems to be called upon to illustrate the theory of Malthus. Its population has increased to incredible proportions, when growth is not checked by war, epidemic or famine.

Palm Dutt, in his book India Today, on the basis of a huge amount of irrefutable data, shatters these neo-Malthusian ravings, with the help of which English bourgeois economists are trying to justify the horrific consequences of two hundred years of British imperialism's domination of India. P. Dutt proved that, contrary to the opinion of the Malthusians, food growth in India exceeds population growth, but food and other benefits go to the imperialists. Due to the appalling mortality of the population, population growth in India is much lower than in England and Europe. Thus, at present, India has a population of 389 million people, and at the end of the 16th century. there were 100 million. Consequently, over the course of three centuries it increased only 3.8 times. The population of England and Wales in 1700 was 5.1 million people, and at present it has reached 40.4 million, i.e. over a period of two and a half centuries, it increased 8 times. Thus collapses the legend of the "excessive" population growth in India. The neo-Malthusian reactionary theory, which explains the poverty of the masses, hunger, and unemployment generated by capitalism, is also collapsing.

There is not a grain of science in the reasoning of the Malthusians, as well as of other bourgeois sociologists who attribute the main role in social life to population growth. The Malthusian "theory" serves only as an ideological cover and justification for imperialist reaction.

Marxism-Leninism on the Significance of Population Growth in the Development of Society

JV Stalin's work "On Dialectical and Historical Materialism" provides a profound and devastating critique of bourgeois theories that explain the development of society by population growth. Comrade Stalin points out that population growth, taken by itself, cannot explain either the structure of society or why, say, feudal society was replaced precisely by capitalist society, and not by any other, why it is precisely socialism that replaces capitalism.

“If population growth were the determining force in social development, a higher population density would necessarily give rise to a correspondingly higher type of social order. In reality, however, this is not observed ... The population density in Belgium is 19 times higher than in the USA, and 26 times higher than in the USSR, however, the USA is higher than Belgium in terms of social development, and Belgium lagged behind the USSR for a whole historical epoch, because in Belgium the capitalist system dominates, while the USSR has already put an end to capitalism and established a socialist system in itself.

But it follows from this that population growth is not and cannot be the main force in the development of society, which determines the nature of the social system, the physiognomy of society. (I.V. Stalin, Questions of Leninism, ed. 11, pp. 549-550.).

Comrade Stalin gave a profoundly scientific definition of the real significance of population growth for the development of society. Population growth undoubtedly affects the development of society, facilitates or slows it down, but is not and cannot be the main reason that determines the structure of society, the development of society.

Depending on specific historical conditions, population growth, its greater or lesser density, can accelerate or slow down the development of society. The greater or lesser density and rapidity of population growth to a certain extent determines, other things being equal, the military power of a country, its ability to develop new lands, and even the rate of economic development. In order to fully master, for example, the untold riches of Siberia and the Far East, these regions need a significant increase in population, an increase in its density. Under the conditions of the socialist system, this will further accelerate the pace of our development and increase the size of the national wealth.

In the USSR, where everyone is working, population growth is an increase in working people, the main productive force, which is why population growth in our country accelerates the development of our society.

Population growth is by no means a biological factor independent of social conditions: it itself accelerates or slows down depending on the nature of the social system and the degree of its development. Marx established in Capital that each historically determined mode of production has its own special laws of population. Under capitalism, the rate of development of the productive forces restrains the growth of the population and influences it in a decreasing manner. Under socialism, the development of the productive forces stimulates population growth in every possible way.

This was especially clearly shown by the development of the Soviet Union. According to pre-war data, the Soviet Union with a population of 170 million people gave a greater natural increase in population than all of capitalist Europe, numbering 399 million. This is a direct result of the socialist social system, which saved the working people from crises, unemployment and poverty. In a speech at a conference of advanced combine and combine operators on December 1, 1935, Comrade Stalin said: “Now everyone here says that the material situation of the working people has improved significantly, that life has become better, more fun. This is, of course, true. But this leads to the fact that the population began to multiply much faster than in the old days. The death rate has decreased, the birth rate has increased, and the net increase is incomparably greater. This, of course, is good, and we welcome it.” (I.V. Stalin,

Under the conditions of the socialist system, population growth accelerates significantly, and this, in turn, contributes to the accelerated development of socialist production.

Capitalism, as a reactionary system that has become a brake on the development of mankind, exposes itself already by putting up barriers to population growth. “Humanity,” wrote Engels, “could multiply faster than modern bourgeois society may require. For us, this is another reason to declare this bourgeois society an obstacle to development, an obstacle that must be removed. (K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Letters, 1947, p. 172.).

3. The mode of production is the determining force of social development

 The production of material goods is the lifeblood of society

What is the determining force of social development, the main cause that determines the structure of society and the transition from one social system to another?

Historical materialism teaches that the main determining force in the development of society is the method of obtaining means of subsistence, the method of producing material goods: food, clothing, footwear, dwellings, fuel, tools of production necessary for society to live and develop.

In order to live, I. V. Stalin writes, people must have food, clothing, shoes, housing, fuel, etc. In order to have these essential goods of life, they must be produced. And for the production of material goods, tools of production are needed, the ability to produce them and the ability to use these tools in the struggle against nature. The production of material goods is the lifeblood of society.

Man separated himself from the animal kingdom and became proper man through production. In this sense, Engels says that labor created man himself. Animals passively adapt to external nature. They in their existence and development entirely depend on what the surrounding nature gives them. In contrast to them, man, human society is actively fighting nature, adapting it to its needs with the help of tools of production. Using the forces of external nature, a person creates the products necessary for his existence, material goods, which in nature itself are not found in finished form. People can be distinguished from animals by their consciousness, by articulate speech and other signs. But people themselves begin to differ from animals only when

Producing the means necessary for their life, people thereby produce their material life. (See K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 4, p. 11.). The existence and development of human society therefore depends entirely on the production of material goods, on the development of production. Production, labor is “a condition for the existence of people, an eternal, natural necessity: without it, the exchange of substances between man and nature would not be possible, that is, human life itself would not be possible.” (K. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, 1949, p. 49.).

 Highlights of the labor process

Marx defines the process of production in its simple form, common to all stages of human development, as an expedient activity for creating use values, as a process in which a person, through his activity, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between himself and nature.

“In order to appropriate the substance of nature in a certain form suitable for his own life, he (man. - F. K.) sets in motion the natural forces belonging to his body: arms and legs, head and fingers. Acting through this movement on the external nature and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops the dormant in the last capacity and subjects the play of these forces to his own power. (Ibid., pp. 184-185.).

 In contrast to the instinctive activity of animals, human labor is an expediently directed, planned activity. Labor is unique to man.

A spider, writes Marx, performs operations reminiscent of those of a weaver, and a bee, by building its wax cells, can shame some architects. “But even the worst architect differs from the best bee from the very beginning in that, before building a cell out of wax, he has already built it in his head. At the end of the labor process, a result is obtained that already at the beginning of this process was in the mind of the worker, that is, ideally. The worker differs from the bee not only in that he changes the form of what is given by nature: in what is given by nature, he at the same time realizes his conscious goal, which, like a law, determines the method and nature of his actions and to which he must subordinate your will." (K. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, 1949, p. 185.).

But not only expediency distinguishes the labor process; labor presupposes as its necessary condition the creation and use of the instruments of production.

The process of labor, the process of production, includes the following three points: 1) the purposeful activity of a person or labor itself; 2) the object on which labor acts; 3) the instruments of production with which a person acts.

The process of production arose when people began to create tools of production. Before the creation of tools of production, even the most primitive ones, such as a sharpened stone - a knife or a stick, adapted to attack animals or to knock down fruits, etc., the humanoid ancestor had not yet stood out from the animal kingdom. The separation from the animal world and the transformation of the ape-like ancestor into man took place thanks to the creation of the tools of production. With the help of tools of production - these artificial organs - a person, as it were, lengthened the natural dimensions of his body, began to subordinate nature to himself, to his power. The production and use of the instruments of production constitute "a specifically characteristic feature of the human labor process." (Ibid., p. 187.).

The instruments of production are an object or a complex of objects that the worker places between himself and the object of labor and with which he acts on the object of labor. In the process of labor, man uses the mechanical, physical, and chemical properties of bodies in order, in accordance with his goal, to force some bodies to act on others.

Among the instruments of production, Marx refers primarily to mechanical means of labor, the totality of which he calls the "bone and muscle system of production." In the era of feudalism, such means of labor are the iron plow, hand tools, a loom, etc. In the era of capitalism, all kinds of machines and systems of machines are widely used.

Marx also refers to the instruments of production such objects as pipes, barrels, baskets, vats, vessels, etc., which serve as a means of storing objects of labor. Marx calls them "the vascular system of production". In the chemical industry, these tools play an important role. But in general, they are the least indicative of the level of development of production.

Depending on the change in the instruments of production, the labor force, the people who set these instruments in motion, also changes. Therefore, historically determined instruments of production are a measure of the development of human labor power. Modern machine production presupposes an appropriate stage in the development of people, workers, producers of material goods, who, thanks to their production experience and skills for work, are capable of producing these machines and setting them in motion and controlling them. It is clear, for example, that a primitive man or an illiterate serf was unable to use a machine, to set it in motion.

That is why the tools of labor serve as an indicator of the stage of development of production reached by society, and at the same time of the social relations themselves. “Just as important as the structure of the remains of bones is for the study of the organization of extinct animal species, the remains of means of labor are for the study of disappeared socio-economic formations. Economic epochs differ not in what is produced, but in how it is produced, by what means of labor. (K. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, 1949, p. 187.).

productive forces

“Instruments of production with the help of which material goods are produced, people who set in motion the instruments of production and carry out the production of material goods thanks to a certain production experience and skills for work - all these elements together constitute the productive forces of society.” (I.V. Stalin, Questions of Leninism, ed. 11, p. 550.).

The vulgar materialists (mechanists) identified the productive forces with technology, with the instruments of production. Such a definition of the productive forces is one-sided, narrow, and incorrect. It ignores the most important productive force—the workers, the working people.

The instruments of production in themselves, apart from people, do not represent the productive forces of society.

“A machine that does not serve in the labor process is useless. In addition, it is exposed to the destructive action of natural metabolism. Iron rusts, wood rots... Living labor must embrace these things, resurrect them from the dead, transform them from only possible ones into actual and active use-values.” (K. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, 1949, p. 190.).

The tools of production are created by people who have production experience and skills for work. Therefore, people who set the instruments of production in motion and produce material goods are the most important element of the productive forces. The significance of this proposition of historical materialism was revealed by Lenin in the course of the socialist revolution in Russia. After four years of imperialist war and three years of civil war, Russia's industry, rail transport and agriculture were badly damaged. The country did not have enough bread. The working class was starving. Lenin wrote in 1919 that under these conditions the main task was to save the working class, to save the working people, the most important productive force. If we save the working class, we will restore and multiply everything, he pointed out. The practice of socialist construction proved the correctness of the great Lenin.

During the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. in the areas of the USSR that were subjected to enemy occupation, hundreds of cities, thousands of villages and villages, factories, factories, mines, power plants, railway transport, collective farms, state farms, MTS were destroyed. The Nazis turned many areas into a desert zone. It seemed that many decades would be needed to restore the destroyed. But experience has shown that in the course of three years socialist industry reached the pre-war level in terms of gross output, and now it has already surpassed this level. Industry destroyed by the enemy has been restored on an even higher technical basis than before the war. Agriculture, both in terms of productivity and gross harvest, exceeded the pre-war level.

This reaffirms the most important proposition of historical materialism, that the working class, the working people, are the most important productive force.

Sometimes the concept of "productive forces" includes not only the instruments of production and labor, but also the objects of labor (raw materials, materials). But there is no reason for this. The fact is that the subject of labor in a broad sense is the nature around us, which is affected by people in the production process. In the mining industry, this is iron ore, deposits of coal, in fishing, this is fish in the waters, etc. Therefore, it would be wrong to include the object of labor in the productive forces; this would mean introducing a part of the geographic environment into the concept of productive forces.

Of course, it does not at all follow from this that, by not including the objects of labor in the productive forces, we discard them from the account, do not attach importance to them in production. All objects of labor, including those already subjected to the influence of labor (for example, semi-finished products - cotton, yarn), together with the instruments of production, constitute the means of production.

The productive forces express the active attitude of society to nature, to the objects and forces of nature used by society for the production of material goods.

Relations of production

The second necessary aspect of the mode of production is the production relations of people. People, engaged in production, become not only in a certain relationship to nature, but also to each other. The production of material goods is always, at all stages of human development, social production. Man is a social being. He cannot live outside of society, outside of industrial relations with other people. People cannot be engaged in production separately, independently from each other. Robinson and "Robinsonades" are the fruit of the imagination of writers or bourgeois economists. In fact, people have always been engaged in production not alone, but in groups, societies. Therefore, in production, people stand in relation to one another, relations of production that do not depend on their will.

“In production,” says Marx, “people influence not only nature, but also each other. They cannot produce without uniting in a certain way for joint activity and for the mutual exchange of their activity. In order to produce, people enter into certain connections and relations, and only through these social connections and relations does their relation to nature exist, does production take place. (K. Marx and Fengels, Works, vol. 5, p. 429.).

The historically existing and existing relations of production between people can be either relations of cooperation and mutual assistance of people free from exploitation, or relations based on domination and subordination, or transitional relations from one form to another.

Thus, for example, under the conditions of slavery, feudalism and capitalism, production relations take the form of relations of domination and subordination, relations between the exploiters and the exploited. The relations of production, expressed in the domination of one class over another, are based on private ownership of the means of production and on the separation of these means of production from the direct producers.

On the contrary, in the conditions of a socialist society, where private ownership of the means of production and the exploitation of man by man have already been abolished, relations of production between people are relations of comradely cooperation and socialist mutual assistance of people free from exploitation.

History also knows transitional relations from one form of production relations to another. Thus, the transitional form of production relations was the relations that developed during the decomposition of the primitive communal system. As a transitional stage from the primitive communal system to the class society that was born in its depths, one can, for example, define the economic relations of Homeric Greece, depicted in the Odyssey. In the era of the formation of a class society, relations that developed in the rural community (mark among the Germanic tribes, rope among the Slavs), which replaced the former tribal community, were transitional. A characteristic feature of the rural community was that in it, along with private property, there was also communal property. In the words of Marx, the rural community was “a transitional phase to a secondary formation, that is, a transition from a society based on common property to a society based on private property. (K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., v. 27, p. 695.).

Transitional relations of production also take place during the period of transition from capitalism, with its relations of domination and subordination, to socialism, with its relations of comradely cooperation and mutual assistance. However, all five economic structures that existed during the transition period from capitalism to socialism in the USSR cannot be attributed to the transitional form of production relations. It is impossible to identify the transitional period with the transitional form of production relations. Among the five economic structures of the transition period in the USSR, there was also a capitalist structure, which was not at all a transitional form from the relationship of domination and subordination to relations of cooperation and mutual assistance, but was one of the forms of relations of domination and subordination. It is not a transitional form and the socialist way, for it rests from the very beginning on relations of cooperation and mutual assistance of the working people freed from exploitation. In this case, only those relations that expressed the process of transforming small-scale production into socialist production can be called transitional. In agriculture, socialist transformation could be carried out only through a series of transitional forms. For example, the transitional form was the production associations of the peasants, through which, through contracting, the state procured a number of agricultural products and supplied the peasants with seeds and tools of production. Comrade Stalin called this form of organization of production "the domestic system of large-scale state-socialist production in the field of agriculture." (See I.V. Stalin, Works, vol. 6, p. 136.).

The relations of production in every society form a very complex network of links and relations between the people involved in production. Let's take capitalist society as an example. Here we see, first of all, capitalist ownership of the means of production and the relations of exploitation of workers by the capitalists based on it. The sphere of production relations also includes capitalist competition, the division of labor between town and country. Further, there are certain relations between people connected with the distribution of total social labor among the various branches of production. These relations of production find their expression in the movement of such economic categories as value, the price of production, analyzed by Marx in Capital.

In a complex system of production relations, it is necessary to single out the basis that determines the nature of the mode of production - this is the attitude of people to the means of production, the form of ownership, or, using legal expression, property relations.

“If the state of the productive forces answers the question of what instruments of production people produce the material goods they need, then the state of production relations answers another question: who owns the means of production (land, forests, water, subsoil, raw materials, implements of production, production buildings, means of communication and communication, etc.), at whose disposal the means of production are, at the disposal of the whole society, or at the disposal of individuals, groups, classes who use them for the exploitation of other persons, groups, classes ” . (I.V. Stalin, Questions of Leninism, ed. 11, p. 554.).

The form of ownership of the means of production determines all other relations of production that develop on its basis in a given society: within the factory, between people employed in different sectors of the economy, etc. The place, position of people in production depends precisely on their relationship to the means of production. . Ownership of the means of production is not simply the relation of people to things; it is a social relation between people, expressed through things, through the relation to the means of production: the class of people who own the means of production (capitalists, landowners) dominates people deprived of the means of production (proletarians, peasants). For example, in a capitalist factory the relationship between the capitalist and the workers is one of exploitation, domination and subjugation.

The labor force, being the most important productive force, always has a social character, and acts either as slaves, or as serfs, or as proletarians, etc.

The production relations of people are, in contrast to ideological ones, material relations that exist outside of consciousness and independently of consciousness.

The falsifiers of Marxism, the idealists of the type of Max Adler and A. Bogdanov, identify relations of production with psychic, spiritual relations, and identify social being with social consciousness. They consider the reason for this to be that people participate in production as conscious beings, that production activity is conscious activity; This means, they conclude, that relations in production are established through consciousness, are conscious. But from the fact that people enter into communication with each other as conscious beings, it by no means follows that production relations are identical with social consciousness. Entering into communication, people in all social formations of any complexity, and especially in the capitalist social formation, do not realize that what social relations are formed in this case, according to what laws they develop, etc.” (V.I. Lenin, Soch., vol. 14, ed. 4, p. 309).

The Canadian farmer, when selling bread, enters into certain relations of production with the producers of bread on the world market: with Argentinean farmers, with farmers in the USA, Denmark, etc., but he is not aware of this, is not aware of the social relations of production that are taking shape in this case. .

The revisionists, arguing that relations of production allegedly have an immaterial character, refer to Marx's proposition that relations of value are relations of production, but value does not contain a single atom of the substance of which commodities are composed. Indeed, the value is different from the natural form of the goods. But it is an objective, existing independently of consciousness, real social production relation, i.e., a material relation. The concept of "material relationship" is not limited to the relationship between things. Relations between people in the process of production are also material relations; they exist outside of our consciousness. Their basis is the relations of ownership of the means of production: factories, factories, land, the materiality of which can only be doubted by lunatics or people who

The relationship of exploitation of man by man is a very material relationship. The working class of the capitalist countries daily, hourly feels the yoke of this exploitation. He sees and understands the fundamental difference between this real-life exploitation and those illusory benefits that are promised to him in the “next world” by the ideologists of the bourgeoisie—Christian and Social Democratic priests.

Whatever the nature of the relations of production, they always, at all stages of the development of society, constitute the same necessary element of production as the productive forces.

Mode of production

Production is always carried out in a concrete historical form, with a certain level of productive forces and with certain production relations between people.

Social production, taken in its concrete historical form, at a certain stage of social development, is precisely the mode of production. In other words, the productive forces and production relations in their unity form the mode of production of material goods. The productive forces and the relations of production are the two sides of the mode of production. Each historically determined mode of production is the embodiment of the unity of certain productive forces and the historically determined form of production relations.

“Whatever the social forms of production,” says Marx, “workers and means of production always remain its factors. But, being in a state of separation one from the other, both of them are its factors only in the possibility. In order to produce at all, they must combine. The special character and manner in which this combination is carried out distinguishes the individual economic epochs of the social system. (K. Marx, Capital, vol. 2, 1949, p. 32.).

 Whatever the mode of production that prevails in a given society, such is the society itself, its structure, physiognomy. Antagonistic modes of production determine the division of society into opposite classes. What is the mode of production, such are the classes in a given society, the nature of the political system and the views, ideas, theories and corresponding institutions that prevail in society. With a radical change in the mode of production - this economic foundation of society - sooner or later the entire social structure of society changes, a transition is made from one form of society to another.

To what kind of social system the transition is being made in a given epoch depends not at all on the arbitrariness of people, not on their subjective intentions, but in the last analysis on the stage of development of the material productive forces reached. From slavery it was impossible to go straight to capitalism or from feudalism to socialism. From capitalism, after it has socialized production, developed the social productive forces and thus fulfilled its historical role and exhausted itself, there is only one way forward—to socialism, to communism.

The transition from one socio-economic formation to another is always prepared by the course of development of material production, by the course of development of the material productive forces. A new form of society cannot emerge until the material conditions for its existence mature in the depths of the old system. This transition from one social form to another does not take place spontaneously, not automatically, but as a result of revolutionary upheavals, as a result of a fierce struggle between the advanced forces of society, the advanced classes, against the obsolete, reactionary classes that stand in defense of the old economic, social and political relations.

Thus, the source of the formation of social ideas, public views, political theories and political institutions must be sought in the conditions of the material life of society.

In the system of conditions for the material life of society, the mode of production of material goods is the decisive and determining force. What is the mode of production that dominates in a given society, such is the society itself, its structure, such are the ideas, views, institutions that exist in a given society.

In order not to err in politics, Comrade Stalin teaches, the proletarian party must proceed in its policy not from the abstract principles of human reason, but from the concrete conditions of the material life of society as the decisive force of social development. Political parties that ignore the decisive role of the conditions of society's material life inevitably fail.

The great vitality of the Marxist-Leninist Party, the Bolshevik Party, lies in the fact that in its activities it always relies on a scientific understanding of the development of the material life of society, never tearing itself away from its real life.