Lecture
The economic structure of society — the production relations that make it up — can be described as the economic base (basis) of society. This means that all other social relations rest on this base, that is, they are determined by the nature of the prevailing system of production relations. The base determines the character of the political and legal superstructure. The superstructural character of politics and law follows precisely from the fact that political and legal relations are, in the final analysis, determined by economic relations. Special attention should be paid to the words "in the final analysis." Frequent neglect of these words leads to a vulgar interpretation of these regularities known as "economic materialism." Economic materialism attempts to derive all social phenomena directly from economic relations, ignoring the relatively independent regularities inherent in the spheres of politics and law (as in all other spheres of social life), as well as the complex character of the influence of the economic base on superstructural phenomena, mediated by many intermediate stages. There is also, moreover, a reverse influence of the superstructure on the base, which is not determining but nonetheless, without changing the content of production relations, leaves a noticeable imprint on the forms taken by economic processes. Such is, in general, the principle of interaction between production relations and all other social relations. On the limited applicability of the "base—superstructure" dichotomy to the analysis of social phenomena, and its inapplicability to phenomena such as culture, the productive forces, and so on: Stalinized Marxism-Leninism tried to force all social phenomena into the Procrustean bed of the "base—superstructure" dichotomy, on the principle that everything in society that is not base is superstructure, and vice versa. This led to scholastic wrangling — for example, on the question of whether language is a base or a superstructural phenomenon. The utter failure of attempts to assign language to either the base or the superstructure led to language being elevated to the rank of a third major social structure: society = base + superstructure + language. In the same way it is impossible to fit phenomena such as the productive forces of society, culture, and so on into the "base—superstructure" dichotomy. The point is that both language and culture are social phenomena of a historically more stable and fundamental character than the changing social relations of production. The productive forces are a social phenomenon that does not itself constitute a social relation. The "base—superstructure" relationship, meanwhile, characterizes only the hierarchy of social relations resting on historically determined modes of production. In the system of social relations, besides the production relations that arise in the process of producing the material conditions of human life and that determine, in the final analysis, the character of all other social relations, there are also relations that arise around the production of human beings themselves. These relations occupy a highly significant place in the structure of society and also exert a noticeable influence on other social relations. The best-known relations of this kind are family and marriage. The emergence and historical character of family and marriage depend on the most fundamental foundations of the mode of production, on the type of economic structure of society, but they themselves also constitute one of its important characteristics. It is largely through the family that the reproduction of society's main productive force — the human worker — is carried out.
The character of production relations and the level of development of the productive forces within an economic social formation predetermine the splitting of society into large social groups — classes — characterized by different positions within the system of social production.
Classes: According to V. I. Lenin's well-known classical definition, "classes are large groups of people differing from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of social production, by their relation (in most cases fixed and formalized in law) to the means of production, by their role in the social organization of labor, and, consequently, by the dimensions of the share of social wealth of which they dispose and the mode of acquiring it. Classes are groups of people one of which can appropriate the labor of another, owing to the different places they occupy in a definite system of social economy."1 Thus, the existence of classes and their position in society are determined by the fact that large groups of people are united by certain social properties common to them, distinguishing them from other large groups of people. These groups are characterized by: 1) different places in the system of the social division of labor; 2) different places in the system of production relations (especially their relation to the means of production and the place they occupy in the system of exploitation); 3) different places in the system of organization of production; 4) differences in the sources, forms, and size of income received. All the defining features of classes (class-forming features) are historical in character, changing as society develops. Classes arise with the development of humanity's subordination to the social division of labor, the emergence of private property, and the formation of relations of exploitation. When these conditions are eliminated, those differences between people that bear a class character will also disappear. The class structure of societies based on exploitative modes of production is inevitably bound up with a conflict of economic interests among different classes (above all, the conflict between exploiters and the exploited), which forms the basis for the development of the class struggle. Class struggle is the actions of the representatives of classes (and of large intra-class or inter-class social groups) directed against representatives of other classes, aimed at changing the conditions for realizing class interests — that is, the economic, political, legal, and other conditions of existence of the struggling classes — up to and including the struggle for state power and its use to undermine the conditions of existence of opposing classes.__________ Class inequality, formed in the economic sphere of social life, permeates all its other spheres as well, giving rise to political and legal inequality, inequality in social consciousness, and so on. Correspondingly, the class struggle permeates all these spheres. ^ Turning to the primary sources: F. Engels on the class struggle: "...Every historical struggle, whether it proceeds in the political, religious, philosophical, or some other ideological domain, is in fact only the more or less clear expression of the struggle of social classes, and the existence of these classes, as well as their conflicts among themselves, are in turn conditioned by the degree of development of their economic position, by the mode and manner of production and the exchange determined by it."2
The basic forms of class struggle are economic, political, and ideological.1 Hostile classes are in constant conflict over their economic interests. The exploited classes try to lessen the burden of labor and to increase the size of the income they receive. The exploiters strive to intensify the exploitation of the working classes and to increase their own income. Such economic struggle is a constant companion of societies characterized by class stratification throughout their history. Slaves and slave-owners, serfs and feudal lords, proletarians and the bourgeoisie — all of them, in their mutual struggle, strive to change the conditions of production and distribution in their own favor. Besides this everyday economic struggle, the warring classes may also come to seek a complete change in the economic conditions themselves that determine their class position. But this is impossible without political struggle. Political struggle acts as a means of achieving goals determined by economic causes. Politics, therefore, in V. I. Lenin's well-known phrase, appears as the concentrated expression of economics. The possession of political power makes it possible to apply systematic coercion against one's class opponents, and allows legal norms to be turned against them. Only the possession of political power makes it possible to fight seriously for the preservation or overthrow of the fundamental conditions determining a given class structure of society. The whole of history is the activity of people endowed with will and consciousness. The class struggle, as the most important component of the historical process, is no exception. The outcome of political struggle therefore depends, to a great extent, on the state of minds, on the processes taking place in social consciousness, and on the struggle of ideas. The ideological conceptions used by opposing classes to justify their struggle acquire, in class society, the form of ideology.1 The term "ideological" is often used instead, but as will be shown below, that term has too narrow a meaning. Ideology: Ideology is not simply a reflection of social and class interests in the spiritual life of society, but an expression of the subordination of the ideational sphere, of spiritual production, to class interests. ______________ ______ Ideology does not necessarily appear as "false consciousness" (to use the phrase of the classics of Marxism). If we are speaking of the ideology of classes whose interests, under given historical conditions, coincide with the objective direction of historical progress, then elements of "false consciousness" (that is, the adaptation of truth to class interests) occupy a subordinate place in their ideology. Finally, if we are speaking of the class consciousness of those classes and social groups whose own class interests extend beyond narrow class limits, aiming at the elimination of class differences altogether, then in such a case ideology may be freed from elements of "false consciousness" altogether, and the ideological movement of such classes takes on an open character, undistorted by extraneous considerations. Nevertheless, as long as the class struggle remains a fact, there remains a danger that the immediate interests of that struggle may exert a distorting influence on the ideological positions even of the most historically progressive classes.
An equal form of the organization of society, and at the same time the chief instrument of the class struggle in societies split into antagonistic classes, is the state. The state historically supersedes communal and tribal self-government (through the intermediate stages of chiefdom or military democracy), differing from it by the separation of power from society, and by the creation of a separate mechanism for exercising power independent of the mass of society's members. This character of the state's structure is determined by its role as an instrument of the power of the ruling classes.
The State — is characterized by the separation of power from society, by the creation of a separate mechanism for exercising power independent of the mass of society's members. This character of the state's structure is determined by its role as an instrument of the power of the ruling classes.
The state initially arises as a result of the appropriation, by the tribal elite, of a number of functions stemming from economic and social necessity (the organization of public works, irrigation, defense...). But this step serves as an instrument accelerating the process of class formation, and once society splits into antagonistic classes, the state is used by the ruling class to consolidate its dominance. ^ Turning to the primary sources: F. Engels on the state: "...The state, which the spontaneously formed groups of kindred communities arrived at, in the course of their development, at first only for the purpose of safeguarding their common interests (for example, irrigation in the East) and for protection against external enemies, from now on acquires no less the purpose of forcibly keeping the exploited class in check under the conditions of oppression determined by the existing mode of production (slavery, serfdom, wage labor)."1
The above view of F. Engels on the state demonstrates the groundlessness of attempts to portray the classics of Marxism as adherents of a theory of political genesis (the formation of the state) solely as a consequence of society's split into different classes. The state, however, functions not merely as a committee for managing the affairs of the ruling classes, as an instrument for suppressing the exploited majority, but also as an instrument for regulating the class struggle (and, in general, the struggle among various socio-economic interests), keeping this struggle (including on the part of the ruling class) within certain bounds and preventing it from destroying society. In addition, the state performs a number of social functions arising from economic necessity or necessary for regulating relations within class society. The state relies on a layer of professional officialdom, the upper stratum of which, in the course of its evolution (especially since the period of absolutism), has increasingly acquired the features of a bureaucracy.
1 Engels F. Anti-Dühring // Marx K., Engels F. Works. Vol. 20. Moscow: Politizdat, 1961. P. 152.
Bureaucracy — a stable, relatively closed professional stratum of senior state officials with their own special interests, which become relatively separated even from the interests of the ruling class which it serves. In the state, norms of human behavior that were previously regulated by custom and tradition acquire the form of legal norms — norms that are, for the most part, formalized (fixed in law) and enforced by the apparatus of the state. Just as the state is an instrument of class coercion, so law is the will of the ruling class raised to the status of statute. In the course of its historical development, the state takes on various forms, differing in the manner in which the state apparatus is formed. The two basic such forms are monarchy and republic. Monarchy is based on one-person rule (usually hereditary, more rarely elective). The republic is based on various forms of citizen participation in the formation of the state apparatus. Republican forms of government can range from oligarchic to democratic.
A democratic republic, while formally granting citizens the right to determine the composition — usually through an electoral procedure — of certain (far from all!) organs of state power, remains an instrument of the power of the ruling social class. Occupying a dominant economic and social position in society, this class is able to use democratic procedures to shape a state apparatus obedient to it. And if, owing to the acuteness of class contradictions, democratic forms of government turn against the interests of the ruling class, that class will always move to destroy democracy. The relations that arise around state power are called political relations, and the activity connected with the struggle to use state power is called politics. Political relations — relations that arise around state power.
Politics — activity connected with the struggle to use state power.
From the very emergence of the state, its existence has been accompanied by political struggle. For the purposes of political struggle, mass organizations called political parties are created. The division into political parties does not necessarily coincide with the class division, although class contradictions do underlie political struggle. The presence of intra-class differences and contradictions can lead a single class to give rise to several political parties. The degree to which classes are aware of their interests, and the degree to which these interests find expression in political programs, can vary. Different classes may share certain political interests. That is why political parties can have a very mixed class composition. The state, as a social institution, develops historically.
At the same time, the forms of state structure described above change depending on changes in the socio-economic foundations of the state system.
For this reason, types of states differ not only in the forms of the state system but also in the character of the influence of socio-economic processes on the state system. Thus, the late Middle Ages in Europe are characterized by a transition from the dynastic state to the national state. The former was based on a system of feudal relations of suzerainty-vassalage, in which the dynastic relations of monarchs acted as a peculiar form of feudal suzerainty relations at the very summit of the ruling elite. The economic basis of such a state was the system of feudal landholding relations, based on hereditary land grants and the system of feudal immunity. Together with the formation of a unified national market — which meant a new level of economic and social ties among the population within the borders of state formations — a new level of human community was also forming: nations and national languages. In this way states, too, acquired the character of national states. Nationalism (that is, the defense of the interests of the national state) becomes the ideology of the growing bourgeoisie (both petty and large), interested in strengthening the national market and in its defense by state power. Initially, however, the national state, like the dynastic state, remained an estate-based monarchy, which meant the preservation of the privileges of the noble elite and hindered the consistent realization of the tendencies of the national state. This realization becomes possible with the bourgeois revolutions, which overturn the principles of estate-based monarchy. It is no accident that patriotism was one of the banners of the bourgeois revolution.
A peculiar intermediate variant between the dynastic and national state was represented by the imperial states of the eighteenth to early twentieth centuries (the Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and, in part, the British empires). Both in the metropoles and in the provinces of these multinational empires, national markets and nations were being formed, and with them the prerequisites for national states, which ultimately led to the disintegration of these empires. Whereas at first the large imperial state played a largely protective role with respect to the socio-economic development of the national provinces, later, once the provinces gained grounds to claim greater independence, the empire turned into a brake on this development and inevitably collapsed.
As noted above, nations, national states, and, with them, national interests are the product of relatively late historical development. The most primary historical community of people is the clan. The union of several clans gives rise to a tribe. The emergence of statehood among tribes becomes the basis for the formation of nationalities (peoples). And only afterward comes the turn of nations... Rather difficult for Marxism — not in its general theoretical formulation, but for certain specific historical conditions — is the resolution of the question of the relationship between the class and the national. Marxism does not reject the defense of national interests. But not from the standpoint of nationalism, which conceals, behind an allegedly "national" interest, the interests of the ruling classes — classes that, at best, express a progressive tendency of social development (during the period of the formation of national states, in the course of bourgeois revolutions and national-liberation movements). In defending national interests, one must clearly see, behind the name of the "national," the concrete positions of concrete classes, which in effect means that every class has its own vision of the "national" interest. And these different positions frequently come into conflict, exposing the falseness of the thesis of the unity of the nation. Nevertheless, the existence of nations and national states in class society means the existence of a conflict of national-state interests. And although such a conflict may be synonymous with a conflict between the ruling classes of different nations, situations can quite well arise in which, for the working classes, the defense of national interests (even as formulated by the ruling classes) coincides with their own interests. But the situation can also develop in precisely the opposite way, forcing the working classes to oppose "their own" national state. Such a state of affairs, however, is possible only as an exception — it typically arises when a revolutionary situation exists and the working classes are prepared to challenge state power. Recognizing the process of the formation of national states as a progressive historical phenomenon, the Marxists at one time advanced the well-known principle of recognizing "the right of nations to self-determination, up to and including secession and the formation of their own state." But it would be a gross error to turn this slogan into a universal abstract truth. First, recognition of the right to secede does not mean that Marxists are advocates of secession. "Secession is not at all our plan. We do not at all preach secession. On the whole, we are against secession"1 — as V. I. Lenin emphasized in explaining his understanding of this slogan. For Marxists, the union of the proletarians of different nations is preferable, and it is only when the joint existence of peoples within a single state gives rise to such deep inter-ethnic conflicts that they destroy the unity of the proletarians of different nations, that secession becomes the more acceptable solution. Second, Marxists place the interests of the proletariat's class struggle and of the socialist revolution above national interests. And if the struggle for the self-determination of some nation causes harm to the cause of the social liberation of the proletariat, then, from the Marxist point of view, the national struggle in such a case acquires a reactionary content. Third, the right of nations to self-determination is not support for the separatism of any ethnic or quasi-ethnic group whatsoever. The slogan of state secession applies only to nations and national groups that have formed or are in the process of forming. In conclusion, it may be noted that the difficulty of resolving the question of the relationship between class and national interests lies in the fact that "national interests" represent a complex fusion of various cultural, class, political, ideological, confessional, regional, and other contradictions. Understanding the resulting character of the interaction of these diverse elements — which, moreover, are refracted in capricious ways in social and individual consciousness — and correlating it with class interests in a given, concrete historical situation is, naturally, an extremely difficult task.
CLASSES: According to V. I. Lenin's well-known classical definition, "classes are large groups of people differing from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of social production, by their relation (in most cases fixed and formalized in law) to the means of production, by their role in the social organization of labor, and, consequently, by the dimensions of the share of social wealth of which they dispose and the mode of acquiring it. Classes are groups of people one of which can appropriate the labor of another, owing to the different places they occupy in a definite system of social economy" [Lenin V. I. A Great Beginning // Lenin V. I. Complete Collected Works, vol. 39, p. 15].
CLASS STRUGGLE — the actions of the representatives of classes (and of large intra-class or inter-class social groups) directed against representatives of other classes, aimed at changing the conditions for realizing class interests — that is, the economic, political, legal, and other conditions of existence of the struggling classes — up to and including the struggle for state power and its use to undermine the conditions of existence of opposing classes.
IDEOLOGY: Ideology is not simply a reflection of social and class interests in the spiritual life of society, but an expression of the subordination of the ideational sphere, of spiritual production, to class interests. THE STATE — is characterized by the separation of power from society, by the creation of a separate mechanism for exercising power independent of the mass of society's members. This character of the state's structure is determined by its role as an instrument of the power of the ruling classes.
BUREAUCRACY — a stable, relatively closed professional stratum of senior state officials with their own special interests, which become relatively separated even from the interests of the ruling class which this bureaucracy serves.
POLITICAL RELATIONS — relations that arise around state power.
POLITICS — activity connected with the struggle to use state power.
4.1. What is the character of the direct and reverse mutual influence between the economic structure of society and its social structure?
4.2. On what grounds does society divide into different classes?
4.3. Why does the splitting of society into classes lead to the transformation of an already existing state into an instrument of the ruling class?
4.4. What is the relationship between the class-based and the so-called lawful functions of the state?
4.5. How is social consciousness formed in class society?
4.6. What is class struggle, and what is its role in historical development?
4.7. What is the relationship between the economic, political, and ideological components of the class struggle?
4.8. What factors should be taken into account in resolving, in a concrete historical situation, the question of the relationship between the class-based and the national?
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