PRINCIPLES OF   MARXISM-LENINISM: A STUDY COURSE

CLASS ONE : THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIETY

1) WHAT IS ECONOMICS?
The science of the ways in which people satisfy their  material needs (for food, clothing, shelter, etc.).

2) WHAT IS POLITICS?
The science of the ways in which people organise themselves  in society.
(NOTE: It is broader than 'the science of government'.  Primitive peoples, without state or government, yet have  political organisation).

3. WHAT IS PRODUCTION?
The transformation of raw materials into things which people  can use, i.e. into products.
(NOTE: The product of one productive process, such as iron,   may form the raw material of another productive process, such as  engineering).

  4. WHAT ARE MEANS OF PRODUCTION?
The tools which people use to carry on production -- from the stone axe to an automated computerised plant.

 5. WHAT ARE THE PRINCIPAL SOCIAL SYSTEMS KNOWN TO  HISTORY?

6. WHAT IS EXPLOITATION?
    The act of living, partly or wholly, on the work of others.

 7. WHAT IS A SOCIAL CLASS?
 A social group which has distinct property relations to the means of production. The members of a class

8. WHAT ARE THE BASIC SOCIAL CLASSES IN BRITAIN TODAY?   9. WHICH OF THE SOCIAL SYSTEMS KNOWN TO HISTORY ARE BASED ON  EXPLOITATION?  10. WHAT IS THE BASIC CAUSE OF HISTORICAL CHANGE FROM ONE SOCIAL  SYSTEM TO ANOTHER?
         The development of tools and techniques.
          This process occurs within a particular social system until  the point is reached where these new tools and techniques can no  longer be developed -- or even used -- to the full within that  particular social system. The frustrations resulting from this  give rise to a political movement, the function of which is to  change this social system to a new one. Eventually this change is   brought about, allowing the new tools and techniques to be  developed further within the new social system.
        The first stage of human society was one in which tools and  techniques were so primitive, and production in consequence so  low, that it was possible for someone to produce only barely  sufficient to keep himself and his dependents alive. There was,  therefore,  no  surplus  which  anyone  could take.
        Consequently, exploitation was impossible, means of production  were communally owned, and the social system was one of primitive communism.
         However, within primitive communism tools and techniques  continued to be developed, until the point was reached where it  was possible for someone to produce more than was necessary to  keep himself and his dependents alive. Until this point prisoners-of-war had generally been eaten; now, however, cannibalism came  to be regarded by society as immoral, because it  was no longer  economically sensible: by turning a prisoner-of-war  into a slave  it was possible to obtain from him, not one good meal, but a  lifetime of meals from his slave labour.
     Thus, as a result of the development of tools and  techniques, primitive communism gave way to slavery. Society  then became divided into two social classes: a class of exploiting  slave-owners and a class of exploited slaves.
       But within slavery tools and techniques continued to be developed until the point was reached where the purely forced  labour of the slave (who worked only to avoid punishment) ceased to be capable of using and developing these new tools and  techniques adequately. In consequence, the slave-owners  themselves gradually transformed the basis of their exploitation  into a new form in which the exploited peasants were given an  interest in the use and development of the new tools and  techniques -- the slaves were transformed into serfs. In feudal society the serfs, although legally tied to their lord's estate, were permitted to work part-time on their own strips of land.  They had, however, to work also on their lord's estate and to hand over to him a proportion of the produce from their own  strips.
       But within feudalism tools and techniques were further  developed, a new class of merchants and artisans appeared in the  towns. The serfs, in alliance with the rising merchant class,  succeeded in gaining their freedom from serfdom, in commuting  their labour service into a new system of money rents.
       With the commutation of labour service, the lords found  themselves unable to obtain labour for their own private estates.  In order to obtain this (as well as for other secondary reasons)  they proceeded to 'enclose' the peasants' own land, that is, to  drive them from it so that they were compelled to seek employment   as wage-labourers in order to live.
     Great numbers of these dispossessed peasants migrated to the  towns to seek employment with the merchants and artisans. The  working class was born. Within the framework of feudal society, a  new economic system -- capitalism -- began to develop.
     But the merchant capitalists found their efforts to develop  the capitalist system (on which their economic advancement  depended) frustrated by the opposition of the ruling landed  aristocracy. This frustration gave rise to a political movement  to change the social system. Eventually the political power of  the aristocracy was overthrown in a bourgeois revolution, and the   capitalist class became the ruling class.
     Within the framework of capitalist society, tools and  techniques were developed at an unprecedented rate. In the 20th  century the point was reached where the full use and development  of these new tools and techniques was being held back by the  continued existence of a social system which had outlived its  usefulness to the mass of the people. This became the basis of a   crisis within the capitalist system, and it brought into  existence a movement to change (again) the social system to a new  one: the socialist movement.
       During the 20th century the working class over a quarter of  the world succeeded in abolishing the capitalist system and in  laying the foundations of a socialist system. However, for  reasons which will be analysed later in this course, a temporary  reversion to capitalism took place.
The establishment of a socialist society in Britain, as part  of a world revolutionary process, is the historic task which  faces the British working people.

11. WHAT IS MEANT BY THE TERM PROGRESSIVE'?
 That which helps forward the development of society.

 12, WHAT IS MEANT BY THE TERM 'REACTIONARY'?
     That which tends to hold back or turn back, the development  of society.

13. WHAT IS THE STATE?
    A machinery of force by which one social class rules over  the rest of the people.
    In primitive communism, a classless society, there was no  state machinery. The state came into existence with the  establishment of a class-divided society, since the slave-owning   minority found  it  necessary to hold down  the  exploited  slave majority by force.
    In slave society, the state was the machinery of rule of the  slave-owning class. In feudal society, the state was the  machinery of rule of the landed aristorcacy. In capitalist  society, the state is the machinery of rule of the capitalist  class.
    As we shall see, the working class (although it is not and  will not be an exploiting class) also needs its own machinery of  force, its own state, a socialist state, in order to maintain  socialist society and prevent its overthrow by the capitalist  class which has lost its wealth and power. Thus, in a socialist  society the state is the machinery of rule of the working class.

  14. WHAT IS A REVOLUTION?
     The forcible replacement of the rule of one class by the  rule of a more progressive class.

15. WHICH OF THE SOCIAL SYSTEMS KNOWN TO HISTORY WERE ESTABLISHED  BY MEANS OF A REVOLUTION?

16. WHAT IS A COUNTER-REVOLUTION?
     The forcible overthrow of the rule of one class by that of a  more reactionary class.

17. WHAT SOCIAL CLASS WAS PLACED IN POWER BY:

1) On Historical Materialism

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