In the past few
decades the world has undergone a radical change . The general crisis of capitalism has deepened . There has emerged and is growing the world system of socialist states . The disintegration of the colonial system is nearing completion . The new balance of forces is no longer giving imperialism a favourable nod . All this has had telescopic and deep going effects on US imperialism . The bungling , the mistakes .
Prior to the emergence of Neanderthal Man , human beings lived in large herd – like groups . The retention of this herd like existence was predetermined by the extremely low level of the productive forces . Man , armed with the most primitive tools , could provide for his survival only through his association with a large group of humans . Even in the gathering of grasses and fruits such a group was necessary to provide for mutual defence when wild beasts fell upon them . When man adopted hunting as his way of life , the joint efforts of the group of men and women guaranteed a greater measure of success in obtaining the means of subsistence . Labour was having an ever – increasing influence on the development of a communal way of life , while all production activity demanded that human beings band together . Only in a commune was it possible to retain and pass on skills and experience , the basis of production development , to future generations .
The progressive development of mankind was determined by the further advance of the productive forces and , primarily , by the perfection of the instruments of labour . The remains of tools of fossil man were discovered in China , India , Ceylon , Burma , Algeria , Kenya , Uganda , Tanganyika and other regions of South Africa and Europe . In the U.S.S.R. the remains of fossil man and his tools were discovered in Armenia , the Crimea , along the Black Sea Coast of the Caucasus , in Central Asia and along the Dniester River .
By the 6th century B.C. more or less similar religious beliefs were held in common in all regions inhabited by the Greeks . These beliefs formed the basis of the Olympian religion , so called after Mount Olympus which was believed to be the home of the Gods , headed by Zeus . The Olympian religion was not connected with any organised religious body , dogma or ritual . The temples of the gods , though of definite significance in the religious lives of the people , did not , how ever , form a single system ; likewise , there was no special strata of religious attendants , no high priests . When necessary , persons chosen by the popular assembly carried out various religious functions . By making the gods human , the Olympian religion was able to penetrate deep into the masses and influence the working people . In time the cult of the Olympian gods became the official religion of the Greek polises , sanctifying the class suppression of the slaves and poor labourers . The masses , dissatisfied with their lack of civil rights , often coun tered the official religion by inaugurating cults of their own patron gods . Such , for instance , was the cult of Dionisius , patron of the tiller , in whose honour feasts and celebrations were held . This religious dissention can be considered the prototype of all later religious heresies .
Articulate human speech evolved in the processes of labour . Human thought and consciousness have the quality of abstract thinking , i.e. , a generalised reflection of reality in concepts , expressed in words . This capacity for abstract thought made it possible to express an idea , a sum of impressions in words , and with their aid man could inform other human beings of his impressions . However , this ability to communicate his thoughts to another human being through the aid of words was insufficient to stimulate speech . What was lacking was the necessity to communicate one’s thoughts to another . This necessity arose and developed in the process of man’s conscious labour . Labour was always a social activity . The work of a single human being was an integral part of the life of the human community . The unity of a commune of human beings in productive labour resulted in the fact that the individual in his mind , thoughts and actions regarded himself as a member of the commune , as subservient to it . That is why in the process of collective labour people felt the need to com municate with each other , to speak to each other . In the beginning , various shouts and cries used in the process of labour and arising from various actions were the sole means of communication . These cries gradually became established and remembered . This , in turn , brought about a change in the corresponding human organs . Under the in fluence of the pressing need to communicate in the process of common labour , the undeveloped throat was gradually transformed into an organ capable of producing articulate sounds . Thus , as a result of collective labour over a great period of time , articulate speech gradually evolved as a means of exchanging thoughts , as a means of human associa tion . Speech was of tremendous significance in the further development of society , since it helped to unite man’s efforts in labour as well as in organising collective labour ; speech made it possible for man to retain and pass on to coming generations his labour experience . Since the history of primitive society is a history of small , isolated human communities , the language of each such com munity developed independently and was unlike the language of other communities .
In the 19th century archeologists discovered the remains of extinct , highly developed primates called Dryopithecinae , or tree apes . Charles Darwin , the great English naturalist , and his followers analysed the evolution of the animal world over the course of many centuries and used these discoveries to scientifically prove the biological relationship between man and the animal world , as well as man’s evolution from the highly developed tossil apes . The proof of this theory was to be found in the data provided by anatomy , embryology , paleontology and , specifically , by the basic similarity of skel etal structure , brain development and the composition of the blood of modern man and the anthropoid apes . The develop ment of modern science has proved the validity of this mate rialist theory magnificently .
Germany on the Eve of the Revolution In the 1840s there had as yet been no bourgeois revolution in Germany. The country was broken up into a number of independent states. The German Union formally unified 34 German states and four free cities. The supreme body of the Union was the Bundestag which exercised practically no power; It had no army, no legal rights and no diplomatic representatives abroad. The decisions of the Bundestag came into effect only after their approval by the heads of all the states and cities. In other words , no centralized state – basis for the development of capitalism – had as yet formed in Germany ; The country had no single internal market and the trade relations between the various German states were hampered by customs barriers. Under those conditions the development of capitalism in Germany encountered great difficulties . A customs union unifying 18 German states with a population of 23 million formed only in 1818-34 . The industry and cities developed slowly . For example , in the 1840s the 12 largest cities of Germany had a slightly larger population than Paris . In the middle of the 19th century the industrial revolution in Germany was only going through its initial stage. The German bourgeoisie was faced with the problem of carrying out a bourgeois revolution , creating a centralised state and winning power . However , the cowardly German bourgeoisie preferred not to raise the question of altering the political system , but to pursue a course of reforms . The German working class , which developed later than the working classes of England and France , began its struggle in the middle of the 19th century ; it tried to set up its own organisations and came out with its own demands . Owing to the severe police regime the German workers set up their organisations abroad , in Switzerland and England , where the political system was more democratic , and tried to guide the working – class movement from there . One of these organisations was the German People’s Union but , like the others , this organisation had weak ties with the workers of the German states and therefore could not exercise any practical guidance of the working – class movement . At the same time the workers began to struggle for their rights openly . The workers of Silesia ( the best developed area in Germany ) who lived under intolerable economic conditions rose against the capitalists in 1844 , but the government immediately dispatched troops to defend the interests of the exploiters . In the middle of the 19th century German industry advanced from the manufactory stage to machine produc tion , and its further development now depended on how rapidly feudalism was abolished in the country . Since the the necessary reforms , a government of the German Union was unwilling to carry out Germany . revolution was impending in Germany.
The import of large quantities of goods to the oppressed countries enlivened the commodity – money relations in them . The local feudal lords and tribal chiefs began to use the market increasingly more often . The result of that was an intensified exploitation of the peasantry , its pauperisation and often ruination . Under the direct pressure of foreign capital ists , the colonial administration and the country’s own feudal lords , middlemen and usurers , peasants had to produce raw materials and foodstuffs for the capitalist market and sell them at uncommonly low prices . The slightest fluctuation in the capitalist market affected the conditions of the peasants in the colonies and semicolonies . The flooding of the colonies and semicolonies with large quantities of industrial commodities from the parent states which were , of course , unable to compete with the industries led to a decline of the local handicrafts and manufactories of the advanced countries . Thus the marketing of the articles manufactured in the parent states impeded the industrial declined together with the handicrafts . Not only the peasants development of Asia , Africa and Latin America . Local trade and handicraftsmen , but even the local bourgeoisie was becoming impoverished , except the part of the bourgeoisie which began to play the role of an intermediary in the trade between the colonialists and the subjugated peoples ( the so – called comprador bourgeoisie ) . ” Free trade ” was the main , but not the only method of exploiting the colonies . Capitalism also developed a system of plantation economy ( West – Indies , Indonesia , India , etc. ) and organised land plunder of the colonies and their settle ment by way of ” free ” colonisation ( Algeria , South Africa , etc. ) . In the countries of plantation economy the English and French colonialists had to abolish slavery which had completely outlived itself , was unproductive and was incapable of making the plantations more profitable . But even after the abolition of slavery the former slaves and the new contract workers from China and India were subjected to monstrous exploitation , continued to live under inhuman conditions and died en masse of starvation and disease . Whereas after abolition of slavery the English and French planters used a system of labour contracts , the Dutch colonialists in Indonesia , where the local population was employed as labour power , introduced a system of forced labour . Usually 5-10 villages were attached to an enterprise which processed raw material . The population was forced to supply the enterprise with raw material and labour power . During the period of pre – monopoly capital , when the main form of economic relations between the parent states and the colonies was ” free trade ” , capitalist relations did not as yet develop in the colonies . At the same time , having been drawn into world trade , the colonies were becoming an exploited part of the forming world capitalist system .
The second way of development of capitalism in agriculture is slower and harder for the peasants . In this case the landowners remain the dominant force in the countryside and , as a rule , in the whole of the country . The greater part of the land is owned by landowners , while the peasants are transformed from serfs into farm hands or tenants . Only a negligible number of rich peasants embark on the path of capitalist exploitation and use hired labour . This way of capitalist development in agriculture is connected with the existence of reactionary political systems , domination of the landowners ‘ class . The most typical of this way of capitalist development in agriculture were Germany , especially Prussia , and tsarist Russia . Neither in Germany nor in Russia ( until 1917 ) was the agrarian problem solved in a revolutionary way . That is why the development of bourgeois relations in the agriculture of these countries was the result not of a revolutionary over throw of feudalism , but of a slow and tormenting for the peasantry development of serf forms of exploitation into capitalist forms . In Prussia serfdom was abolished in 1806 , but the feudal obligations actually existed until the middle of the 19th century . A law on redeeming the feudal obligations was passed only in 1850 , and the peasants paid the land owners 1,000 million marks . These enormous sums received by the landowners from the peasants accelerated the trans formation of the landowners ‘ estates into capitalist farms and at the same time ruined many peasants . A similar picture was observed in Russia after the ” emancipation ” of the peasants in 1861 . The landowners ‘ way of development of capitalism in agriculture means persistence of the survivals of feudalism in the economy and the political system of the state . Elimina tion of these survivals becomes one of the objectives of the revolutionary movement .
By the middle of the 19th century the natural and social sciences had reached such a level of development that it was possible to create a truly scientific philosophy – a science about the most general laws of development of nature and society . The natural sciences showed that the world had not been created by anybody , but had developed according to its own laws . For example , physics discovered the law of universal gravitation which governs all natural phenomena , while chemistry discovered the law of conservation of matter , according to which nothing is created in the world and nothing disappears without leaving a trace , everything merely changing the form of its existence . The advance of natural sciences helped the further development of materialism and dialectics . The greatest contribution to materialist philosophy was made by the German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach ( 1804 1872 ) . Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ( 1770-1831 ) , another German philosopher , generalised the method used by the modern sciences in analysing the phenomena of nature and society and raised dialectics to a new level ; according to Hegelian dialectics everything must be considered from the point of view of continuous change and development . However , neither Feuerbach nor Hegel could create a truly scientific philosophy . Feuerbach , for example , did not recognise dialectics and thereby rejected the method of cognition used by science , whereas Hegel adhered to idealist positions and persisted in the opinion that , according to the laws of dialectics , it was not nature and society , but some Absolute Idea that developed . Moreover , he limited the development of this idea to the creation of the Prussian constitutional monarchy , considering it the highest expression of the Absolute Idea and the acme of development of society .
Capitalism Society 