We can now formulate in a more systematic manner the fundamental tenets of historical materialism, which have already been touched on briefly in the first chapters of this little book.
1 Human production and human communication
This creature which has become man is a unique animal both because of its physical qualities and because of its physical deficiencies. On the one hand there is the upright stance, the hand with a free and flexible thumb, the protruding eyes which afford stereoscopic vision, the tongue, throat and vocal chords which permit the articulation of separate and combined sounds, the highly developed cortex, frontal lobe of the brain and cerebral convolutions, the cranial casing, and the reduced facial surface which allows these developments. All these physical qualities are indispensable for the deliberate fabrication of tools, and have been progressively perfected as tools and productive work have been perfected.
On the other hand, most of the human senses and organs are less developed than those of other highly specialised animal species. When forced, possibly because of a change in climate, to come down from the trees and live off a varied diet in the savanna, primitive humanity could not defend itself from the carnivores by running like an antelope, by climbing like a chimpanzee, by flying away like a bird, or by depending on its physical strength like a buffalo or a gorilla. With such physical characteristics it could not lay its hands on the most alluring foodstuffs: the countless ruminants with whom it shared the savanna. Above all, the new-born human was particularly vulnerable and helpless, really an extra- uterine embryo totally dependent on the mothers in the horde (the upright stance, which narrowed the pelvis in the female, undoubtedly contributed to this premature characteristic in human childbirth).
Both the possibility of and the need for social organisation are rooted in this combination of qualities and deficiencies. Humans cannot survive individually or ensure their subsistence without co-operation with other members of their species. Their physical organs are too little developed to allow them to appropriate their foodstuffs directly. Humans must produce these collectively, with the aid of tools, prolonging and perfecting their organs. This production is ensured through communal action by groups of humans. Human infants are integrated into the group and learn the rules and techniques of survival as members of the group through their progressive socialisation.
The social organisation of humans and the socialisation of human infants presupposes qualitatively superior forms of communication between the members of the group to those existing among other animal species. These superior forms of language, linked to the development of the cortex, make possible the growth of the capacities of abstraction and of learning – that is, the conservation, transmission and accumulation of the lessons of experience. They make possible the production of concepts, of thought, of consciousness. In this sense, the different characteristics of humanity – our ‘anthropological quality’ – are closely linked to one another. It is because they are ‘naked apes which walk in the upright position’, because they remain extra-uterine embryos after their birth, that they must become deliberate tool makers, social animals developing language, storing up successive impressions and images, capable of using and perfecting them for practical ends, capable of learning, anticipating, thinking, abstracting, using imagination and invention.
The interaction, the combination of these characteristics, is decisive. There are human-like primates that use tools and occasionally even surpass their usually rudimentary level. There are several species that know instinctive forms of collective cooperation. There are just as many species exhibiting rudimentary forms of communication. But the human species is the only one which progressively makes tools in a more deliberate manner, perfecting them after they have been conceived of as such in a conscious way, on the basis of successive experiences, which are also transmitted as a result of more and more numerous and perfected communications. The development of tools liberates the mouth. The mouth perfects the language and the capacity for abstraction, which in turn allows the tools to be improved and new tools to be invented. The hand develops the brain, which, by improving the utilisation of the hand, creates the conditions for its own improvement.
Although the transformation of the anthropoid primates into humans is conditioned by the existence of an anatomical and neurological infrastructure, it cannot be reduced to this infrastructure. The ‘production/communications’ dialectic creates the possibility of an unlimited development in producing, inventing and perfecting tools and therefore in human production, of an unlimited development in human experience, learning and anticipation, and therefore of a practically unlimited plasticity and adaptability of the human species. The material society and culture of humanity becomes its second nature.
It follows that it is absurd to declare that any social institution (the absence of social inequality or of the state, the absence of private property) is ‘contrary to human nature’. Humanity has lived and can live in the most diverse conditions. None of these institutions has proved immutable or an absolute precondition for human survival. Any affirmation that ‘the aggressive instinct’ dominates human evolution confuses the existence of a tendency (which co-exists, moreover, with its own negation – the instinct of sociability and co-operation) with its realisation. Prehistory and history show that there are social institutions and conditions which allow us to contain and hold back this tendency, while, in contrast, there are others which encourage its manifestation in outrageous forms.
The ‘production/communications’ dialectic dominates the entire human condition. Everything people do ‘goes through their heads’. Human production is distinct from animal appropriation of food mainly in that it is not a purely instinctive activity. It generally constitutes the realisation of a ‘plan’ which first arises in the human head. Of course, this ‘plan’ does not just fall from the sky. It is the reproduction or recombination by the human brain of those elements and problems of that activity which are indispensable to human survival, which have been experienced and absorbed by the brain thousands of times in lived experience. But on the other hand, the ability to recombine concepts born in the last analysis from social praxis permits humanity to invent, to anticipate, to imagine changes in nature and society which have not yet occurred, which are only hypothetical and which will be realised at least partly because of this anticipation. Historical materialism is the science of human societies which basically tries to take account of and explain this production/communications dialectic.
2 Social base and superstructure
Every human society must produce in order to survive. Subsistence production – in the narrow or wide sense of the term, that is, the satisfaction of merely nutritional or of all socially recognised needs – and the manufacture of the instruments and work material necessary for this production constitutes the initial condition for any more complex social organisation or activity.
Historical materialism states that the way in which humanity organises its material production constitutes the base of all social organisation. This base in turn determines all other social activities – the administration of relations between groups of humans (mainly the appearance and development of the state), spiritual production, morals, law, religion, etc. These so-called social superstructure activities always remain attached, in one way or another, to the base.
This idea has shocked, and still shocks, many people. Homer’s poetry, the Gospels, the Koran, the principles of Roman law, Shakespeare’s plays, Michelangelo’s painting, the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the Communist Manifesto itself – can all these products of spiritual endeavour really have depended on the way in which contemporary people tilled their fields and wove their cloth? To understand the tenets of historical materialism we must start off by explaining precisely what we mean by this formula.
Historical materialism in no way affirms that material production (‘the economic factor’) directly and immediately determines the content and form of all so-called super- structural activities. Moreover, the social base is not simply productive activity as such, and even less is it ‘material production’ taken in isolation. It is the sociai relations that people form in the production of their material life. In fact, historical materialism is not, therefore, economic determin- ism but socio-economic determinism.
Activities on the superstructural level do not immediately flow from these social relations of production. They are only determined by them in the last instance. A series of mediations therefore intervene between the two levels of social activity. These we will examine briefly in section three of this chapter.
Finally, if in the last analysis the social base determines phenomena and activities at the level of the superstructure, these latter can also react on the former. One illustration will show this. The state always has a precise class nature and corresponds to a definite socio-economic base. But it can partially modify this base. While saving the feudal nobility from certain economic ruin for a few centuries by tapping the revenue of other social classes, the state of the absolute monarchy (from the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries in Europe) powerfully aided the substitution of the capitalist mode of production for the feudal mode of production, by developing mercantilism, colonialism, encouraging manu- facturing and the national monetary system, etc.
There are several reasons why activities on the super- structural level are in the final analysis determined by the social base. Those who control material production and the social surplus product also assure the livelihood of those who live off the social surplus product. Whether ideologues, artists and academics accept or rebel against this dependence, it still fixes the framework of their activity. The social relations of production therefore entail consequences as regards the forms of activity in the superstructural sphere, which also constitutes conditioning. The relations of production are accompanied by forms of communication which are predominant in each type of society, bringing about the appearance of predominant mental structures which condition forms of thought and artistic creation.
3 Material Production And Thought Production
The social base/social superstructure dialectic affects the relations between material production and thought product- ion. A more detailed study of these relations will better allow us to understand the complexity of this dialectic, and also allow us to underline the importance of its active element, an element which will be discussed at the end of this chapter.
Historical materialism argues that the relations of production constitute the base of all societies, onto which the social superstructure is built. In fact, these two levels concern two distinct forms of social activity. Material production is the fundamental object of activities at the level of the social base. Ideological (philosophical, religious, judicial, political, etc.), artistic and scientific production is the fundamental object of activity at the level of the social superstructure. Of course, the latter also encompasses the activities of the state apparatus, which are far from being confined to just the ideological domain (the problem of the state was taken up in Chapter 3). But, with this exception, the distinction we have made seems pertinent.
Historical materialism offers an explanation of the evolution of each of these two spheres, of their inter- dependence and their reciprocal relations. This explanation combines four levels:
(a) All thought production is linked in one way or another to processes of material labour. It always operates with its own immediate material infrastructure. Some arts are initially the direct result of material labour (the magical function of primitive painting; the origins of dance in the formalisation of gestures of production; the integration of songs into production; etc.). Technological revolutions profoundly influence art, science, ideological production. Sciences such as geometry, astronomy, hydrography, biology and chemistry came about in intimate correlation with irrigation in agriculture, developed animal breeding, and emergent metallurgy. After the discovery of the technique of printing in the 15th Century and radio and television in the Twentieth Century, these techniques profoundly reconditioned not only the diffusion but even the form of ideas, as well as some of their content. The influence of electronic computers on the development of science of the last thirty years is evident.
(b) All though production evolves according to an internal dialectic which is proper to its own history. Every philosopher, lawyer, priest or scientist starts off as a student. Through their studies, they assimilate to varying degrees concepts (or systems of concepts) which were produced by previous generations and transmitted as such to the present generation. Thought producers conserve, modify, adapt or shake up these concepts or hypotheses of work, according to production procedures that they borrow or invent within the framework of the dialectic proper to their activity. Each new generation tries to conserve, deepen or reject the answers to the questions flowing from the subject concerning them. Sometimes they invent new questions (which then demand ‘revolutionary’ answers: scientific, artistic, philosophical revolutions, etc.), or rediscover questions which were discarded by previous generations.
(c) But these modifications in the treatment of concepts, artistic forms, scientific hypotheses, do not come about in an arbitrary manner, no matter what the socio-historical conditions. They are instigated, conditioned, or, at the very least, furthered by the socio-economic context and needs. The evolution from animism to monotheism did not take place in small primitive communities restricted to hunting and gathering food. The scientific theory of labour- value could not be perfected before the appearance of modern capitalism. The development of mechanical physics is closely linked with the development of machines, which in turn correspond to specific social needs, etc.
These great transformations in thought production are also linked to specific mental structures which are predetermined by the social structures. It was not by chance that all the great attempts at social and political revolution of the Thirteenth to Seventeenth Centuries were expressed in the ideological form of religious struggles, given the primacy that religion had attained in the superstructure of feudal society. In the same way, from the second half of the Sixteenth Century onwards, the rise of the modern bourgeoisie created a mental structure which transposed individual autonomy, formal equality, and the competition of private owners of commodities into all domains of thought production (theory of natural right, pedagogic humanist concepts, German idealist philosophy, portraits and still lifes in painting, political liberalism, classical political economy, etc.).
(d) Finally, the evolution of spiritual production is determined in the last analysis by the conflict of social interests. It is a well-known fact that the works of the Encyclopaedists, V oltaire’s polemics, the political philo- sophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the works of the Eighteenth Century materialists were just so many weapons for the ascendant manufacturing bourgeoisie to use against decadent absolute monarchy and the decrepit remains of feudal society. The function played by the so-called utopian socialists, and by Marx and Engels, in developing the proletariat’s consciousness of its class nature, of its position and its tasks in relation to bourgeois society, and of its interest in overthrowing it, is just as evident. Even today, one cannot doubt the function of astrology, of certain religions and mystical sects, of philosophies exalting the irrational, of racialist doctrines, or those of ‘blood and land’ (Blut and Boden) and contempt for humanity, as anti-working class and counter-revolutionary ferments favouring the birth of a pre-fascist climate.
These statements do not imply either the idea of an ‘organised conspiracy’ between distinct social classes and thought producers as individuals, or the idea of deliberate complicity on the part of all these producers with clearly laid out political projects. They reflect an objective correlation which can be, and sometimes is, subjectively assumed, though this is not necessarily the case. Thought producers can become the instruments of social forces without knowing it or wanting it. This just confirms that it is social existence which determines consciousness, and that given class interests assign a definite function to certain ideologies in the structure and evolution of any given society.
4 Productive forces, social relations of production and modes of production
Every human-made product is the result of a combination of three elements: the object of the labour, which directly or indirectly is a raw material produced by nature; the instrument of labour, which is a means of production created by humanity whatever its degree of development (from the first wooden sticks and fashioned stone implements to today’s most sophisticated automatic machines); the subject of labour – that is, the producer. Because in the last analysis labour is always social, the subject of the labour is inevitably inserted into a social relation of production.
Even if the object of labour and the instrument of labour are elements indispensable to all production, the social relations of production cannot be conceived of in a ‘reified’ manner – that is, they should not be seen as concerning relations between things, or between people and things. Social relations of production concern relations between people, and only relations between people. They bring together the entirety of the relations people establish amongst themselves in the production of their material life. The ‘entirety of relations’ not only signifies relations ‘at the point of production’, but also relations concerning the circulation and division of the various elements of the social product which are indispensable to material production (in particular, the way in which the objects of labour and the instruments of labour come to the immediate producers, the way in which they obtain their subsistence, etc.).
In general, given relations of production correspond to a given degree of development of the productive forces, to a given sophistication (amount) of the means of production, to a given technique and organisation of labour. In the age of the simplest stone tools, it was difficult to transcend the primitive communism of the horde or the tribe. Agriculture on the basis of irrigation and with the aid of iron tools created a considerable permanent surplus product which allowed the birth of a class society (slave society, society based on the Asiatic mode of production, etc.). Agriculture based on triennial crop rotation created the material foundations for feudal society. The birth of the steam engine definitively assured the upsurge of modern industrial capitalism. It is difficult to imagine generalised automation without the withering away of commodity production and the money economy, that is to say, outside of a fully developed and stablised socialist society.
But if there is a general correspondence between the degree of development of the productive forces and the social relations of production, this correspondence is neither absolute nor permanent. A double incongruity between them can be produced. Given relations of production can become a great hindrance to the further growth of the productive forces: that is the clearest sign that a given social form is condemned to disappear. On the other hand, new relations of production which have just emerged from a victorious social revolution can be in advance of the degree of development of the productive forces already reached in that country. This was the case with the victorious bourgeois revolution in the Netherlands in the Sixteenth Century, and the victorious socialist revolution in Russia in October 1917.
It is not by chance that these two principal cases of incongruity concern historical periods of profound social upheaval: periods of social revolutions. Moreover, the incongruity can also lead to a long-term decline of the productive forces, as in the epoch of the decline of the Roman Empire in the West, or of the decline of the Oriental Caliphate in the Middle East.
Rather than seeing their inter-relation as a mechanical correspondence, it is the dialectic between productive forces and social relations of production which to a large extent determines the succession of great epochs in human history. Each mode of production passes through the successive phases of birth, growth, maturity, decline, fall, and disappearance. In the final analysis, these phases depend on the manner in which the relations of production, initially new, then consolidated, then in crisis, progressively favour, allow or hinder the growth of the productive forces. The articulation between this dialectic and the class struggle is evident. It is only through the action of a social class or several social classes that a given set of relations of production can be introduced, conserved or overthrown.
Every social formation, that is, every society in a given country, in a given epoch, is always characterised by a totality of relations of production. A social formation without relations of production would be a country without labour, production, or subsistence – that is, a country without inhabitants. But every totality of social relations of production does not necessarily imply the existence of a stabilised mode of production, nor the homogeneity of these relations of production.
A stabilised mode of production is a totality of relations of production which are reproduced more or less automatically by the actual functioning of the economy, by the normal pattern of reproduction of the productive forces, with a correlative role (more or less important) of certain factors of the social superstructure. This was the case for centuries in many countries of the Asiatic, slave, feudal, and capitalist modes of production. This was the case for thousands of years with the tribal communist mode of production. In this sense, a mode of production is a structure which cannot be fundamentally modified by evolution, adaptation or self-reform. Its internal logic can only be transcended if it is overthrown.
On the contrary, in periods of profound historical social upheaval, one can experience a sum total of relations of production which do not have the nature of a stabilised mode of production. A typical example is that of the epoch when petty commodity production predominated (the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries in the Low Countries, in North Italy, and then in England), in which the prevailing relations were not those between lords and serfs, nor between capitalists and wage-earning producers, but those of free producers having direct access to their mode of production. It is the same for the characteristic relations of production in today’s bureaucratised workers states. Neither in one case nor the other can one demonstrate the existence of a stabilised mode of production. In all these societies in a transitional phase the hybrid relations of production are not structures which reproduce themselves more or less automatically. They can lead either to the restoration of the old society or to the arrival of a new mode of production. This historic alternative is governed by a number of factors, mainly the sufficient or insufficient growth of the productive forces, the result of the class struggle in a given country and on an international scale, the play of superstructural and subjective elements (role of the state, of the party, level of combativity and consciousness of the revolutionary class, etc.).
On the other hand, even when a stabilised mode of production exists, the relations of production are not necessarily homogeneous. They hardly ever are. In every concrete social formation there is always a combination between the predominant relations of production of the existing mode of production and the not entirely absorbed vestiges of previous relations of production which were historically transcended a long time ago. For example, practically all the imperialist countries still contain some vestiges of petty commodity production in agriculture (small peasant owners, working without wage-earning labour) and even vestiges of semi-feudal relations of production (share-cropping). In these cases it is correct to talk of a stabilised mode of production when the predominance of the relations of production characteristic of it is such that it assures their automatic reproduction and their domination over the whole of economic life through their internal logic and laws of development.
A characteristic example of hybrid relations of production dominated by a hegemonic mode of production is that of so-called ‘third world’ social formations (for under- developed countries see Chapter 7). Here pre-capitalist, semi-capitalist and capitalist relations of production exist side by side, combined in a determined manner under the pressure of the international economy’s imperialist structure. In spite of the predominance of capital, and in spite of insertion into the imperialist system, capitalist relations of production (above all, the ‘wage labour-capital’ relation) do not become generalised, although they exist and slowly extend. But this fact hardly justifies the characterisation of these social formations as ‘feudal countries’, nor the contention that feudal or semi-feudal relations of product- ion predominate within them, a theoretical error committed by many social democratic, Stalinist and Maoist theoreticians.
5 Historical determinism and revolutionary practice
Historical materialism is a determinist doctrine. Its fundamental thesis affirms that it is social existence which determines social consciousness. The history of human societies can be explained. Its course is not haphazard or arbitrary. Its unfolding does not depend on unforeseeable whims of genetic mutation, or ‘great men’ among the atomised multitude. In the last analysis it is explained by the fundamental structure of the society at each given epoch, and by the essential contradictions of this structure. For as long as society is divided into classes, it is explained by class struggle.
But if historical materialism is a determinist doctrine, this is so in the dialectical and not the mechanistic sense of the term. Marxism excludes fatalism. More precisely: any attempt to transform Marxism into automatic fatalism or vulgar evolutionism eliminates a fundamental dimension of it.
While it is true of course that humanity’s choices are predetermined by material and social constraints from which it cannot escape, it can forge its own destiny within the framework of these constraints. Humanity makes its own history. If humanity is the product of given material conditions, these material conditions are in turn the products of human social practice.
This transcending of old historical idealism (‘ideas, or great men, make history’) and of old mechanical materialism (‘people are the product of circumstances’) is in a way the birth of Marxism. It is contained in the famous ‘Theses on Feuerbach’ which conclude The German Ideology by Marx and Engels.
Among other things, this signifies that the result of each great epoch of social convulsions in history remains uncertain. It can lead to the victory of the revolutionary class. It can also lead to the reciprocal decomposition of all the fundamental classes of a given society, as was the case at the end of the ancient mode of production based on slavery. History is not the sum total of linear progressions. Many past social formations have disappeared without leaving many traces, mainly through the absence or weakness of a revolutionary class capable of forging a way towards progress.
The evident decadence of contemporary capitalism does not automatically lead to the victory of socialism. It leads to the alternative ‘socialism or barbarism’. Socialism is a historical necessity to permit a new upsurge in the productive forces which is consistent with the possibilities of contemporary science and technology. It is above all a human necessity, in that it will permit the satisfaction of needs, in conditions that assure the blossoming of all human potential in all individuals and all peoples, without destroying the ecological balance. But what is necessary is not necessarily what is achieved. Only the revolutionary and conscious action of the proletariat can guarantee the triumph of socialism. Otherwise the enormous productive potential of contemporary science and technology will assume a progressively more destructive form as regards civilisation, culture, humanity, nature, and, quite simply, life on our planet.
It is humanity’s social practice that creates the social structures which subsequently envelop it. Through revolutionary social practice these same structures can be overthrown. Marxism is determinist in that it affirms that these upheavals can only take certain forms in certain epochs. It is impossible to reintroduce feudalism, or the communism of small autarchic communities of producer- consumers, on the basis of contemporary productive forces. It is determinist in that it stresses that progressive social revolutions are only possible if the material preconditions and social forces which permit the creation of a superior social organisation have already matured within the old society.
But Marxism is not fatalistic, because in no way does it postulate that the arrival of this new society is the inevitable product of the ripening of the material and social conditions necessary for its appearance. This arrival can only result from the outcome of struggles between living social forces. In the last analysis, it results from the degree of social effectiveness of revolutionary action. If this is in turn partially conditioned by social circumstances and the balance of forces, revolutionary action can overturn, brake or accelerate the evolution of these circumstances and balance of forces. Even an eminently favourable balance of forces can be ‘spoilt’ by subjective deficiencies on the part of the revolutionary class. In this sense, in our epoch of revolution and counter-revolution, the ‘subjective factor of history’ (the class consciousness and revolutionary leadership of the proletariat) plays a primordial role in determining the result of great class battles, in deciding the future of the human species.
6 Alienation and emancipation
For thousands of years humanity lived in strict dependence on the uncontrollable forces of nature. It could only try to adapt to a given natural milieu, each little human group to its own. It was the prisoner of a narrow and constricted horizon, even if several primitive societies were able to develop certain human potentialities in a remarkable manner (for example, paleolithic painting).
Within the gradual development of the productive forces, humanity manages little by little to overturn this relationship of absolute dependence. It succeeds in subjugating the forces of nature more and more, in controlling them, domesticating them, using them consciously in order to increase production, to diversify needs, to develop human potential- ities, and to extend social relations so as finally to encompass and partially unify humanity on a world scale.
But the more people emancipate themselves in relation to the forces of nature, the more they alienate themselves in relation to their own social organisation. As the productive forces grow, as material production progresses, as relations of production become those of a society divided into classes, the mass of humanity no longer controls the entirety of its production or the whole of its productive activity. It therefore no longer controls its social existence. In capitalist society this loss of control becomes total. Freed from subjection to the whims of nature, humanity seems fated to become subject to the whims of its own social organisation. Freed from the irresistible effects of floods, earthquakes, epidemics and droughts, it appears to be condemned instead to the effects of war and economic crises, bloody dictatorships and the criminal destruction of the productive forces, even the possibility of nuclear destruction. The fear of these cataclysms inspires even more anxiety today than the fear of hunger, illness or death did before.
However, the same impressive development of the productive forces which pushes the alienation of humanity to the limit in relation to its own production and its own society also creates, under capitalism, the possibility for a real emancipation of humanity, as we have already indicated at the end of Chapter 2. This possibility must be understood in a dual sense. More and more, humanity will be capable of controlling and determining its social development as well as the upheavals in the natural milieu in which this takes place. Humanity will be increasingly capable of developing to the full all its potentialities of individual and social development, previously stifled or mutilated by its insufficient control over the forces of nature, social organisation, and its own social destiny.
The construction of a classless society, and then the coming of a communist society, implies the emancipation of labour, the emancipation of humanity as producer. The workers become masters of their products and processes of work. They freely choose the priorities in the division of the social product. They decide collectively and democratically the order in which needs are to be fulfilled, the productive priorities, the sacrifices of leisure-time and current consumption which this allocation of resources will imply.
Of course, these choices will continue to be made within a certain framework of constraint. No human society can consume more than it produces without reducing its reserves and productive resources and condemning itself to a reduction in current consumption at a later date, when the draining of reserves and the reduction of productive resources has reached a certain threshold. In this sense, Frederick Engels’ formula stating that freedom is the recognition of necessity remains true even for communist
humanity. ‘The taking in hand of necessity’ would be more correct than ‘recognition’, as the more humanity’s control over its natural and social conditions of existence grows, the more the number of possible responses to constraining conditions grow, and the more humanity can emancipate itself from the obligation to adopt just one response.
But there is a second dimension to human disalienation, which greatly enlarges the sphere of human liberty. When all basic needs of all people are satisfied, when the reproduction of this abundance is assured, the solving of material problems ceases to be a priority for humanity. Humanity emancipates itself from enslavement to mechanistic, un-creative labour. It liberates itself from the niggardly measurement of how it uses its time and from the devotion of that time mainly to material production. The development of creative activities, the development of humanity’s rich individuality, the development of wider and wider human relations all take priority over the constant accumulation of material goods which are less and less useful.
Thenceforth revolutionary social practice will not only overthrow relations of production. It will change all social organisation, all the traditional customs, mentality and psychology of humanity. Material egoism and the aggressive competitive spirit will fade away for lack of nourishment in daily experience.
Humanity will master its geographical surroundings, the configuration of the globe, the climate and the distribution of great water reserves, at the same time preserving or re-establishing ecological equilibrium. It will overturn everything down to its own biological foundations. It cannot achieve these objectives in an absolutely voluntarist manner, independent of preconditions and a sufficient material infrastructure. But once this infrastructure is assured, it is active humanity, more and more free in its choices, which will become the principal lever for the creation of the new person, the free and disalienated communist. It is in this sense that it is correct to talk of communist and Marxist humanism.