Publication Details

Abstract

The present paper does not deal with the facts which are mentioned to support the claim that a counter-revolution was taking place in Czechoslovakia. Its purpose is to introduce a generally theoretical problem: to what extent the tendencies toward regressive development from socialism to capitalism are possible under conditions of developed socialistic social relations. Marx pricipally distinguished the stage of the rise of a social formation from the epoch of the inner self-development of a social formation which has already been stabilized. He proved that, in the period of the rise of capitalism, it was external conditions of the economic unevenness, created by feudalism, which determined where and in what direction capitalism was developing. On the other hand, Marx proved that the already stabilized and developed capitalistic relations of production change the original external conditions of their rise into the inner moments of their own self-development. The petty-bourgeois consiciousness understands also the developed capitalism from the standpoint of the rising of capitalism; the apologists of capitalism interprete also the epoch of developed capitalism from the standpoint of the epoch of the rise of capitalism. It is a paradoxical phenomenon (which, however, has its social causes) that, in the approach to the theoretical analysis of the socialistic social formation, many Marxist authors adopted this particular artificial transfer of points of view and criteria of the rise of socialism to developed socialistic to Marx's conception of social formation, it is a method which is peculiar to the apologists of capitalism. It is a speciality of socialistic revolution that it begins by political seizure of power. It is necessary to bring the ideas of scientific socialism into the consciousness of working people in order that they understand their class interests. The present paper proves minutely, on the basis of Lenin’s theoretical and practical articles, that even in that period Lenin considered the bringing of ideas of Marxism into the consciousness of working people as an inferior moment to the revolutionary practice proper of the masses. In the degree in which the ruling proletariate transforms the objective conditions of social being of the population into socialistic, the movement of the inner contradictions of such a socialistic country becomes decisive for its further development. The effects of the general antagonism between socialism and capitalism on a world-wide scale, can penetrate into the life of a stabilized socialistic society only by means of the inner movement of the socialistic social relations. Under conditions of the existence of the socialistic world system, the own inner development of socialism is the decisive form of the struggle against imperialism. Nevertheles, possibilities exist of individual successive regressive movements in the socialistic social relations. The present paper tries to analyse them. It also expresses concisely the author's view on the individual stages of asserting the leading role of the Party in Czechoslovakia in 1968. The concluding chapter is devoted to the problems of establishing the socialistic consciousness under conditions of developed socialism. In the consciousness of working people, the creative moments of their own social practice are interspersed with illusions, with the „false conciousness" on that practice. The Marx-Leninist party helps working people to understand truthfully the connections of their own activity and organizes them for the struggle for their long-termed class interests. Already the report of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at the 20th Congress emphasized that Marxist ideology had to interprete more truthfully and deeper the new phenomena of world and home developments. The present coexistence of scientifically sterile administrators of philosophy with creative philosophers, who are being inspired exclusively with thought currents different from Marxist dialectics, cannot represent the way to renaissance of the creative Marxism-Leninism; this task can only be performed by following Lenin’s teaching, by the actual overcoming of the deformations of Marxist dialectics, and by such an unfoldment of the inner possibilities of the original Marx’s dialectics that Marxist dialectics could fully play its positive role in the development of all progressive tendencies of knowledge as well as social practice. The deformation of pre-January Czechoslovakia and the passiveness of its citizens were so deep that the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia could and can only gradually increase the citizens’ energy which has arisen after January 1968, from the level of democratic and national aspirations to the level of fully socialistic unity.