The theory of scientific socialism is rightly considered the product of two brilliant minds—Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Paul Lafargue, noted figure in the international working-class movement and talented populariser of the ideas of Marxism, writes in his reminiscences that it is impossible to think of Engels without recalling Marx. This was also emphasised by Lenin. “From the time that fate brought Karl Marx and Frederick Engels together the two friends devoted their life work to a common cause,” Lenin wrote. Many fundamental works were produced by them jointly. The ideas elaborated by these two great minds in their own individual writings were repeatedly and thoroughly discussed both during personal meetings and by correspondence. Lenin specially mentions as a truly scientific exploit the work accomplished by Engels in preparing the second and third volumes of Capital for publication.

HISTORICAL BOUNDS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

Engels made a substantial and comprehensive contribution to the theory of scientific socialism. Marx, according to Lafargue, never stopped wondering at the universality of Engels's knowledge, the subtlety of this mind. Engels's sphere of scientific interests encompassed philosophy, political economy, history, philology and military matters. In all spheres studied by Engels he proved himself to be an inquisitive analyst who delved deep into the heart of the matter. Lenin characterised as follows the importance of Engels's works for Marxism: “It is impossible to understand Marxism and to propound it fully without taking into account all the works of Engels.”¹

As ideologists of the working class, Marx and Engels saw their primary task in analysing scientifically the capitalist mode of production from the viewpoint of the class interests of the proletariat, in ascertaining its historic mission, the mission of grave-digger of capitalism and builder of the new, communist society. This task was splendidly accomplished in the monumental Capital and in a number of works by Engels; for example, The Condition of the Working Class in England, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, and Anti-Dühring. Concerning the first of these works Lenin wrote: “Engels was the first to say that the proletariat is not only a suffering class; that it is, in fact, the disgraceful economic condition of the proletariat that drives it irresistibly forward and compels it to fight for its ultimate emancipation.”²

In analysing the capitalist mode of production, Marx and Engels not only arrived at their conclusion about the necessity and inevitability of capitalism's fall and the socialist revolution, but also revealed the content of the transitional period from capitalism to communism, and delineated the main contours of the future society. In other words, creating the political economy of capitalism, Marx and Engels also formulated the basic principles of the political economy of the communist formation.

Moreover, their conception of the future society, of the process of transition to communism, was based on a strictly scientific analysis of the economic regularities and facts. In a letter to Edward Pease, one of the founders of the Fabian Society, Engels specially drew attention to this point: “Our views of the features which distinguish the future non-capitalist society from the contemporary society are precise conclusions from the historical facts and the processes of development,” he wrote.

But is it possible in principle to speak of the political economy of the communist formation? This question was raised already during the lifetime of Marx and Engels, and it was raised again after the Great October Revolution in Soviet political literature. A group of economists influential at that time headed by Bukharin, expounded the view that political economy examines only the commodity capitalist economy in the system of which the relations among people are concealed as it were by relations among things. Under socialism, however, the Bukharinites argued, where relations among people are clear, or “transparent”, no theoretical analysis is needed, and therefore political economy is also unnecessary. The end of capitalism, according to Bukharin, would also spell the end of political economy. But Engels long ago furnished an exhaustive answer to this question. In his Anti-Dühring, he differentiates between political economy in the narrow sense of the word, namely, one that studies the capitalist mode of production, and political economy in the broad sense, which encompasses all socio-economic formations, including the communist. Moreover, Engels added that “political economy in this wider sense has still to be brought into being”.³ Lenin, in his remarks on Bukharin's book The Economy of the Transition Period, in which the latter tried to prove that political economy was unnecessary after the socialist revolution, noted that Bukharin's position was nothing but a “step back from Engels”. The subsequent development of the socialist economy has demonstrated that, although production relations under socialism are indeed free of the shell of fetishism they are by no means simpler, or more primitive: on the contrary, in structural nature they are finer, more complex than the relations in all the preceding formations, and their analysis is very important and complicated.

TRANSITIONAL PERIOD FROM CAPITALISM TO COMMUNISM

Engels, like Marx, paid great attention to the problem of the transitional period from capitalism to communism, to the forms and tasks of transforming a capitalist into a communist society. Both thinkers regarded political power, the dictatorship of the proletariat, as the instrument of this transformation. Engels wrote that he and Marx had both always considered that for the achievement of its aims in the revolution “the proletarian class will first have to possess itself of the organised political force of the State, and with this aid stamp out the resistance of the Capitalist class and reorganise society”.⁴

At the same time, Marx and Engels emphasised the importance of such a force as the party of the proletariat, which becomes aware of itself as a class party. In a letter to Jerson Trier, a Danish Social Democrat, Engels wrote: “For the proletariat to be sufficiently strong and to be able to win at the decisive moment, it is necessary—Marx and I have been upholding this position since 1847—that it form a special party, separate from all others and opposed to them which considers itself a class party.” Lenin, following this legacy of the founders or Marxism, built up a mighty party of the working class, and the historical experience of the Soviet Union has confirmed the exceptional significance of such a party for the victory of the proletariat in the socialist revolution and its tremendous constructive role in building the new, communist society.

In the Principles of Communism, a work presenting a draft programme of the Communist League, prepared on the instructions of the League and later utilised in the drawing up of the Communist Manifesto, Engels pointed out that the immediate abolition of private property and the growth of the productive forces on the necessary scale, was impossible. “Therefore,” he stressed, “the revolution of the proletariat which is oncoming, according to all signs, will be able to transform the present society only gradually …”. The Principles also outline such basic measures of the transition period as the gradual expropriation of landed property, large-scale industry, the transport system and the banks; the introduction of the universal obligation to work; the development of the social economy, etc. These measures were subsequently incorporated in the text of the Communist Manifesto. The leading force in the reconstruction of society is the proletariat, which takes political power in order, as pointed out in the Manifesto, “to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class”.⁵

These thoughts were subsequently developed by Engels in other works: for example, in Anti-Dühring he thoroughly substantiates this proposition. “The proletariat,” he emphasises, “seizes political power and turns the means of production in the first instance into state property.”⁶ Thereby the proletariat abolishes class antagonisms and then, gradually, all class differences.

Engels points out that the capitalist mode of production itself indicates the way to this revolution. The productive forces increasingly acquire a social nature, whereas appropriation remains private. Hence, between the social nature of the contemporary productive forces and their private capitalist shell there is a conflict, which is expressed most sharply in economic crises and also in other forms of mass destruction of the productive forces; for example in wars or in the militarisation of the economy.

The need to recognise the social nature of the productive forces already asserts itself within the bounds of capitalism, assuming the form of joint-stock companies and state property. The capitalist state is compelled to assume management first and foremost of such sectors as communications, railway transport, electric power, and so on. But Engels warns us that the conversion of the means of production into state property does not signify a transformation of capitalism, does not resolve the conflict, but merely contains the “formal means, the possibility of resolving it”, that is, indicates to the proletariat the way of actually resolving it in the course of the socialist revolution.

Under capitalism, however, the conversion of the means of production into state property “does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces”, because the capitalist state is “only the organisation that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the general external conditions of the capitalist mode of production”, a “capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital”.⁷

In this connection Engels caustically derides “spurious socialism …, degenerating now and again, into something of flunkeyism, that without more ado declares all state ownership even of the Bismarckian sort, to be socialistic. Certainly, if the taking over, by the state of the tobacco industry is socialistic, then Napoleon and Metternich must be numbered among the founders of socialism”. The turning of the means of production into state property, according to Engels, is “in no sense, a socialistic measure, directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously. Otherwise, the Royal Maritime Company, the Royal porcelain manufacture, and even the regimental tailor of the army would also be socialistic institutions”.⁸

So far from losing its significance, this remark of Engels on the contrary acquires special weight under the conditions of the development of state-monopoly capitalism and the practice of bourgeois nationalisation. It is also sharply relevant to the fraudulent socialism of present-day revisionists who picture the imperialist state as a national agency concerned with the welfare of the people as a whole and who claim that every step of this state in assuming control over production is a step towards socialism.

The winning over of the working peasantry to the side of socialism and the means for the socialist reorganisation of small peasant farming, were one of the most important and difficult questions in the transformation of society. Putting forward the programme for nationalising large-scale capitalist property, the classics of Marxism at the same time set the task of gradually redirecting the peasantry on to the road of socialism and discovered the form for this transition, namely, the cooperatives. Engels wrote: “That during the transition to a complete communist economy, we will have to employ on a large-scale cooperative production as an intermediate link—of this Marx and I never had any doubt.”

Cooperatives as a means of transition to socialism are most suitable for the socialist reorganisation of peasant farming. Marx and Engels stressed the need for winning over the working peasantry to the side of the proletariat, attentively considering its distinctive features and rendering it the necessary support in the organisation of cooperatives. Engels wrote: “We shall do everything at all permissible to make his [the peasant's] lot more bearable, to facilitate his transition to the cooperative should he decide to do so, and even to make it possible for him to remain on his small holding for a protracted length of time to think the matter over, should he still be unable to bring himself to this decision.”⁹

These ideas of Marx and Engels were taken up by Lenin and by our Party and further developed in Lenin's plan for cooperative production and in his teaching of the alliance of the working class and peasantry.

The importance Engels attached to the elaboration of the question of the transitional period and the thoroughness he demanded in this matter are illustrated by his letter to Konrad Schmidt, who planned to write a special study on the subject. Engels wrote: “Your second plan—transitional stages to communist society—is worth pondering over, but I would advise you nonum prematur in annum; this is the most difficult of all the existing questions, because the conditions are constantly changed.”

MAIN FEATURES OF THE COMMUNIST MODE OF PRODUCTION

In one of his early statements, in the Elberfeld Speeches, written in February 1845, Engels expounded the idea of collectivity as the underlying foundation of the new society. In contrast to the fragmented economy, the mutual struggle of producers, the conflicting interests and the struggle of exploiters and exploited under capitalism Marx and Engels propose the single social economy, unity in management, the collective nature of production under communism, and depicts the tremendous advantages of this new organisation of production.

Competition and anarchy in production, together with the exploitation of wage-earners, result in a tremendous waste of productive forces owing to haphazard and uncontrolled production, economic crises, unemployment, superfluous middlemen in trade, wanton luxury among the ruling classes, and so forth. The organisation of production on a collective basis makes it possible to avoid all these losses. “But,” Engels writes, “the advantages afforded by the communist organisation as a result of utilising the now wasted labour powers is still not the most important thing . The biggest saving of labour power is contained in combining the separate labour powers into a collective power and in such a system which is based on the concentration of the powers which until now stood opposed to each other.”

Here Engels described the profound underlying reasons for the advantages of the economy of the new formation as compared with the capitalist formation. In actual fact, economic development under capitalism is a result of adding the losses and gains of opposing forces, while under socialism it is a result of multiplying the forces concentrated on the achievement of a single goal. A new productive force arises unknown under capitalism, the collective organisation of social production.

In modern times, as in the days of Marx and Engels, attempts have been made, and still are being made, to picture the relations of collectivity as common to all formations, including the exploiting systems. According to this view, slave and the slave-owner, capitalist and worker, are simply equal members or equal partners in a single production collective. Marx and Engels vigorously opposed these concepts which pervert the real state of affairs. The joint labour of many people (or labour cooperation) has of course existed in various socio-economic conditions, while under capitalism labour cooperation becomes a permanent form of production. Under exploiting formations, however, the joint labour of many people, like other combinations, is not under any circumstances collective, but represents, according to the expression of Marx and Engels, “sham collectivity” or “illusory collectivity”, and is utilised by the exploiters as a means of exploitation. “Sham collectivity in which individuals united until now always counterposed itself to them as something independent; and since it was an association of one class against another, it represented for the subordinate class not only absolutely illusory collectivity, but also new fetters.”

A genuine community presupposes the economic equality of individuals, their emancipation from exploitation, the existence of a single, common, material interest. In contrast to the illusory, false community, Marx and Engels propose genuine collectivity. “The very opposite takes place under the collectivity of revolutionary proletarians who place under their control both the conditions of their existence and the conditions of the existence of all members of society: in this collectivity individuals participate as individuals. … In conditions of genuine collectivity, individuals acquire freedom in their association and through it.”

Speaking of collectivity as the foundation of production, Marx and Engels regarded all society as a single producer, as an association of producers within the bounds of the entire national economy, and energetically opposed the various petty-bourgeois, syndicalist tendencies. Emphasising the importance of cooperative production in redirecting the peasant along the road to socialism, Engels indicated the need for ensuring conditions under which the “particular interest of the cooperative could not prevail over the interests of society as a whole”.

The existence of a single production aim uniting the efforts of all the producers on a national economy scale is a distinguishing feature of the collective organisation of social production. In a number of his works, Engels not only emphasises the importance of a single production aim under the conditions of the new society, but also reveals its content. Thus, in the Principles of Communism Engels points out that in future society the possibility of unlimited and expanding production will help to ensure the free development and application of the energies and capabilities of every member and that production will develop “in accordance with the needs of all members of society”. Developing this thought in Anti-Dühring, Engels writes that in future society the development of production will be subordinated to the task of ensuring for “all members of society the means of existence and of the free development of their capacities, and indeed in constantly increasing measure”.¹⁰

The revolutionary movement of the working class follows this major postulate of Engels'. When the first programme of the party was drawn up, Lenin energetically objected to Plekhanov's formula of the aim of production, which read: “The planned organisation of the social productive process for satisfying the needs of society as a whole and also its separate members.” Lenin pointed out the haziness and imprecision of this formula. “Such ‘satisfaction’ is ‘given’ by capitalism as well, but not to all members of society and not in equal degree.”¹¹ On Lenin's insistence, Plekhanov's suggested formula was replaced in the programme by the following: “To ensure the well-being and the many-sided development of all members of society.” This formula, which stems from the propositions of Marx and Engels, was retained by Lenin in the Programme of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) as approved by the Eighth Congress of the Party.¹²

In recent years, the advocates of all kinds of “new models of socialism of the O. Šik type have exerted much effort to prove that the social and material interests (incentives) of the people as a whole are an empty abstraction, a fabrication for prettifying reality under socialism, whereas the only real incentive lies in personal and group interests. Yet a single economy, a single goal of production common to all, determines the material interests (or incentives), not substituting for the other interests, but acquiring a leading significance of their own. The tremendous role of this stimulus has been proved by the entire history of socialist construction in our country.

Now if all producers are united by a single aim and common interests, and if they work on communal means of production, relations between them can be neither relations of exploitation nor relations of competition; they can only be relations of comrades with equal rights working for the common cause or, to put it another way, relations of comradely cooperation and allround mutual assistance. These new relations of people engaged in the process of production also affect their relations in the suprastructural sphere: relations between classes, between social groups, between nations within a country, and finally, between states within the framework of the world socialist system.

The experience of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries has visibly confirmed the prediction of Marx and Engels that the abolition of exploitation of one man by another will also abolish the exploitation of one nation by another, and that, as class antagonism disappears, hostile relations between nations will also vanish of their own accord. The new principles, both in the home and foreign policy of the socialist states, are deeply rooted in the economic nature of the new society.

The efforts of millions of producers who pursue a single aim according to the laws of phenomena in the social, economic and psychological spheres, must be coordinated. Marx and Engels, characterising the economy of the new society in relation to this law, always pointed to systematised planning as its intrinsic feature. In the Principles of Communism, Engels writes that under socialism “all sections of production will be managed by entire society, i.e., will be operated in the social interest, according to a social plan, and with the participation of all members of society. Thus, this new social system will abolish competition and put association in its place.”

Association or, to put it another way, the collectivity of production, was countered by Engels to competition; systematised planning as an organic feature of association was contraposed to the anarchy of production organically linked with competition.

In Anti-Dühring Engels characterised the new society as “organised for cooperative work on a planned basis”.¹³ “With this recognition, at last, of the real nature of the productive forces of today,” Engels writes, “the social anarchy of production gives place to a social regulation of production upon a definite plan, according to the needs of the community and of each individual.”¹⁴ These ideas of Engels' were subsequently developed by Lenin and our Party on a basis of generalising from the experience gained in building socialism and became the cornerstone of the theory and practice of socialist planning.

Engels, like Marx, paid much attention to questions of distribution, examining them in close connection with the development of production. On the one hand, Engels stressed that “distribution in so far as it is governed by purely economic considerations, will be regulated by the interests of production, and that production is most encouraged by a mode of distribution which allows all members of society to develop, maintain and exercise their capacities with maximum universality”.¹⁵ Engels here links up the aim of production in the new society with the form (system) of distribution. On the other hand, Engels emphasises that the method of distribution, apart from the decisive influence of the given social form, is also affected by the level of production development, by the quantity of products subject to distribution. This methodological proposition of Engels' gives a deeper understanding of the characteristics of distribution in the first and second phases of communism.

Indicating the common features of the communist formation as a whole (the absence of exploitation, the collective nature of production, a common goal of production, planned economy, etc.), Marx and Engels simultaneously drew attention to the need for examining this formation in its dialectical development, in motion. Engels stressed: “The so-called ‘socialist society’ in my opinion is not something given once for all and, like any other social system, it has to be regarded as subject to constant change and transformation.” This idea was further developed and perfected in those works of Marx and Engels which specifically expounded the theory of the two phases of communism; the first, lower phase (socialism), and the second, higher phase (communism). In the writings devoted to this question, the classics of Marxism also analysed certain characteristics of each phase, particularly the first, which are determined by the insufficient development of the productive forces. One of these distinctions, analysed by Marx in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, is distribution according to quantity and quality of work.

At the same time, the classics of Marxism did not think that they could foresee all the possible concrete forms of the future society's development and they did not set themselves such a task; but they elaborated and formulated the initial methodological postulates of the scientific communism which revolutionary parties of the proletariat could utilise for the solution of all the main historical problems facing them; thus, Marx and Engels laid the cornerstone of the theory of building a new society which was subsequently developed, gaining from the experience of socialist construction in the USSR and later in other countries.

“FROM THE KINGDOM OF NECESSITY INTO THE KINGDOM OF FREEDOM”

Engels called the transition from capitalism to communism the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom. This proposition does not mean that under communism economic laws lose their objective nature and economic necessity vanishes. Economic laws, both in the first and in the second phase of communist formation, are objective laws which have to be taken into account. But while it is inherent in capitalism to obey laws of the scattered actions of private individuals, of producers acting in opposition to each other, of mutual struggle and the oppression of the weak by the strong, the economic laws of socialism are collective production, the united actions of people, their all-embracing cooperation in achieving a common aim. But this means that under capitalism, even if people are aware to this or that degree of the laws of social evolution, they nevertheless remain slaves of their own dissociated actions. Under communism, however, since the producers act as a single entity and strive for a single aim, they rise above nature and the uncontrolled forces of society and place the social forces under collective control; and so the result of their united actions increasingly coincides with their hypotheses and aims. “The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of man, who for the first time becomes the real, conscious lord of nature, because he has now become master of his own social organisation. The laws of his own social action, hitherto standing face to face with man as laws of nature foreign to, and dominating him, will then be used with full understanding, and so mastered by him.”¹⁶

The experience of building the new society in the Soviet Union and in other socialist countries has corroborated this prediction by Engels. It has been proved that the efficiency of the collective labour of the producers is directly dependent on the degree of comprehension of economic laws and on thorough penetration into the inner workings of their mechanism. A profound understanding of socialism's economic laws is the principle task of the builders of the new society.

But comprehension of laws is only a necessary prerequisite for raising the efficiency of human action. Engels emphasised this thought as applied to the conditions of capitalism: “Mere knowledge, even if it went much further and deeper than that of bourgeois economic science, is not enough to bring social forces under the domination of society. What is above all necessary for this, is a social act.”¹⁷ In this context, a “social act” means the socialist revolution. But Engels's thought in a definite sense is also applicable to socialism, namely, here it is not enough to understand a law; it is necessary to be able to make use of it. But for this purpose “social act” is needed in the sense of properly organising the collective efforts of millions of producers equipped with knowledge and inspired with the ideas of communism.

Engels voiced the profound thought that economic laws are laws of action of social forces in the sphere of production. Just as the laws of natural science are laws of action or interaction of various forces of nature, the laws of political economy are laws of action or interaction of the social forces of production. This means that economic laws include not only the objective necessity but also the objective possibility which can be utilised to greater or smaller effect, and it is on our knowledge and on our ability to use this opportunity, that the success of all our activity largely depends. “Active social forces”, Engels wrote, “work exactly like natural forces: blindly, forcibly, destructively, so long as we do not understand, and reckon with them. But when once we understand them, when once we grasp their action, their direction, their effects, it depends only upon ourselves to subject them more and more to our own will and by means of them to reach our own ends.”¹⁸

This proposition has truly universal significance, and is fully applicable to the economic laws operating in socialist society. Let us take, for example, the law of distribution according to work done. It reflects the existence of a mighty social force, new for its nature, the material interest of the workers in the development of social production. If we do not consider this force in every sector of economic activity, then we are faced with processes like fast personnel turnover and a slowing down or even a decline in labour productivity. Conversely, due consideration for this same force is a powerful asset for increasing labour productivity and the efficiency of social production.

An approach to economic laws as laws of the action and interaction of diverse social forces enables us to deduce that they can be measured, can be expressed in qualitative relationships. By this means, the possibility is opened for applying mathematical methods to economic theory and practice, thus creating a basis for the application of progressive methods (electronic computer techniques) in planning and managing the national economy.

The immense theoretical legacy left by Marx and Engels was taken over by Lenin and by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and further developed on the basis of the experience of the Great October Revolution and socialist construction. This legacy has served and continues to serve, the international communist and working-class movement.

Notes

1. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 91.

2. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 2, p. 22.

3. Frederick Engels, Anti-Dühring, Moscow, 1962, p. 207.

4. K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Correspondence, Moscow, p. 437.

5. K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 1, Moscow, 1958, p. 53.

6. F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, Moscow, 1962, p. 384.

7. Ibid., p. 382.

8. Ibid., p. 381.

9. K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 435.

10. Frederick Engels, Anti-Dühring, p. 208.

11. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 6, p. 68.

12. See V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 9, p. 121.

13. Frederick Engels, Op. cit., p. 208.

14. Ibid., p. 383.

15. Ibid., p. 276.

16. Frederick Engels, Op. cit., p. 388.

17. Ibid., p. 434.

18. Ibid., p. 383.