МОРАЛЬ КОММУНИСТИЧЕСКАЯ

Morality, Communist

The aggregate of principles and standards of conduct of the builders of communist society. The objective criterion of Communist Morality is the fight for the victory of communist society. Its fundamental principles as stipulated in the CPSU Programme are as follows: devotion to the cause of communism; increase of social wealth by labour; a high sense of public duty; collectivism; humanism; internationalism; an uncompromising attitude to violations of communist moral standards, etc. (see Moral Code of the Builder of Communism).

The historical and theoretical basis of Communist Morality is the world outlook and morality of the working class, which include the simple and high moral standards handed down by the progressive classes of the past. At the same time the working class has put forward its own ethical standards, such as class solidarity, internationalism and collectivism, striving for the emancipation of the working people. Through the working class Communist Morality inherits all the progressive standards of human morality. Thus, Communist Morality is the highest degree of moral progress of humanity.

The standards of Communist Morality are not confined to people's behaviour; they are active factors in transforming society, in educating and re-educating man, in the sense that through people's conduct they influence the formation of communist social institutions and the whole course of social development. When the standards of Communist Morality become universal, they will gradually make superfluous many links in the legislative and administrative regulation of the relations between the individual and society. Human behaviour dictated by consciousness of public duty will exclude all forms of external compulsion and will lead to genuine freedom of the individual. The natural replacement of the code of laws and forms of the administration by the standards of Communist Morality will be a revolution in the history of morality. It will also lead to the abrogation of the principle of compulsion.

At present the maturing standards of Communist Morality are confronted with non-communist morality along two lines: inside socialist society, where the old and obsolete standards exist as survivals of the past, resulting from noncompliance with, and violation of, the laws obtaining in society, this giving birth to amoral actions and crime; outside socialist society, where Communist Morality is opposed to the morality of bourgeois society. Communist Morality is being formed in this complicated struggle and construction as the future morality of the whole of humanity (see Morality, Ethics).