ОБЩЕСТВЕННОЕ БЫТИЕ И ОБЩЕСТВЕННОЕ СОЗНАНИЕ
Общественное бытие и общественное сознание
Под общественным бытием марксизм понимает условия материальной жизни общества, главным образом способ производства, а также экономический строй общества. Под общественным сознанием – философские, политические, религиозные взгляды и т. п. Вопрос о взаимоотношении общественного бытия и общественного сознания – основной вопрос философии применительно к общественным явлениям. Диалектический материализм рассматривает бытие как первичное, а сознание как вторичное; сознание есть отражение материи, природы в мозгу человека, являющемся высшим продуктом развития природы. Исторический материализм даёт такое же решение вопроса об отношении общественного бытия к общественному сознанию, к идеям, теориям, взглядам и т. д. Общественное бытие является первичным, определяет общественное сознание, духовную жизнь общества. Каким является бытие общества, какими являются условия материальной жизни общества, такими являются и идеи, теории, политические взгляды, политические учреждения общества. До Маркса господствующим было идеалистическое понимание истории. Основу, двигательную силу общественного развития идеалисты видели в общественном сознании (идеях, теориях, убеждениях людей) или в «абсолютной идее», боге и пр. Маркс, распространив диалектический материализм на область общественных явлений, установил, что общественное бытие определяет общественное сознание. Это было величайшим открытием, которое превратило знания об обществе в подлинную науку. Вместе с тем марксизм показал огромную мобилизующую, преобразующую и организующую роль передовых общественных идей в развитии материальной жизни общества. Передовые идеи, появившись на свет, становятся величайшей активной силой, помогают новому строю ликвидировать старый экономический базис и старые классы. (См. также: Базис и надстройка.)
Social Being and Social Consciousness
Two interconnected and interacting aspects, material and spiritual, of society's life. Marxism understands social being as the material life of society, the production of material wealth and the relations (in class society, class relations) people enter in the process of production. Social consciousness is the views, concepts, ideas, the political, legal, aesthetic, ethical, and other theories, philosophy, morality, religion, and other forms of consciousness.
The relationship of social being and social consciousness is part of the fundamental question of philosophy as applied to society. Prior to Marxism the view prevailed in philosophy that consciousness plays a determining role in the life of society. Actually, however, consciousness is a reflection of the people's social being in their spiritual life. The first formulation of this proposition, which lays a solid scientific foundation under social science, was given by Marx and Engels. In The German Ideology they said: "Men, developing their material production and their material intercourse [i.e., relations of production], alter, along with this, their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life".
Marxism explained this fact of decisive importance for understanding the life of people and also demonstrated that the relationship of social being and social consciousness is not simple but complex and fluid and that it grows more complex simultaneously with social life. At the initial stages of history, social consciousness was formed as a direct product of the material relations of people; subsequently, with the division of society into classes and the appearance of politics, law, and political struggle, social being acted in a determining way on the minds of people through a mass of intermediate links like the state and state system, legal and political relations, etc., which also exerted a great influence on social consciousness. In these conditions the direct deduction of social consciousness from material relations leads to vulgarisation and simplification.
At the same time Marxism demands understanding of, and consideration for, the great role of social consciousness and its influence on the development of social being itself. The absolute counterposing of these two sides of the people's life holds true only within the framework of the fundamental question of what is primary and what is secondary. Outside of it, such absolute contrasting is meaningless. In certain periods the role of social consciousness can and does become decisive, although ultimately it is determined and conditioned by social being.
The diverse forms of social consciousness, for all their dependence on social being, possess relative independence. The latter is expressed in the fact that changes in the material life of society never create new products of social consciousness, because spiritual concepts—scientific, philosophical, artistic, and other ideas—depend on the data accumulated earlier and are also subject to a definite intrinsic logic of development. Moreover, changes in material relations cannot cause instantaneous automatic changes of the social consciousness because people's spiritual concepts possess a considerable power of inertia, and only struggle between new and old concepts leads to the victory of those which are called into being by the main requirements of changed material life, by new being.
The Marxist doctrine of social being and social consciousness is of great methodological importance; it helps to formulate problems of social life scientifically and to solve them in the course of practical activity.
Общественное бытие
См. в ст. Бытие.