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Saint-Simon, Claude-Henri de Rouvroy (1760–1825)

French utopian socialist. The son of a count, he was brought up by Jean d'Alembert; during the French Revolution was close to the Jacobins; took part in the War of Independence of the United States. Saint-Simon subscribed to the views of the French materialists, opposed deism and idealism, particularly German idealism, and put up against them "physicism", i.e., a study of nature. He resolutely upheld determinism, extending it to the development of human society, and paid special attention to substantiating the idea that history is governed by laws. Saint-Simon held that history must contribute to human progress as much as the natural sciences.

Each social system is a step forward in history, but the driving forces of social development are progress of scientific knowledge, morality, and religion. Correspondingly, history passes through three phases: theological (the period of the domination of religion, which covers the slave and feudal societies), metaphysical (the period of the fall of the feudal and theological systems), and positive (the future social system based on science). His idealist approach to history did not prevent Saint-Simon from expounding the idea that social progress is an objective process and advancing surmises on the role of property and classes in the development of society. Moreover, his sociological concept helped to show that every new social system springs naturally from preceding historical development.

According to Saint-Simon, the society of the future will be based on scientifically organised and planned large-scale industry, but with the preservation of private property and classes. The dominating role in it will be played by science and industry, by scientists and industrialists. Among the latter Saint-Simon put also the workers, merchants, and bankers. Planning of industry will be done in the interests of the majority of society's members, especially the poor and the lowly. All must be given the right to work; each man works according to his ability. Particularly important is the surmise that the future society instead of ruling over people will administer things and manage production.

The utopian nature of the views of Saint-Simon stands out in his failure to understand the historic role of the proletariat as the builder of the new society and of the revolution, as the means of transforming the old society, and in the naive hope that by propaganda of a "positive" philosophy it will be possible to achieve rational organisation of the people's life. After his death, his doctrine was advocated by B.P. Enfantin (1796-1864) and A. Bazard (1791-1832). Before long, however, the school of Saint-Simonists degenerated into a religious sect, which accentuated the weak sides of the doctrine.

Main works: Lettres d'un habitant de Genève à ses contemporaines (1803), Mémoire sur la science de l'homme (1813-16), Travail sur la gravitation universelle (1821-22), Du système Industriel (1821), Catéchisme des industriels (1823-24), and Nouveau christianisme (1825).

Sankhya

One of the major orthodox systems of ancient Indian philosophy. Being a dualist doctrine, Sankhya recognises the existence of two prime elements in the Universe: material, prakrti (matter, nature) and spiritual, purusha (consciousness). Purusha is neither the supreme God, the creator, nor the universal spirit. It is the eternal, unchanging individual consciousness which contemplates both the course of life of a living being in which it finds abode and the process of evolution of the Universe taken as a whole.

Prakrti is in constant change and development and is subject to the law of cause-effect connection. All changes of prakrti depend on the correlation in which the three gunas are represented in it, the main material properties of the gunas being sattva (clarity, purity), tamas (inertia) and rajas (activity). A combination of these gunas produces the entire diversity of nature. Contact of prakrti with the purusha determines the beginning of the evolution of the individual and the Universe.

Each living being consists of three parts: purusha, the subtle body, and the gross material body. The subtle body comprises the intellect, sense-organs, and the relevant elements and emotions of the Ego. The subtle body is the concentration of karma (see Hinduism) and follows the purusha until the latter achieves complete liberation from being incarnated in any substance. The gross material body consists of material elements and perishes with the death of a being.

The foundation of the Sankhya system is ascribed to the legendary wise man Kapila, but the first systematic exposition of Sankhya, Sankhya-karika, was given by Ishvara-Krishna in the middle of the 1st millennium of our era.

Santayana, George (1863–1952)

An American philosopher and writer, proponent of critical realism. Admitting the objective existence of the material world, Santayana held that only "essences" could be cognised, i.e., real or possible qualities of things which appear in cognition as signs of objects. In his understanding of the "essences" Santayana was close to Plato and Husserl. Santayana regarded consciousness as an epiphenomenon: consciousness is not a reflection of reality but more or less significant poetry.

In aesthetics he defined the beautiful as "objectification of pleasure". In ethics supported escapism: happiness should be sought in liberating the spirit from the flesh, from the world and knowledge. In sociology (Dominations and Powers, 1951), Santayana put forward a theory which explains the development of society by the instinct of self-preservation and the striving for material benefits, etc. In political science Santayana was an antidemocrat who favoured the power of the elite. Rejecting theological dogmas, Santayana recognised religion as the poetry of social behaviour.

Main work: Life of Reason (5 vols., 1905-12).

Sarasvati, pseudonym Dayananda Mulshankar (1824–1883)

Indian idealist philosopher and religious reformer, founder of Arya Samaj (Bombay, 1875), a reformist Hindu society, preaching "return to the Vedas" and revival of the ancient religion of the Aryans. He attacked idolatry, polytheism, domination of the priests, superstition, retrograde customs, etc., and strove to "cleanse" Hinduism from medieval superimpositions. Religious reformism combined quaintly in Sarasvati with his ideas of enlightenment.

While advocating universal scientific education, he at once sought to present science as a projection of the Vedas. In philosophy, Sarasvati was a follower of Madhva's dvaita Vedanta, on the basis of which he sought to conciliate all the six main philosophical systems of antiquity. He attempted to oppose the ancient Indian idealised varna system to the medieval feudal and caste system and contemporary Western bourgeois civilisation. Constitutional monarchy was his political ideal. Sarasvati advocated independent national development for India and was a spokesman of the Indian bourgeoisie, then in the process of formation, to whose interests he adapted the ancient philosophical and political ideas.

Sartre, Jean-Paul (1905–1980)

French philosopher and writer. Sartre is an exponent of so-called "atheistic existentialism". His main works: L'Être et le Néant (1943), L'Existentialisme est un Humanisme (1947), Critique de la raison dialectique (1960). His views were shaped under the influence of Husserl and Heidegger. There is also a definite connection between his philosophy and the doctrine of Kierkegaard; Freud's method of psychoanalysis also exerted a certain influence on Sartre.

Anthropocentrism and subjectivism are characteristic of his philosophy. He conceives man as "being for himself" from which there are such derivative forms as "being in itself" (i.e., the objective world), space and time, quantity and quality, etc. Thus, the objective world, being irrational and determinated, is the opposite of human activity, which is free and does not depend on objective laws. Such an idealist concept of freedom (its essence is expressed in the principle: "Man is what he makes himself") underlies Sartrian ethics.

In a number of his works Sartre makes the futile attempt to prove existentialism with the help of Marxist philosophy. Sartre was in the ranks of the French Resistance during the 2nd World War; he is waging an active struggle against the revival of fascism and for peace; Sartre is a member of the World Peace Council.

Scepticism

A philosophical conception questioning the possibility of objective knowledge of reality. Consistent Scepticism is close to agnosticism. Scepticism is most widespread in periods of social development when the old social ideals are already tottering, but the new ones have not yet asserted themselves.

As a philosophical doctrine, Scepticism emerged during the crisis of antique society (4th century B.C.) as a reaction to the preceding philosophical systems which had tried to explain the sensual world by means of contemplative arguments and in so doing had often contradicted one another. Scepticism reached its peak in the teachings of Pyrrho, Arcesilaus, Carneades, Aenesidemus, Sextus Empiricus, and others. Following the traditions of the sophists, the first sceptics drew attention to the relativity of human knowledge, the impossibility of proving it formally and its dependence on various circumstances (living conditions, the state of the sense-organs, the influence of traditions and habits, etc.).

Doubt as to the possibility of any generally recognised and demonstrable knowledge underlay the moral conception of antique Scepticism. The sceptics of old preached abstention from judgements for the sake of achieving complete peace of mind (ataraxia) and thereby happiness, the objective of philosophy. But the sceptics themselves by no means refrained from judgements. They wrote works criticising the contemplative philosophical dogmas and putting forward their tropes, or arguments, in support of Scepticism.

There were various sceptic tendencies in the philosophy of the 17th and 18th centuries. On the whole, Scepticism played an important role in refuting the dogmas of medieval ideology. The works of Montaigne, Charron, Bayle, and others questioned the arguments of the theologians, thus preparing the ground for the adoption of materialism. On the other hand, the Scepticism of Pascal, Hume, Kant, and others restricted the possibilities of reason in general and cleared the way for religious faith. In modern philosophy, the traditional arguments of Scepticism have been adopted for its own aims by positivism, which considers all judgements, generalisations, and hypotheses as useless if they cannot be tested by experience.

Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von (1775–1854)

German philosopher, third (in point of time) of the famous German classical idealists. Professor in Jena, Erlangen, and Berlin; member of the Munich Academy of Sciences. In the nineties he published a series of works on problems of the philosophy of nature. Using Kant's views and Leibniz's doctrine of living monads and the purpose in nature, Schelling introduced the idea of development into the understanding of nature.

In his System des transzendentalen Idealismus (1800) Schelling tried to combine Fichte's subjective idealism with the objective idealism of his own system. According to Schelling, philosophy must supply the answer to two questions: how does the development of unconscious-spiritual nature lead to the birth of consciousness? And, on the contrary, how does consciousness, which in itself is only a subject, become an object? The first question is answered by the "philosophy of nature", and the second by the doctrine of "transcendental idealism".

Schelling believed that his system differed from Fichte's subjective idealism, since to Fichte's tenet that the subjective is primary he opposed—in the philosophy of nature—investigation in which the objective is primary. By the subjective Schelling understood not the consciousness of the individual but the mind's direct contemplation of the object itself, or "intellectual intuition". Unlike Fichte, Schelling extended "intellectual intuition" to all levels of thinking ("reflection") of consciousness about its own activity. In developing this doctrine, Schelling joined the reactionary wing of the Romantic school, according to which intuition is the lot of only a few of the elect.

As consciousness attains comprehension of its own spontaneity it understands itself to be both free and subject to necessity. The regular process in which spirit and nature, subject and object, freedom and necessity, are combined is manifested and operates necessarily through the free action of individuals. However, to Schelling, this process is not open to knowledge, but only to faith, and the guarantee of historical and moral progress lies only in God. Schelling's doctrine, conceived as dialectics of necessity and freedom in history but developed on the basis of idealism and mysticism, turned out in reality to be fatalism and complete denial of historical prevision.

From the "philosophy of nature" and the system of "transcendental idealism" Schelling went over to the "philosophy of identity", a new form of objective idealism. The main problem in Schelling's doctrine becomes the idea of the identity of object and subject, the supreme law is declared to be the law of the identity of indivisible reason with itself. The process of comprehending identity, the transition from the indivisible to the multiple takes place in the absolute.

Schelling's doctrine of freedom was further developed in Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit (1809). Together with Fichte, Schelling understood freedom as recognised necessity; he saw in freedom not the heroic deed of an individual but the achievement of society. However, in contradistinction to this view, Schelling mystifies the problem of freedom, connecting it with the problem of evil in the world; he proclaims purely individual principle which has its origin in the transcendental world "comprehensible by reason" to be the ultimate root of freedom.

From about 1815, Schelling passed over to a new and final phase in his development: to the mystical "philosophy of mythology and revelation". His teaching in this period is distinguished by extreme intensification of mystical elements. He brands all philosophies based upon reason; to them he counterpoises the "philosophy of revelation", which seeks truth beyond the limits of reason—in "religious experience". The public propaganda of the "philosophy of revelation" as developed by Schelling failed. The young Engels, in brilliant pamphlets, explained to his contemporaries the reactionary contents of Schelling's "philosophy of mythology and revelation".

Schiller, Ferdinand Canning Scott (1864–1937)

English pragmatist, professor at Oxford and Los Angeles. Schiller called his variety of pragmatism "humanism". He regarded truth as man's creation, and declared all human knowledge to be subjective. Following James' understanding of truth, Schiller nevertheless believed that only good results can be the criterion of truth. He understood "reality" as "experience", as a plastic shapeless mass, subject to the influence of man's will: "the world is what we make it". Thus Schiller arrives at solipsism, declaring it to be theoretically possible, although inconvenient in everyday life.

In his "metaphysics" he combined subjective idealism with evolution theory, which he regarded as a purposeful process directed by divine power. Schiller pragmatically interpreted formal logic, replacing it by the "logic of application". He took the laws and forms of logic to be postulates and convenient fictions. From the position akin to that of Nietzsche's he acclaimed fascism as a means of creating the "superman".

Main work: Humanism (1903).

Schiller, Johann Friedrich (1759–1805)

German poet and aesthete. His views were formed under the influence of Rousseau's and Lessing's ideas, the movement of Sturm und Drang. In 1781, Schiller published the drama Die Räuber, full of protest against despotism and social injustice, and then the Kabale und Liebe, which, in Engels' words, was "the first German politically tendentious drama". Schiller acclaimed the French Revolution, but later he was disappointed in it.

His drama and philosophical lyrics are penetrated with humanism and hate for tyranny; they evince great profundity in portraying feelings and characters. But in his search for an abstract aesthetic ideal, the poet departed from reality in some of his works. In the nineties, Schiller became a follower of Kant's philosophy and aesthetics, but he did not follow him in everything (for instance, he criticised the formalism of Kant's categorical imperative). He regarded art as a means of moulding the full man, freely creating good, and considered that only art helps man to achieve real freedom. Although his demands for freedom were purely spiritual, they constituted a protest against the feudal regime.

Schiller's main philosophical works are: Philosophische Briefe (1786), Über Anmut und Würde (1793), Briefe über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen (1795).

Schleiden, Matthias Jakob (1804–1881)

German biologist, professor at the University of Jena. He was one of the authors of the cell theory (see Cell); investigated the structural unity and development of organisms. Schleiden's philosophical views were close to those of Kant.

Main work: Beiträge zur Phytogenesis (1838).

Schleiermacher, Friedrich Ernst Daniel (1768–1834)

German Protestant theologian and philosopher. He was for many years a preacher, a professor at the University of Berlin. Schleiermacher's views are a combination of the ideas of Spinoza, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Jacobi, and others. His philosophy was dominated by Romantic, anti-Enlightenment trends (see Romantic School). He deduced religion and morality from the inner disposition of the subject.

According to Schleiermacher, the basis of infinite being is the unity of the world, or God, in whom all contradictions are reconciled. In contrast to Hegel, Schleiermacher said the laws of dialectics were not universal. For him, dialectics expressed only the movement of knowledge. He further developed the criticism of the Old Testament as begun by Spinoza, extending it to the New Testament. His ideas stimulated further criticism of all the sources of Christianity (see Young Hegelians). None of these criticisms, however, went beyond the framework of the religious world outlook. His philosophico-religious views greatly influenced the ideology of Protestantism.

Main works: Reden über die Religion (1799), Monologen (1810).

Schlick, Moritz (1882–1936)

Austrian philosopher and physicist, one of the leaders of logical positivism and founder of the Vienna Circle. As a physicist he studied the problems of theoretical optics, was one of the first interpreters of the theory of relativity, 1917. In his book, Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre (1918), he formulated ideas which were later adopted by logical positivists, particularly the teaching on the analytic a priori nature of logic and mathematics and the principle of verification.

Besides defending the general conception of logical positivism (Positivismus und Realismus, 1932), he tried, from the idealist position, to analyse special philosophical problems (space and time, causality and probability) and ethics (significance of value judgements, free will). He put forward a non-scientific theory on the "inexpressibility of the content", according to which "immediate experience", the content of our knowledge, cannot be transmitted to another. For him, only "structural relations of experience" can be expressed in words and transmitted. He criticised Carnap's and Neurath's conventionalism.

Scholasticism

The name given to medieval "school philosophy" whose followers—the scholastics—tried to give a theoretical substantiation to the religious world outlook. Scholasticism rested on the ideas of ancient philosophy (Plato, and especially, Aristotle, whose views Scholasticism adapted to its own purposes). The dispute over universals was prominent in medieval Scholasticism.

Historically, Scholasticism is divided into several periods: early Scholasticism (9th-13th centuries) was under the influence of Neo-Platonism (Erigena, Anselm of Canterbury, Avicenna, Averroes, Maimonides). "Classical" Scholasticism (14th-15th centuries) was dominated by "Christian Aristotelianism" (Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas). The disputes between the Catholic (Suarez, Cajetan) and Protestant (Melanchthon) theologians, which took place in late Scholasticism (15th-16th centuries) were ultimately a reflection of the struggle waged by the Catholic Church against the Reformation.

The 19th century saw the period of neoscholasticism, which unites various schools of Catholic philosophy (Thomism, the Platonic-Augustinian school, the Franciscan school, etc.).

Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788–1860)

German idealist philosopher; taught in Berlin and Frankfurt on the Main (from 1832). Main work: Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (1819). Schopenhauer became famous only after the revolution of 1848, when the bourgeoisie, frightened by the revolutionary people, turned to reaction. The influence of Schopenhauer's ideas increased particularly in the epoch of imperialism.

He was an enemy of materialism and dialectics; counterpoised metaphysical idealism to the scientific understanding of the world. Having accepted Kant's views of the appearance as notions conditioned by consciousness, he rejected the "thing-in-itself" and maintained that blind and irrational will is the essence of the world. His voluntaristic idealism is a form of irrationalism. The will which rules the world excludes any laws of nature or society and hence the possibility of scientific cognition. Denial of historical progress is another peculiarity of Schopenhauer's voluntarism. His world outlook, permeated as it was by hate of revolution and the people, is utterly pessimistic.

His aesthetic views had great influence; he fought progressive, realistic art and preached aestheticism which scorns reality and is alien to the vital interests of the people. He set off desirelessness and passive contemplation of artistic intuition against the meaningful creative art. The summit of Schopenhauer's philosophy was the mystic ideal of nirvana—absolute serenity, killing the "will to live", which he borrowed from Buddhism. His views constituted the ideological basis of Nietzsche's philosophy.

Schrödinger, Erwin (1887–1961)

Austrian physicist, professor at Dublin University (from 1940), foreign member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (from 1934). Developing the teaching of de Broglie, he founded wave, or quantum, mechanics. In 1926, he discovered the basic (the so-called wave) equation of quantum mechanics. His outstanding physical idea was the wave theory of matter. In the unified field theory and the generalised theory of gravity, he tried to show that the corpuscular structure of matter, its discontinuity, are the result of its wave structure, of continuity.

Schrödinger was also interested in statistical physics, biophysics, the history of science, and philosophy. His main philosophical idea was the conviction that subject and object are indivisible, that there is a mistaken notion of their division and that the outside world is "objectivised" by modern philosophy and science. For this reason Schrödinger turned to ancient philosophy, in which, according to him, there was no such conflict, beginning with the hylozoism of Ionic natural philosophy and ending with the doctrine of the Vedas. From this position Schrödinger interpreted the results of modern science, especially the quantum theory.

Schwann, Theodor (1810–1882)

German biologist, professor at the Louvain and Liege universities in Belgium. One of the founders of the cell theory. Main work: Mikroskopische Untersuchungen über die Übereinstimmung in der Struktur und dem Wachstum der Tiere und Pflanzen (1839). Elements of deism and teleology are inherent in his philosophical views.

Science

A form of social consciousness which represents a historically developed system of knowledge whose truth is verified and constantly made more precise in the course of society's practical experience. The power of scientific knowledge lies in its general character, universality, necessity, and objective truth. In contrast to art, which reflects the world in artistic images, science cognises it in concepts by means of logical thinking. In direct opposition to religion, which gives a distorted, fantastic picture of reality, science bases its conclusions on facts. The strength of science lies in its generalisations; behind the accidental and chaotic it finds and studies objective laws, without the knowledge of which conscious and purposive practical activity is impossible.

The needs of material production, the requirements of society's development are the driving force of science. The progress of science consists in its passing on from the disclosure of relatively simple causal-consequential relations and essential connections to the formulation of more profound and fundamental laws of being and thinking. The dialectics of scientific cognition, new discoveries and theories do not cancel out former results and do not negate their objective truth; they only specify the bounds of their application and determine their place in the general system of scientific knowledge.

Science is closely connected with the philosophical world outlook, which arms it with the knowledge of the most general laws governing the development of the objective world, the theory of knowledge, and a method of investigation. Idealism leads science into the blind alley of agnosticism and subordinates it to religion. In present-day conditions only the philosophy of dialectical materialism is capable of ensuring the correct approach to reality and opening the way to broad and fruitful generalisations.

Arising out of the requirements of society's productive activity and subject to the constant stimulating influence of the latter, science in its turn greatly affects the course of society's development. Present-day production is inconceivable without science, whose role is constantly growing. Being brought closer to production in the process of building the material and technical basis of communism, science is becoming a direct productive force of society.

Scientific Prevision

Prediction of natural and social phenomena, not yet observed or not yet established by experiment, based on a generalisation of theoretical and experimental data and consideration of the objective laws governing development. Scientific prevision can be of two kinds: (1) it may concern existing phenomena which are unknown or have not yet been observed experimentally (for example, prediction of anti-particles, new chemical elements, deposits of minerals, etc.); (2) it may bear on phenomena which must arise only in the future given definite conditions (for example, the prediction by Marx and Engels of the inevitable downfall of capitalism and the victory of the communist formation, Lenin's conclusion concerning the possibility of building socialism in one single country, the propositions of the Programme of the CPSU about the main features of future communist society and the ways of building it).

Scientific prevision is always based on the extension of cognised laws of nature and society to a sphere of phenomena which are unknown or have not yet arisen, a sphere in which these laws should preserve their force. Scientific prevision inevitably also contains elements of supposition, especially as regards concrete future events and their dates. This is determined by the emergence, in the course of development, of qualitatively new causal connections and possibilities which did not exist previously and, insofar as society is concerned, by the especial complexity of its development because in society the agents are people endowed with a mind, individual characters, etc., as a result of which unexpected situations may arise.

Practice is always the final criterion of the correctness of scientific prevision. Denial of the objective laws of reality (agnosticism, scepticism), also leads to denial of scientific prevision, as the unavoidable outcome of the idealist theories of social development. On the other hand, recognition of scientific prevision is based on a materialist understanding of history.

Sechenov, Ivan Mikhailovich (1829–1905)

Father of Russian physiology and founder of materialist psychology in Russia. He was professor of the Medico-Surgical Academy (1860–1870) and Moscow University (1891–1901), Honorary Member of the Academy of Sciences since 1904. Sechenov was an irreconcilable fighter against idealism in physiology and psychology. His philosophical and socio-political views were greatly influenced by the Russian revolutionary democrats, particularly Chernyshevsky.

In his scientific activity Sechenov was guided by three main methodological principles—the proposition on the material unity of the world, the principle of determinism and the genetic approach to the object studied, particularly to psyche. Sechenov initiated experimental physiological investigations of the central nervous system, in particular the brain. His major discoveries were made in the physiology of the nervous system, i.e., research into central inhibition and the properties of "inertness" of the nerve tissue.

The extension of the reflectory principle to the activity of the brain (Reflexes of the Brain and Who and How Should Elaborate Psychology) marked the beginning of the reflectory theory of the mental activity of animals and man. He introduced new concepts (the "sensory instrument", or analyser, acquired reflexes, etc.) which served as points of departure for Pavlov in creating the doctrine of higher nervous activity.

Sechenov made an important contribution to the natural scientific treatment of such problems of materialist epistemology as the nature of the sensory reflection and its cognitive function (First Lecture at Moscow University, Impressions and Reality, Object, Thought and Reality), as the connection and transition from sensory reflection to thinking and the nature of thought processes (Elements of Thinking), the role of objective, practical activity in shaping images and mental abilities, and a number of other problems.

Secondary Qualities

See Primary and Secondary Qualities.

Sextus Empiricus (c. 200–250)

Greek philosopher and physician, follower of Aenesidemus. The extant works of Sextus Empiricus—Hypotyposes pyrrhoniennes, Adversus mathematicos—sum up the arguments used by ancient sceptics (see Scepticism) to refute the idea of "dogmatic" philosophy about the possibility of proving indisputable knowledge. Demonstrating the impossibility of any universal obligatory scientific, theological, ethical, and other truths, Sextus Empiricus advised philosophers to refrain from any solutions and knowledge in order to achieve complete peace of the mind and bliss, the realisation of which is the aim of philosophy. Sextus Empiricus proposed that man be guided in life by natural requirements, inclinations, habits, laws, traditions, and above all by common sense.

Self-Consciousness

The process of man singling himself out from the objective world, awareness of his relation to the world, awareness of himself as a personality, his behaviour, actions, thoughts, sentiments, desires, and interests. An animal is identical with its activity, it changes nature only by virtue of its presence, i.e., is related to it directly. Man, however, mediates his relation to nature by his social practical activity and above all by the use of tools. Thanks to labour he is singled out from the natural connections: in the process of labour he correlates his aims and tasks with the natural material and takes into account his own possibilities. By changing nature, he changes himself. By creating products in the process of labour, man, as it were, doubles himself, and in the object of his activity contemplates his handiwork. He differentiates himself as producer from the objects of his activity.

But since labour is always of a social character, man begins to be aware of himself as a particle, a cell of the given historical system, regarding another man as similar to himself and seeing in him a man. Language plays an important part in the shaping of self-consciousness because language is the direct reality of thought and discharges its function for man only because it exists for others.

Self-consciousness (as an earnest, as an inclination) arises simultaneously with consciousness as a derivative from it, but is displayed at a considerably higher stage in the development of mankind. At first man differentiates himself from the object, becomes aware of the object of his activity and of himself as a subject only in the process of acting on things. Then self-consciousness is manifested as a generic, collective element: man is still fully absorbed by the genus which carries human essence. As the gentile system declines, civilisation appears and the individual emerges, the self-consciousness of the personality as such arises.

In the history of philosophy, self-consciousness was an active principle and it frequently exhausted the understanding of the practical activity of man (see Fichte, Hegel, Young Hegelians). Moreover, self-consciousness was frequently regarded as a creative element in relation to the objective world. In reality self-consciousness, being an active principle, can be understood only as a result of man's productive activity in society and as its aspect; it depends on the reflection of the objective world and is determined by it.

Self-Motion

Movement which has its source and cause in the moving thing itself. From the very beginning the conception of self-motion was the opposite of "external impulse" as the sole cause of changes in nature. In the history of philosophy the origin and development of the category of self-motion was associated, first, with the question of the "beginning" of the world, the prime cause of world processes and, second, with difficulties in explaining the actual processes of development.

Materialists tried to explain movement by forces and properties inherent in nature itself: combination and division of the primary elements (Ionian philosophy), "love" and "hate" (Empedocles), atoms and void (Leucippus and Democritus). Deduction of change from an ideal transcendental element was characteristic of idealist systems (Plato). The problem of understanding the cause of movement became especially acute with the appearance of the Christian dogma of the creation of the world. To prove the self-motion of the world it was necessary to reveal the source and mechanism of its movement within itself, but theology placed this source outside of it (activity of God).

The mechanistic concept of causality (and change) is theoretically (methodologically) untenable because it cannot withstand the idea of the "prime impulse" (Newtonian mechanics) and is incapable of explaining real processes of development. A radical transformation of the method of thinking was required for a scientific explanation of self-motion: dialectics had to come to the aid of materialism.

The Spinozian idea of causa sui (cause of itself), the Leibniz principle of the monad as the self-moving and self-determining substance, the Kantian ideas of the development of the heavens, earth, and man, the evolution idea in Schelling's philosophy and, lastly, Hegel's idealist dialectics—all were the landmarks in developing the self-motion conception which consists of nothing else but "an exhibition of contradiction" (Hegel). Marxist philosophy, upholding the materialist approach to self-motion, emphasises that this category has a dialectical content, is incompatible with a mechanistic understanding of development (simple decrease, increase, repetition) and is inseparably connected with the dialectical conception of development as the unity of opposites.

Self-Realisation, Theory of

An objective idealist ethical theory of the 19th–20th centuries, according to which the moral demand made on man is that he "realise" in his actions his inner, strictly individual Ego; this Ego at the same time is in harmony with the absolute Ego, or the universal spirit, i.e., in essence with God. Thus, this theory actually avoids the problems of human development. In different variants this theory was expounded by the British objective idealists (Francis Bradley, Bernard Bosanquet, John Muirhead), the American personalists (Mary Calkins, Josiah Royce, William Hocking, Borden Bowne), and others.

Semantic Philosophy

See General Semantics.

Semantics

See Semiotic.

Semblance

The outward manifestation of the essence or, to be more exact, certain aspects of the essence of things as immediately perceived by the senses. The subjective factor in semblance lies in the fact that semblance gives only an inadequate, distorted expression of the essence of things (refraction observed when an object is immersed in water, apparent movement of the Sun round the Earth, etc.). It is incorrect, however, to treat semblance as purely subjective, for it is always in some way connected with objective reality, of which it is a manifestation. Even the subjective factor which distorts reality is often determined by objective factors. The task of cognition is to reduce semblance to reality and explain how the latter is manifested in semblance (see Essence and Appearance).

Semiotic

A science which engages in the comparative study of sign systems (see Sign), from the simplest signalisation systems to natural languages and formalised languages of science. The main functions of a sign system are: (1) the function of transmitting a communication or expressing sense (see Denotation and Sense); (2) the function of communication, i.e., ensuring understanding by the listeners (readers) of the transmitted communication, and also a motive to action, an emotional influence, etc.

The exercise of any of these functions presupposes a definite internal organisation of a sign system, i.e., the presence of different signs and laws of their combination. In conformity with this, three main divisions are singled out: (1) syntactics, or the study of the internal structure of the sign systems regardless of the functions they perform; (2) semantics which studies the sign systems as a means of expressing sense; (3) pragmatics which studies the relation of the sign systems to those who use them.

The biggest role in the development of semiotic methods is played by a study of systems possessing, on the one hand, sufficiently rich media for expressing sense, and on the other, a sufficiently clearly defined structure. Up to now such systems have been above all formalised languages of mathematics and particularly of mathematical logic. Metalogic is the most developed semiotic subject.

Semiotic studies promote the formalisation of new spheres of science (cf. the recently developing calculi in mathematical linguistics, experiments in formalising certain concepts of pragmatics, the concepts of "verse metre", etc.). The concepts and methods of semiotic acquire great importance in view of the development of the theory and practice of the rational storing and automatic processing of information; in this sphere semiotic comes in close contact with cybernetics.

The main principles of semiotic were first formulated by the American logician and mathematician Charles S. Peirce; subsequently they were expounded and systematised by the philosopher Charles Morris (Foundations of the Theory of Signs, 1938). Questions of semiotic were in fact considered as early as the 1920s by Polish logicians of the Lvov-Warsaw school.

Seneca, Lucius Annaeus (4 B.C.–65 A.D.)

Prominent exponent of Roman stoicism, the tutor of Nero who subsequently sentenced him to death. His numerous works and the biggest of them, Epistolae morales ad Lucilium, have been preserved in the original. Seneca adhered to the pantheism of the Greek stoics, i.e., regarded the world as a single material and rational whole and elaborated chiefly moral problems which, when properly solved, enable man to attain calm and undisturbed spirit (see Ataraxia). He sought to link his ethics, individualist in the main, with the tasks of society and the state. The ethics of Seneca exerted a great influence on the Christian ideology. Engels called Seneca the uncle of Christianity.

Sensation

The elementary result of the action of the objective world on man's sense-organs (analysers). Diverse factors of the environment (electro-magnetic oscillations, molecules of chemical substances, etc.) stimulate the peripheral part of an analyser, the receptor; the stimulus in the form of discrete impulses is transmitted along the nerve canals to the central part of the analyser, the cerebral cortex, where sensation arises. Thus, sensation is secondary in relation to material reality.

According to the specific character of the external stimuli, sensations are divided into separate groups: visual, tactile, auditory, gustatory, olfactory, etc. Each group of sensations possesses specific modality—a sum total of qualities incomparable with the qualities of sensations of other groups. Thus, colours do not resemble sounds, taste or smells. The most developed sensations are visual; next come tactile, auditory, gustatory, and olfactory.

A feature of the relation existing between the sensations and the properties of the objects of the material world causing them is that different properties of external objects may correspond to one and the same quality of sensation. The process of getting to know the objective world begins with sensation. In this process they perform two functions, first, separate sensations act as a signal; for example, colour signals the temperature of heated metal. The source of our knowledge of the temperature of a given body is not the colour itself but a correlation between colour and temperature known in advance. The second and most important function of sensation is that as part of the image given in perception it conveys connections and relations inherent in the objective world.

Sensation, like other forms of sensory contemplation, is the channel through which man is directly connected with the objective world. In his Materialism and Empirio-Criticism Lenin criticised the idealist interpretation of sensation.

Sensationalism

A doctrine in epistemology which considers sensations the sole source of knowledge. If sensations are regarded as a reflection of objective reality, consistent sensationalism under certain conditions leads to materialism (Holbach, Helvétius, Feuerbach). But if sensations are regarded only as subjective, behind which nothing exists or the unknowable thing-in-itself is posited, sensationalism leads to subjective idealism (Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Mach, Avenarius, Bogdanov).

Therefore sensationalism by itself is not yet a materialist line in philosophy. Although it played a big part in the development of materialist philosophy, its limitations made it often powerless in struggle against idealism. Sensation can become a necessary side of cognition only given its organic unity with other sides of the cognitive process: practice and abstract thinking (see Knowledge; Theory and Practice; Contemplation; Empiricism; Rationalism).

Separation of Powers

The teaching of the division of powers into legislative, executive, and judicial. Locke was the first to suggest the idea of the separation of powers; later it was developed by Montesquieu. The teaching of the separation of powers served as the ideological foundation of the alliance of the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy and of the limitation of absolutism by concentrating legislative power in the hands of bourgeois representative institutions. In the bourgeois state the separation of powers is purely formal; in a number of cases it is used to justify the "strong" presidential, executive power.

Set Theory

A branch of mathematics dealing with one of the main categories of philosophy, logic, and mathematics—the category of the infinite—by exact methods. It was founded by Georg Cantor. The subjects of set theory are the properties of sets (sum totals, classes, ensembles) which are for the most part infinite. The fundamental principle of the set theory is the establishment of different "orders" of infinity.

The classical set theory proceeds from the recognition of the applicability of the principles of logic, unquestionable in the sphere of the finite, to the infinite sets. However, as early as the end of the 19th century the development of the set theory brought to light difficulties, such as paradoxes, connected with the application of the laws of formal logic, particularly the law of the excluded middle to the infinite sets.

In the polemics that started in connection with this, some important epistemological problems of mathematical cognition were formulated: the nature of mathematical concepts, their relation to the real world, the concrete content of the concept of existence in mathematics, etc. In the course of these polemics there arose such trends in philosophy and mathematics as formalism, intuitionism, logicism. Special attention is deserved by the constructive trend in Soviet mathematics.

The methods of the set theory are largely employed in all fields of modern mathematics. They have significance as a matter of principle in the problems of the substantiation of mathematics, particularly for the modern form of the axiomatic method (see Axiom). All the problems of substantiating mathematics by logical means are nothing but problems of substantiation of the set theory. However, efforts to substantiate the set theory itself encounter difficulties which have not been overcome up to now.

Shelgunov, Nikolai Vasilyevich (1824–1891)

Russian revolutionary democrat and public figure, follower of Herzen, Belinsky, and Chernyshevsky. As a journalist he wrote on problems of history, politics, and economics; he was also an art critic and populariser of natural scientific knowledge. In his leaflets "To the Young Generation" and "To the Soldiers" (1861), he severely criticised the peasant reform and called for a peasant revolution.

He assisted in introducing Marxism into Russia. In his article "The Urban Proletariat in England and France" (1861) he enunciated the fundamental ideas of Engels' book The Condition of the Working Class in England, recalling its author as "one of the best and noblest of Germans", to whom "European economic literature owes its best work on the economic life of the English worker".

In his social views Shelgunov did not reach up to materialism, although he spoke of the role of the masses in history and of the significance of the development of production for social progress. He believed that Russia could pass over to socialism through the peasant commune. He criticised the doctrine of innate ideas from positions of materialist sensationalism. As an adherent of Chernyshevsky's aesthetic views, Shelgunov fought the "art for art's sake" theory.

Shelgunov's works—Usloviya progressa (The Conditions of Progress), 1863, Zemlya i organicheskaya zhizn (The Earth and Organic Life), 1863, Ubytochnost neznaniya (The Disadvantage of Ignorance), 1864, Pisma o vospitanii (Letters on Education), 1873–1874, and others—are devoted to philosophical problems. Shelgunov was arrested several times for his attacks against serfdom and its survivals.

Shevchenko, Taras Grigoryevich (1814–1861)

Ukrainian poet, artist, thinker, fighter against tsarism and serfdom, founder of the revolutionary democratic trend in the Ukrainian history of social thought. Born in a family of serfs, he was ransomed in 1838. Graduating from the Academy of Arts in 1845, he joined the following year a secret political organisation in Kiev. He was connected with the Petrashevsky group. In 1847, he was arrested, forced to serve in the army, and exiled. At the end of his exile (1857) he was drawn close to Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov and other staff members of the journal Sovremennik, who exerted a good influence upon him.

His poetical works The Dream, Caucasus, The Last Will, etc., and his activities were directed against the "gang of selfseeking landowners", and the "crowned hangman", meaning the tsar, and against the apologists for serfdom. Exposing the oppression of Russian landowners and the tsar, Shevchenko came out against the Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists, stood for the friendship of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples and fought for the development of the Ukrainian culture and language.

Shevchenko's world outlook was materialistic, since he held that spiritual power was unthinkable without matter; but mistakenly identifying materialism with its vulgar form, he did not call himself a materialist. Stressing the inevitability of the downfall of serfdom, Shevchenko considered the masses to be the decisive force in social development. He severely criticised both religion and the church. In aesthetics he stood on the side of realism, holding nature to be the source of the beautiful. He held that art must be true to life, in close contact with the people, and be a vehicle of progressive ideas. Shevchenko's Dnevnik (Diary) vividly reflects these views. He greatly influenced the development of the Ukrainian revolutionary social thought and culture (I. Franko, M. Kotsyubinsky, Lesya Ukrainka, etc.).

Shintoism

Japanese term meaning "the way of the gods", a religion which emerged in Japan under the primitive-communal system and underwent considerable changes in the course of its development. The term Shinto first came into use in the 18th century to distinguish Shintoism from Buddhism, from which many of its rites and conceptions were borrowed. In 1868, Shintoism was proclaimed the state religion, which it remained formally until 1946; actually it began to lose its significance at the end of the 19th century.

The chief element in Shintoism is worship of numerous kami (spirits), which were originally personified by animals, plants, things, natural phenomena, and the souls of the ancestors. According to Shintoism, contact between the gods and people is effected through the emperor (Mikado), the descendant of Amaterasu, the Sun goddess, and her representative on earth. The Mikado is considered to be the forefather of all the Japanese and is honoured as a god. Following Japan's defeat in the Second World War the divine origin of the Mikado began to be denied.

Shulyatikovism

Synonym for crude simplification and vulgarisation of Marxism, which reduces the complicated process of the development of philosophy, art, literature, natural science in a class society to the simple expression of the "class interest". As a means of criticism of vulgar sociologists (Fritsche, Pereverzev, and others) the term "Shulyatikovism" appeared in the Soviet literature of the 20s and 30s.

The term is derived from the name of V. Shulyatikov (1872-1912), a Russian Social-Democrat, literary critic, whose book, Opravdaniye kapitalisma u zapadnoevropeiskoi filosofii (The Justification of Capitalism in West European Philosophy), 1908, is an example of such vulgarisation. Proceeding from the philosophy of Bogdanov, Shulyatikovism tries to show that all philosophical systems are but the theoretical justification of bourgeois interest, and, for this reason, are alien to the proletariat, and that Marxism is in no way connected with them.

Shulyatikovism denied the existence of any element of objective truth in the philosophical views of Descartes, Spinoza, the French materialists, Hegel, and other pre-Marxian philosophers, since they give a "picture of the class structure of society". Characteristic of Shulyatikovism are direct deduction of ideological phenomena from the forms of the organisation of production, denial of the relative independence of science, literature, and philosophy, the desire to find a vulgarly understood "class equivalent" for every philosophical category or artistic image.

Sign

A concept of philosophy, logic, linguistics, psychology and other sciences dealing with an analysis of human activity. Most often sign is understood as a sensorily perceptible object, action or event which indicates, denotes or represents another object, event, action, subjective formation, etc. This description covers an essential feature of sign, but cannot serve as its definition, because it considers only one of the relations or connections (namely, the relation of designation), which, taken all together, constitute a sign.

Attempts to define the concept sign encounter considerable difficulties, because sign is a complicated structural formation, the methods for the study of which have not yet been sufficiently elaborated. A feature in the history of the analysis of sign is a desire to solve the problem by studying its separate parts. Attention has been concentrated on examination of the relation of designation (in logic, and in the 19th-20th centuries in logical semantics); the analysis of the relationships within sign systems considered independently of the content they express (in logical syntax); the description of relationships and historical changes in the meanings of sign and sign systems within the framework of man's practical work and psychical activity (in epistemological concepts and psychology and, lately, in pragmatics as part of semiotics).

Awareness of the limitations of such approaches to the analysis of sign made felt the need for its synthetic description (for example, within the bounds of semiotics). But the methods of synthesis in the conceptions put forward by C.S. Peirce, K. Buhler, C. Morris, were still undeveloped, chiefly because human activity was limited to individual activity, disregarding social productive activity. Dialectical materialism has furnished the methodological principles for the study of sign and sign systems and provided a scientific understanding of the structure and functions of socio-productive activity. Language holds a special place among the sign systems.

Signal Systems

The conditioned-reflex mechanism for reflecting reality. The main postulates of the doctrine of signal systems (formulated by the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov) are as follows. In the higher animals, including man, the subcortex is the first region of intricate relationships of the organism and the environment. The subcortex closest to the cerebral hemispheres has its intricate unconditioned reflexes caused by a few unconditioned, i.e., inborn external agents. Hence, limited orientation in the environment.

The second region is the cerebral hemispheres, without the frontal lobes. Here a new principle of activity originates by means of conditioned connection: signalling of the few unconditioned agents by the innumerable mass of other agents which are analysed and synthesised and make possible greater orientation in the same environment. This is the only signal system in the animal organism and the first signal system in man.

Man has another (second) signal system located in the frontal lobes of the brain, signalling by word, by speech. This introduces a new principle of nervous activity—abstraction and generalisation of countless signals of the first system, followed by an analysis and synthesis of the generalised signals, a principle which makes for unlimited orientation in the external world.

Sigwart, Christoph (1830–1904)

German logician, professor of philosophy at Tubingen University (1865-1903), subjective idealist, Neo-Kantian. Known for his Logic (1873-78). According to Sigwart, logic is based on psychology and is the science of correct thinking. The criterion of truth, in his opinion, is necessity and universal significance, for which there is no basis whatsoever in the objective world. Evidence, simply postulated with a reference to faith, is considered by Sigwart to be the basis of necessary thinking. He elaborated in detail the theory of inference.

Simultaneity

Coincidence in time of events separated in space. The classical picture of the world contained the concept of absolute time, single flow of time proceeding uniformly everywhere and consisting of instants, each of which ensues throughout space. The theory of relativity dislodged from the scientific picture of the world the absolute motion ascribed to ether and rejected the concept of absolute simultaneity.

Identification of the moments of time of two events has meaning when we examine events within the bounds of a definite frame of reference. Events simultaneous in one frame of reference will be non-simultaneous in others.

Single Individual

German: der Einzelne, one of the central categories in the ethics of existentialism. This concept expresses a distorted idea of man considered outside social relations. Existentialists regard "singleness" and "inimitability" as the main features of man. The peculiarity or "individuality" of the single individual is a source of morality and the criterion of ethical evaluation. Existentialists utilise the category of single individual to justify individualism and egoism.

Skovoroda, Grigory Savvich (1722–1794)

Ukrainian enlightener, democrat, philosopher and poet. He was educated at the Kiev-Mogilyansky clerical academy. Renouncing a clerical career, he chose the life of a wandering preacher and philosopher. His outlook was influenced by the works of Feofan Prokopovich and Lomonosov, his theological education having imparted to his views a contradictory character.

In solving the fundamental question of philosophy, he evinced vacillation between materialism and idealism, but his standpoint on many questions was materialistic. Following Lomonosov, he came to the conclusion that matter is eternal and infinite, that nature is ruled by law-governed connections and is its own cause (Druzhesky razgovor o dushevnom mire [Friendly Conversation on the Spiritual World], 1775).

Dualistic vacillations led Skovoroda to create the theory of "three worlds" embracing all that exists: the "macrocosm", or nature, the "microcosm", or man, and the "world of symbols", the Bible. Each of these he considered as comprising two natures, the outward, or material, and the inner, or spiritual. In an attempt to overcome the dualism of his teaching, Skovoroda tried to eliminate the contradiction between the material and spiritual principles by combining the concepts "God" and "nature", considering them as identical, as is typical of pantheism. He acknowledged the boundlessness of human knowledge, but associated the study of nature with the necessity for self-analysis and recognition of the "world of symbols".

Skovoroda sharply criticised the official religion for its dogmatism and scholasticism and propagated the heliocentric teaching of Copernicus which was inimical to the church (Potop Zmiin [The Deluge of Snakes], 1791, and other works). He ridiculed the vices and parasitism of the clergy. His moral preachings were couched in a religious form and were associated with the search for a "religion of love and virtue". He defended the interests of the people, called for an end to lawlessness and to ignorance among the working people, but his solution of social problems was utopian, inasmuch as he considered the moral principle to be the main factor in setting up a new society. His sociological views reflected the weakness and limitations of the then peasant anti-feudal movement. Skovoroda's works were not published during his life, but were widely circulated in manuscript copies.

Slave-Owning System

The first antagonistic class society, arising on the ruins of the primitive-communal system. Slavery existed in some degree and in one form or another in all countries. It reached its highest form of development in ancient Greece and ancient Rome, where slaves became the chief productive force of society. Under the slave-owning system the slave-owners made up the ruling class. It fell into different social groups: the big landowners, the owners of big workshops, the merchants, the money-lenders. The second main class was composed of the numerous exploited slaves. Besides these two main classes in the slave-owning system there were the intermediate strata of the population: small proprietors, who lived by their own labour (the handicraftsmen and peasants), and the lumpen-proletariat, composed of ruined handicraftsmen and peasants.

Private ownership of the means of production and of the slaves by the slave-owners constituted the basis of the dominant production relations of the slave-owning system. Exploitation of the slaves, based upon extra-economic compulsion, assumed monstrous proportions. To counter such exploitation and oppression the slaves showed a low productivity of labour and destroyed instruments of production. The surplus product created by every slave was insignificant. But the whole mass of surplus product, owing to the large number of slaves exploited and the extreme cheapness of their labour, was relatively great. On this basis some social and technical progress, development of science, art, and philosophy became possible.

The state emerged and developed with the rise of the slave-owning system. The whole history of slavery is the history of class struggle. The class struggle reaches its highest point with the decay of the slave-owning system. Slave uprisings are interwoven with the struggle of the ruined small peasants against the big landowners. In Rome the collapse of the slave-owning system was precipitated by invasion. The slave-owning form of exploitation was replaced by feudal exploitation. The slave-owning mode of production did not completely disappear with the collapse of the slave-owning system. It continued to exist in one degree or another in the period of feudalism and capitalism.

Slavophiles

Representatives of a conservative political and idealist trend in Russian social thought which strived to justify Russia's need for a special path of development as compared with that of Western Europe. In its objective purport it was a reactionary utopian programme for the transition of the Russian nobility to the bourgeois path of development with maximum preservation of their privileges. This programme was evolved at a time when the necessity for a departure from the old forms of exploitation and an adaptation of the ruling class to the new historic conditions had become obvious even to the most reactionary figures, including the Tsar, Alexander II.

The founders of Slavophilism were I. Kireyevsky, and A. Khomyakov; its members included K. and I. Aksakov, Y. Samarin and P. Kireyevsky. The movement got its first literary expression in 1839, its ideas were developed in the forties and fifties and were subsequently adopted by the pan-Slavists and the Russian intellectuals who emigrated from Russia after the October Revolution.

Defending their main idea, the Slavophiles regarded orthodoxy, community life, which they idealised, the "submission" of the Russian people and the "absence" in its history of any class divisions as "peculiarities" of Russian history. The Slavophiles justified this conception sociologically, claiming that the religion of a people determines the character of its thinking and is, therefore, the foundation of its social life. Since the Slavophiles considered orthodoxy the true religion, they held that only those peoples who professed it, first and foremost the Russians, could have any claim to progress, while other peoples could do so only to the extent to which they accepted orthodox civilisation. The Slavophiles sought a philosophical justification of their teachings in a religious and mystic system, in the voluntaristic ontology of Khomyakov and the intuitionist epistemology of Kireyevsky.

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.

Social Consciousness, Forms of

Different forms of reflection in the minds of people of the objective world and social being in the course of their practical activity. Social consciousness exists and is displayed in the forms of political ideology, legal conceptions, morality, religion, science, art, and philosophy. The diversity of forms of social consciousness is determined by the wealth and diversity of the objective world itself—of nature and society. Different forms of consciousness reflect diverse spheres and aspects of reality (for example, political ideas reflect relations between classes, nations, and states and serve as a basis for political programmes realised in the action of classes and social groups; the sciences study the concrete laws of nature and society, etc.).

Each form of consciousness has its own object of reflection and is also marked by a specific form of reflection (for example, scientific concepts, moral rules, artistic images, religious dogmas). The wealth and complexity of the objective world merely creates the possibility for the various forms of social consciousness to appear. This possibility is realised on the basis of a definite social requirement. Science arises only when the simple accumulation of experience and empirical knowledge becomes insufficient for the development of social production; political and legal views and ideas arise with the appearance of classes and the state to justify and consolidate the relations of domination and subordination, etc.

In each socio-economic formation all forms of consciousness are interconnected and in their entirety constitute the spiritual life of the given society. The specific nature of a social requirement giving rise to one form of social consciousness or another also determines the historically concrete role which they play in the life and development of society. The communist formation, for example, comes into being and develops on the basis of the knowledge and purposeful application of objective laws. That is why under socialism, the lower phase of communism, religion begins to wither away; at the higher phase religious survivals will be fully eliminated. At the same time essential changes will occur in the spiritual life of society as a whole. With the victory of communism the need for political and legal ideology will disappear and they will wither away. On the other hand, such forms of social consciousness as morality, science, art and philosophy will flourish. They will not only serve various social needs, but will also mould the spiritual countenance of each individual, become a requisite for his allround development, for active creative endeavour, the display of the entire wealth of individual capabilities, inclinations and habits, for the full-blooded life of each man (see Social Being and Social Consciousness).

Social Contract, Theory of

An idealist doctrine of the origin of the state and law as a result of a contract consciously concluded between people. From the viewpoint of this theory, complete anarchy and "war of all against all" or, according to some views, idyllic freedom, precedes society and the state. The general feature of the "natural state" is unrestricted personal freedom which people consciously forgo in favour of the state to ensure their safety, private property, and other personal rights.

The first concepts of the origin of state by contract arose in antiquity. Chinese philosopher of the 5th century B.C. Mo Tzu, sophists, Socrates, Epicurus developed such concepts. The Theory of Social Contract was most developed in the 17th-18th centuries (see Hobbes, Gassendi, Spinoza, Locke, Rousseau) in view of the struggle of the bourgeoisie against feudalism and the absolute monarchy. It was the ideological justification of the bourgeoisie's claim to political power.

The bourgeois limitations of this theory were expressed chiefly in proclaiming the eternity of the "natural" law of private property and justifying the economic inequality of people. This theory was also shared by the enlighteners in Russia (see Radishchev), the United States (Thomas Jefferson), and other countries.

Social-Darwinism

A doctrine which regards struggle for existence and natural selection as the prime mover of social progress. It originated from the application of Darwin's biological theory to sociology by Friedrich Lange, Otto Ammon and Benjamin Kidd. It was current in sociology in the late 19th century.

Certain Social-Darwinists (Elmer Pendell, Francis Montagu) claim that natural selection and struggle for existence continue to operate in human society to this day. Others hold that natural selection operated in society in its pure form a mere 100 years ago, but that under the impact of progress in science and technology the struggle for existence subsided and a situation emerged in which not only the fittest could survive but also those who in earlier conditions were doomed to extinction. The exponents of such theories saw the root of all social evil in the intensified propagation of such inferior people.

Social-Darwinism is used extensively to justify the allegedly "eternal" and "inviolable" nature of the capitalist system and attacks on the working people's democratic rights, to extol the jungle law reigning in capitalist society, to depict millionaires as heroes and supermen, and to classify workers and working people in general as "second-rate" people.

Social Estates

A form of class division typical of the slave and feudal societies. Social Estates were social groups distinguished by their status in society and the legal place they held in the state machinery. Affiliation to Social Estates was hereditary.

In feudal Russia, only the nobles and gentry belonged to the nobility. They were freed from duties, not subject to corporal punishment, and could be tried by their own court of law, the court of the landed nobility. They alone possessed the right to own manors and serfs. The clergy were also a privileged estate. The townsmen (chiefly petty artisans and tradesmen) and peasants made up the lower Social Estates, subject to duties.

The remnants of the division of society into estates survive even now in many of the capitalist countries, particularly where the outdated feudal relations have not been entirely eliminated. To retain its class domination, the contemporary bourgeoisie is prepared to sustain estate prejudices (typical in this respect are the nazi theories of the corporative state, suggesting the restoration of social estates, and also the reactionary "elite" theories recommending the transfer of power to the select top of society). In Russia, estate divisions were abolished in 1917.

Social Psychology

The totality of feelings, emotions, habits, ideas, illusions, volitional trends and other characteristics common to people because of the common socio-economic conditions in which they live. The historically developed forms of Social Psychology include Social Psychology of classes, nations, social or professional groups, etc. Typical of the psychology of the working class, for example, is its sense of collectivism and class solidarity, whereas the psychology of the bourgeoisie is characterised by individualism and money-making.

Under socialism the psychology of people is typified by a sense of collectivism, public duty, a creative attitude to labour, internationalism, a keen sense of dignity and confidence in the future. Although the building of socialism in the U.S.S.R. has brought about the moral, political and ideological unity of society, there are still in social production and private life survivals of the bourgeois psychology of individualism, such as greed, parasitism, religious superstition, etc. One of the reasons responsible for these survivals is that changes in human sentiments and habits take place more slowly than in ideology. Along with the material conditions of social life, the latter is an important factor determining the trend of development of Social Psychology. The construction of communism, obliteration of the distinctions between town and country and between mental and physical labour, will result in the formation of a basically common Social Psychology of the members of communist society.

The term Social Psychology also applies to that department of science which deals with social psychology. The main task assigned by Marxism-Leninism to Social Psychology is to analyse the socio-economic nature of the objective factors, the laws governing the formation of social sentiments, moods and incentives of activity, and other mental processes. The mentality of Soviet people was analysed in the past (e.g., by A.S. Makarenko) and is being analysed today in studies of their social behaviour. These studies serve the communist education of working people.

Social Psychology became a special branch of sociology in the late 1890s (Gabriel Tarde, Gustave Le Bon, William McDougall, Edward Ross). Among the capitalist countries, the USA is the one where Social Psychology is making especially rapid progress. Its main trends are behaviourism (Emery S. Bogardus and S. Stransfeld, the adherents of E.L. Thorndike, John B. Watson and George H. Mead) and psychoanalysis (E. Jones and B. Trotter, the adherents of Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler). Despite the differences in views held by the exponents of these schools, they have in common general defects of idealism and metaphysics; they ignore the determinative role of production relations in society and recognise the psychic factors as primary in social development; they identify Social Psychology with sociology and use unscientific methods of selecting and processing the collected information.

Social Relations

Relations between people established in the course of their joint practical and spiritual activity; these are divided into material and ideological. The production of material wealth forms the basis for the existence and development of human society. That is why the relations of production, economic relations, are the most important of all the Social Relations. The relations of production determine the nature of all the other Social Relations—political, legal, etc. Understanding of the dependence of all Social Relations on the relations of production made it possible for the first time to explain the course of human history.

Socialism

A social system based on public ownership of the means of production; comes into being as a result of the abolition of the capitalist mode of production and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Socialism builds on two forms of ownership: state (public) ownership and co-operative and collective ownership. Public ownership presupposes absence of exploiter classes and of exploitation of man by man, and existence of relations of comradely co-operation and mutual aid among workers engaged in production.

Under Socialism there is no social oppression and inequality of nationalities, and no antithesis between town and country, between mental and physical labour, although the essential distinctions between town and country, and between mental and physical labour, continue to exist. Socialist society consists of two friendly classes—the working class and the collective-farm peasantry—and a social stratum, the intelligentsia. The distinctions between the two classes and also between them and the intelligentsia are being gradually obliterated.

A prominent feature of the relations between all these social groups is their sociopolitical and ideological unity, while the relations between socialist nations are marked by friendship, co-operation and fraternal mutual assistance. By virtue of public ownership, Socialism develops its entire economy on a planned, proportionate basis, a practice that is impossible under capitalism. The development and improvement of social production is aimed at satisfying the people's material and cultural requirements to an ever fuller degree.

Life in a socialist society is grounded on broad democracy, implying the drawing of all working people into active administration of the state. Socialist democracy ensures social rights—the rights to labour, rest and leisure, free education and medical services, to security in old age, equal rights for men and women, and citizens of all races and nationalities—and political liberties—freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and the right to elect and be elected.

Socialism differs from the higher phase of communism by the lesser degree of maturity of all the aspects of social life. Under Socialism the productive forces are not yet developed enough to secure an abundance of products and labour is not yet a prime vital necessity for all members of society. For this reason, material wealth is distributed according to the principle, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his work". The natural outcome of the development of Socialism is communism.

In the Soviet Union, Socialism has triumphed fully and for all time, and the country has embarked on the full-scale building of communism. At present, Socialism is being built in a number of countries in Europe, Asia and America. The world socialist system embraces over one-third of the world's population.

Socialism and Communism

The two phases of the communist socio-economic formation, socialism being its first, or lower, phase, and communism its higher phase. They differ in degree of economic maturity. Already under socialism there is no private ownership of the means of production, and its production relations are based not on domination and subjugation, but on comradely co-operation and mutual assistance of people free from exploitation. In this respect there is no difference between socialism and communism.

Under socialism, public ownership of the means of production exists in two forms: as state (public) property and as collective-farm and co-operative property. Under communism, however, there will be one property of the whole people. Under socialism there are still distinctions between the working class and the collective-farm peasantry. Once the building of communism is completed, these distinctions will disappear. The same will be true of the distinctions between the working class and the peasants, on the one hand, and the intelligentsia, on the other. All these distinctions are conditioned in the final count by the level of development of the productive forces.

It is this factor that determines the differences in the forms of distribution, which under socialism are governed by the principle: "To each according to the quantity and quality of labour done", and which under communism are governed by the principle: "To each according to his needs". Under communism, due to the growth of the productive forces, direct distribution of wealth will take the place of commodity and money relations still existing under socialism. Changes in the economy are accompanied by changes in the superstructure (see Basis and Superstructure).

Political and legal institutions and political and legal ideology will wither away at a particular stage of communist development. All people will observe single, generally recognised rules of communist living, for these will meet their inner requirements and customs. The state will wither away, and the Party as well will have fulfilled its historical role. Communism will see an ever growing rapprochement between nations in all respects up to the point of the complete disappearance of any distinctions between them.

Communism will be a higher form of social organisation, which will function on the basis of greatly developed productive forces, science, technology, culture and communist public self-administration. The Programme of the CPSU says: "Communism is a classless social system with one form of public ownership of the means of production and full social equality of all members of society; under it, the all-round development of people will be accompanied by the growth of the productive forces through continuous progress in science and technology; all the springs of co-operative wealth will flow more abundantly, and the great principle, 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs', will be implemented. Communism is a highly organised society of free, socially conscious working people, in which public self-administration will be established, a society in which labour for the good of society will become the prime vital requirement of everyone, a necessity recognised by one and all, and the ability of each person will be employed to the greatest benefit of the people." (The Road to Communism, p. 509.)

The gradual development of socialism into communism involves a series of profound qualitative changes centering on three main problems: the creation of the material and technical basis of communism (the decisive link in the chain of all social-economic tasks), the promotion of communist social relations and the moulding of the new man. The Programme of the CPSU scientifically outlines the period during which a communist society will in the main be built in the Soviet Union. The creation of the material and technical basis of communism by 1980 will ensure an abundance of material and cultural values for the whole population, and Soviet society will draw closer to the point of introducing the principle of distribution according to the needs of its members.

Social relations will develop systematically: class distinction will be the first to vanish, followed after 1980 by the distinctions between mental and physical labour and subsequently by national distinctions, including language distinctions. Another specific feature of communist construction will be the moulding of the new man, an individual developed comprehensively and harmoniously, combining spiritual wealth, moral purity and perfect physique. Communism implies harmonious relations between the individual and society.

Socialism, Christian

A doctrine which seeks to impart a socialist tinge to the Christian religion, to picture Christianity as the champion of the working people's interests and a means of deliverance from all social evils. Christian Socialism originated in the 1830s and 1840s as a variety of feudal socialism, reflecting the hostile attitude of the outgoing feudal classes to capitalism. The aim of Christian Socialism was to fight against the revolutionary movement and reconcile the antagonistic classes.

In our days Christian Socialism looks for a "third line" differing from both capitalism and communism; actually, its ideal "Christian democracy" does not go beyond the bounds of bourgeois social relations. Christian Socialism is closely connected with reformism, and it seeks to split the ranks of the working class.

Socialism, Fabian

A reformist trend in Britain which arose as an antipode to scientific socialism. Its name is an allusion to the Roman army leader Fabius Cunctator (Procrastinator). The Fabian Society was organised in Britain in 1884, and in 1900 it entered the Labour Party as a literary-publicist group. Fabian Socialism was represented by Beatrice and Sidney Webb, Morgan Phillips, Clement Attlee, Herbert Morrison, and others.

Officially, Fabian Socialism denies any connection with philosophy, but many of its proponents support religion, adhere in their views of history to the doctrine of the decisive role of ideas in society, and deny the class struggle. Fabian Socialism, according to Lenin's definition, "is the most consummate expression of opportunism and of Liberal-labour policy". (Vol. 21, p. 260.)

Socialism of the Chair

An ironical name given to a group of German liberal professors and politicians, members of the socio-ethical school which in the second half of the 19th century was the first to "prove" theoretically that capitalism would peacefully develop into socialism. Following the teaching of the historical school in political economy, the Socialists of the Chair held that political economy must go beyond the bounds of studying economic phenomena in the narrow sense and merge with the other social sciences. They held that the state could regulate economic relations.

Socialism of the Chair was a peculiar reaction to the spread of the working-class movement and it expressed the desire of the bourgeoisie to retard the growth of the proletariat's class consciousness. In 1872, soon after the suppression of the Paris Commune, the Socialists of the Chair organised a Socio-Political Union which advocated the need for social reforms and state intervention in economic relations. Lorenz Stein, Adolf Wagner, Gustav Schmoller, Lujo Brentano, and Werner Sombart were among the proponents of Socialism of the Chair.

Socialism, Scientific

See Communism, Scientific.

Socialism, Utopian

A teaching on society based on common property, obligatory labour of all members, and equal distribution of products. The term "utopia" (from Greek, literally a non-existent place) as a designation of an ideal society was first used by Thomas More and was the name he gave to an imaginary island on which an ideal society was set up. Subsequently, this term was applied in describing imaginary and mainly impracticable social systems.

The utopian socialists, who criticised the existing system based on private property, painted pictures of the ideal future society and set out to prove theoretically the need for public ownership, voiced a number of brilliant ideas and conjectures. That is why Utopian Socialism (together with English political economy and German classical philosophy) is one of the ideological sources of scientific socialism.

Condemnation of private property and praise of common ownership can be found in the works of some of ancient Greeks and Romans, the medieval "heretics", in the programmes of some peasant uprisings in the epoch of feudalism, and in the views of peasant ideologists. That was a natural reaction to the inequality and exploitation in antagonistic societies.

As capitalism developed, Utopian Socialism became more complex as a theory and branched out, forming various schools and trends. The systematic development of Utopian Socialism began in the period of capitalism's birth, the Renaissance and Reformation—Houska in Bohemia, Müntzer in Germany, More in England, Campanella in Italy, and others. It was further developed in the period of bourgeois revolutions in Europe, being at that time the ideology of the proletariat's predecessors (see Meslier, Mably, Morelly, and Babouvism in France, Lilburne and Winstanley in England).

Utopian Socialism reached its apex during the rapid development of capitalism, when the illusions of the ideologists of bourgeois revolutions vanished and the contradictions of capitalist society became increasingly apparent (Saint-Simon and Fourier in France and Owen in England).

No utopian socialist, however, succeeded in attaining a materialist understanding of history or discovering the real driving forces of society and its future, socialist transformation. Even Saint-Simon, who came closest of all to the correct understanding of the role of property and classes in the progressive development of history, maintained that the progress of scientific knowledge, morality, and religion was the basis of social development. Besides this, there was a lack of understanding of the real ways for transforming the existing social relations, renunciation of revolution and naive faith that the existing order could be changed by spreading socialist ideas.

According to Marx, only the development of the productive forces, which make a revolution in the mode of production inevitable, and the emergence of an industrial proletariat, sufficiently schooled and organised by the development of capitalist society itself, create the historical possibility of converting socialism from an utopia to science. Marx and Engels translated this possibility into reality by scientifically proving the inevitability of the transition to communism and discovering the force capable of effecting this transition, the proletariat, and by creating the doctrine of socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat as the instrument for applying the socialist ideals in life.

Marxism critically re-fashioned and assimilated everything valuable in Utopian Socialism. With the rise of Marxism, Utopian Socialism increasingly became a factor impeding the working-class and socialist movement. In individual countries, Utopian Socialism, merging with the revolutionary democratic ideology, played a progressive part (Russian revolutionary democrats, Narodniks in the 1870s, and others) even after the development of Marxism.

Socialist Emulation

A social phenomenon expressing the creative initiative of the working people aimed at furthering socialist production in every way possible.

Socialist Emulation is based on socialist relations of production. Being entirely different from capitalist competition, which is a means of exploiting the working people, Socialist Emulation is a form of conscious and free creativity on the part of the people and an expression of their talents and abilities. Socialism, which abolishes exploitation and transfers political power to the working class, provides great opportunities for large-scale emulation for the first time in history.

Socialist Emulation has its source in the radical change in the attitude to labour, which occurs for the first time in the history of society after labour is freed and becomes labour for oneself, for society. Lenin wrote that communism begins where ordinary workers display concern for the welfare of the whole of society.

As a form of socialist organisation of labour, Socialist Emulation is based on friendship, mutual assistance and collectivism. The characteristic features and indispensable conditions of Socialist Emulation are as follows: publicity of achievements in production scored by individual enterprises and workers, mutual assistance among the workers, the advancement of those who are lagging behind to the level of the foremost, broad popularisation of advanced experience, etc.

Socialist Emulation plays an enormous role in increasing labour productivity, improving the workers' skill and developing new technology. The socialist principle of remuneration for labour done serves to combine public and personal interests in Socialist Emulation. Socialist Emulation stimulates criticism and self-criticism, helps improve the organisation of production, dissemination of experience and enlistment of working people in management of production. It aims at inculcating in people the communist attitude to labour.

By improving the economic relations of socialism and developing socialist democracy, Socialist Emulation promotes the formation of communist social relations. Lenin emphasised the organisation of emulation as an important task of the state in his works: How To Organise Emulation?, The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government, and A Great Beginning.

Socialist Emulation has assumed a variety of forms, including communist subbotniks and the Stakhanov movement. Today, the main form of Socialist Emulation is the movement for communist labour under the slogan: "Learn to live and work in a communist way."

Socialist State

The state formed by socialist society, the political part of the superstructure that develops on economic basis of socialism. The Socialist State is a new type of state succeeding the bourgeois state as a result of socialist revolution. Creation of the socialist superstructure embraces the period of transition from capitalism to socialism. In this period, the state takes the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is socialist in its aims and tasks, because it serves as a means of building socialism.

As socialist society progresses, the functions of the Socialist State change accordingly. With the abolition of the exploiting classes, the function of suppressing their resistance disappears, while the main functions of the Socialist State—economic organisation, education and cultural development—are exercised to a greater extent.

After the world socialist system was formed, the Socialist State acquired a new external function, that of promoting fraternal co-operation with other socialist countries, in addition to the old functions of fighting for world peace and defending the socialist country.

With the complete and final victory of socialism and the entry of Soviet society into the period of full-scale communist construction, the state of proletarian dictatorship turns into a state of the whole people, an organ expressing the will of the entire people. The Socialist State is an instrument for strengthening socialism and gradually developing socialist society into communist society.

The withering away of the state implies the gradual development of the socialist state and the entire political organisation of socialist society into communist public self-administration. The construction of a developed communist society and the victory and consolidation of socialism on a world scale are indispensable for the complete withering away of the state.

Society, Organic Theory of

An unscientific theory which likens human society to a biological organism and, on this basis, considers the capitalist system "natural" and immutable. Spencer was the father of this theory. After him this theory was expounded by the German sociologist Schäffle, who compared various social groups in a class society to organs of the human body. This theory is supported by contemporary American sociologists Bogardus and Parsons.

Socio-Economic Formation

A historical type of society based on a definite mode of production, and appearing as a stage in the progressive development of mankind from the primitive-communal system through the slave-owning system, feudalism, and capitalism to the communist formation (see Socialism and Communism).

The concept of Socio-Economic Formation was first elaborated by Marxism and is the cornerstone of the materialist understanding of history. It makes it possible, first, to differentiate one period of history from another and, instead of arguments about "society in general", to study historical events within the bounds of definite formations; second, to group the systems in different countries on the same level of production (for example, in capitalist Britain, France, West Germany, and the United States) and to reveal the features common to these countries and, hence, to utilise in studies the general scientific criterion of repetition, whose application to social science the subjectivists deny; third, in contrast to eclectic theories which regard society as a mechanical totality of social phenomena (the family, the state, the church, etc.) and the historical process resulting from the influence of diverse factors (natural conditions and education, development of trade and birth of a genius, etc.), the concept of Socio-Economic Formation makes it possible to examine human society in each period of its development as a single "social organism" incorporating all social phenomena in their organic unity and interaction on the basis of the mode of production.

The productive forces make up the material and technical basis of society; the relations of production, its economic structure or basis. The ideas which arise on this basis, the ideological relations and various organisations and institutions form the superstructure of society (see Basis and Superstructure); lastly, the language, the family, and the historical communities of people (see Tribe, Nationality, Nation), etc., form specific social phenomena which are related neither to the basis nor to the superstructure but are essentially important for understanding the development of a Socio-Economic Formation.

Each formation has its particular laws of emergence and development. At the same time, general laws operating in all formations bind them into a single process of world history. Capitalist society is the last formation based on the antagonism between classes. It completes the pre-history of mankind. The communist formation which brings peace, labour, freedom, equality, and happiness for all people on earth, for the first time in history provides conditions for the boundless development of mankind based on the accelerated growth of the productive forces. The communist formation begins the true history of mankind.

Sociology

The science of society and the laws governing its development.

The inception of sociological doctrines goes back to remote antiquity. Mo-Tzu, Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, and Lucretius attempted to apprehend the causes of social changes, the motive forces in the life of people, the reasons for social upheavals, the origin of the state and law, the forms of an ideal social and political system, etc.

In feudal times, religious sociological doctrines appeared, based on dogmas of the church and representing its interests. The chief exponents of Sociology at that time were St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.

At the time of the decay of feudal society and the emergence of capitalism, sociological teachings appeared that were aimed against the theological view on history and society, as represented by Ibn Khaldun and Machiavelli. The earliest attempts to treat history as a law-governed process go back to Vico, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Herder in the 17th and 18th centuries; their sociological theories are put forward in the form of a philosophy of history.

At the time of the ascendant development of capitalism a number of bourgeois historians (Augustin Thierry, François Guizot, François Mignet) advanced some profound ideas about social laws and the struggle of classes. The dialectical conception of Hegel, which described history as a law-governed and necessary process, was the summit of sociological thought in the pre-Marxian epoch.

Subsequently, Comte, who coined the term "sociology", endeavoured to build on an idealistic foundation a "scientific sociology" that would reveal the eternal and immutable laws of human society, similar to the laws of natural science. Prior to the emergence of Marxism, Sociology was, on the whole, typified by an idealistic and metaphysical approach to the elucidation of social phenomena. Pre-Marxian theories maintained that man's historical activity was impelled by ideal motives and overlooked the material basis of society. For this reason, they were unable to apprehend its laws, and moreover, took no account of the activity of the masses.

The role of the masses and their struggle against the relations of exploitation were stressed by such revolutionary democrats as Herzen, Chernyshevsky, etc. Marx and Engels were the founders of materialist Sociology, creating the theory of historical materialism. They pinpointed the true determinative material basis of society, the relations of production, discovered the objective laws of history and society, proved that the development of society is a natural historical process in which socio-economic formations succeed each other, and predicted the inevitable replacement of capitalism by communism.

Contesting the truth of historical materialism, bourgeois Sociology of the late 19th century and early 20th century opposed to it a variety of unscientific sociological schools (psychological, organic, geographical, biological, racist, etc.). These argued the eternity of capitalism and colonialism and propagated racial inequality.

Most of the sociological trends in the capitalist countries are idealistic and metaphysical. As a rule, they repudiate objective social laws, historical progress, the very concept of social evolution and the progressive ideas of the past, and champion the outdated capitalist system against the ideas of socialism and communism. They are largely irrational and agnostic, for they maintain that it is impossible to create a general sociological theory, reject scientific prevision and the possibility of planned guidance of society, and cultivate empiricism.

Modern Sociology in the capitalist countries has broken up into a number of specialised Sociologies (industrial Sociology, rural Sociology, Sociology of the family, mental diseases, microsociology, and the like). As regards methodology, modern bourgeois Sociology is, as a rule, typified by eclectical pluralism, which rejects the unity of society as the determinant of its basis, and upholds the chaotic interaction of numerous factors.

The task of Marxist Sociology today is to follow the method of historical materialism to produce concrete scientific investigations of the pressing problems of the contemporary historical epoch: the building of communist society, the moulding of new relations between people, a new way of life, new morality, etc.

Sociology, Empirical

One of the trends in modern sociology dealing with the description of particular aspects of social life. It was widely disseminated after the Second World War, especially in the USA (Lundberg, Dodd, Mayo, etc.).

The study of individual social phenomena by means of concrete sociological investigations can play a positive role only if it is based on a scientific theory, examining society as a unity developing according to law. The exponents of Empirical Sociology, however, reject the unity and integrity of society and the objective laws of its development. They refuse to penetrate into the essence of social phenomena and consider society as a mechanical aggregate of separate social phenomena, which they merely describe and list, investigating only the relationships between different factors.

Empirical sociology's method is limited to questionnaires, interviews, and statistical material. They maintain that this purely quantitative method of investigation is the only scientific method.

The main features of Empirical Sociology are lack of a general philosophical basis and a profound differentiation between social studies, which results in the creation of different sociologies independent of each other (urban sociology, rural sociology, family sociology, industrial sociology, sociology of alcoholism, sociology of advertisement, sociology of mass media, etc.).

Sociology, Naturalist

A trend in contemporary bourgeois sociology, whose proponents elevate into an absolute traits of man as a biological being and assert that the development of mankind is determined by the laws of biology. Among the naturalist trends are Social-Darwinism, Malthusianism, and other unscientific theories of population which ascribe to it the decisive part in the development of society, and also a biological variety of racialism, as distinct from psychoracialism, which treats racial features as an absolute and regards the struggle of races as the main factor of social development.

Sociology, Romantic

A sociological trend which took shape in the middle of the 19th century in England and Germany. In the beginning Romantic Sociology was interwoven with feudal socialism (Carlyle), in the contemporary period it merged with fascism (Heidegger). The basic idea of Romantic Sociology is the cult of the heroic past of the Aryan tribes, an appeal to return to the eternal and imperishable "law of the jungle", to return to the formation of armed bands. Romantic Sociology renounces bourgeois democracy. Starting with Gobineau, the exponents of Romantic Sociology fight for the dominance of the "superior Aryan race" over all peoples. This idea led eventually to the Nazi (Günther, Krieck, Rosenberg) cult of the leader, the hero, the superior race. This formed the ideological basis of Hitler's Reich.

Sociometry

Experimental and applied microsociology. Applying the usual methods of empirical sociology (questionnaires, interviews, etc.), Sociometry probes the psychological relationships among men in some specific place (factory, office, school, home, and the like).

Socio-Political and Ideological Unity of a Nation

The community of economic, political, ideological and moral interests and principles that emerges as a result of the construction of socialism. Economically, the socio-political and ideological unity of a nation is based on socialist ownership of the means and instruments of production and on socialist relations of production. Politically, it is based on the socialist state, the system of socialist democracy. The settlement of the national question is a necessary requisite and integral part of the nation's socio-political and ideological unity (see Friendship of Peoples). Ideologically, this unity is based on Marxism-Leninism, the ideology of the working class, which becomes the ideology of the whole people.

The socio-political and ideological unity of the Soviet people is most vividly displayed in the fact that the state which came into existence as a dictatorship of the proletariat has now become a state of the whole people, while the Communist Party, once the party of the working class, has become the vanguard of the whole people.

Socrates (469–399 B.C.)

Greek philosopher, whose doctrine initiated the turn from materialist naturalism to idealism. He lived and taught in Athens and his many pupils included Plato, Antisthenes, Aristippus and Euclid of Megara.

Socrates wrote nothing and his doctrine is known through the writings of Plato and Aristotle. The structure of the world and the physical nature of things are unknowable; we can know only ourselves. This understanding of the object of knowledge was expressed by Socrates in the formula: "know thyself". The supreme purpose of knowledge is not theoretical but practical—the art of living. Knowledge, according to Socrates, is the thought, the idea of the universal. Ideas are revealed through definitions and are summed up through induction. Socrates himself provided examples of definitions and generalisations of ethical concepts (for example, valour, justice). Definition of a concept is preceded by a conversation, in the course of which questions bring out contradictions between the interlocutors. Disclosure of contradictions leads to the elimination of sham knowledge, while the state of unrest prompts the mind to search for real truth.

Socrates compared his methods of study with the "art of the midwife"; his method of questioning presupposed a critical attitude to dogmatic assertions and came to be known as Socratic "irony". The ethics of Socrates is rationalistic: evil actions are only produced by ignorance and no one is ever bad of his own free will.

Solipsism

From Latin solus, alone; ipse, self. A subjective idealist theory, according to which only man and his consciousness exist, while the objective world, including people, exist only in the mind of the individual. In principle, every subjective idealist philosophy inevitably arrives at Solipsism. Berkeley and Fichte and supporters of the immanence school drew closest to this outlook. The viewpoint of Solipsism deprives human activity and science of all sense. For this reason subjective idealist philosophers are trying to avoid extreme Solipsism for which purpose they posit the existence of a generic, super-individual, divine consciousness. Epistemologically, Solipsism regards sensation as the absolute source of knowledge. Lenin gave a criticism of Solipsism in his Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.

Solovyov, Vladimir Sergeyevich (1853–1900)

Russian idealist philosopher, theologian, and poet. Graduated from Moscow University (1873). His views were greatly influenced by Christian literature and also the ideas of Buddhism, Neo-Platonism and other philosophico-religious systems. Solovyov was especially close to the Slavophiles. The idea of the "oneness of being" which by its nature is unconditional and absolute is central in his doctrine. Ultimately, the "oneness of being" is defined by Solovyov as the sphere of the divine, while the real world, as its embodiment. Truth ("oneness of being") can be cognised neither rationally nor empirically; it is conceived only by "integral" knowledge based on mystical knowledge: faith in the unconditional existence of the object; mental contemplation (or imagination) which gives a true idea of the object: creation (or realisation of this idea in experiment). As for "integral" knowledge, it is a synthesis of the mystical, rational (philosophical) and empirical (scientific) knowledge. From this Solovyov deduced the unity of theology, philosophy and science and called it the "free theosophy".

In society the idea of "oneness of being" reveals itself as the voluntary spiritual union of people ("free theocracy"), or as the church which determines the absolute aims of society—the establishment of a "kingdom of God" on earth where all social contradictions will be resolved. A "free theocracy" can result from a merger of the Western (Catholic) and Eastern (Orthodox) Christian churches within the framework of a monarchy; in this respect a "special role" belongs to the Russian people. According to Solovyov, the main purpose of philosophy is to justify the socio-religious ideal and, therefore, it must serve theology. Solovyov also based ethics on religion. The poetry and aesthetics of Solovyov became one of the ideological well-springs of Russian symbolism. The unscientific theory of Solovyov which reflected the interests of the reactionary circles of the bourgeoisie and the nobility exerted a great influence on Russian idealist-religious philosophy at the turn of the century (See Berdyayev, Trubetskoi, and others).

Main works: Kritika Otvlechonnykh Nachal (Critique of Abstract Principles), 1880; Chteniya O Bogochelovechestve (Lectures of Man-God), 1877–81; Istoriya i Budushchnost Teokratii (History and Future of Theocracy), 1885–87; Rossiya i Vselenskaya Tserkov (Russia and the Oecumenical Church), 1889; Opravdaniye Dobra (Justification of Good), 1897–99.

Sombart, Werner (1863–1941)

German sociologist and economist, professor of Berlin University. Studied capitalism as a social phenomenon and also problems of social mobility and social stratification. At first Sombart considered himself a Socialist and Marxist, but later turned anti-Marxist. His central idea is the peaceful evolution of capitalism into a society of "social pluralism" where capitalism and socialism will remain together for a long time. The main content of Sombart's doctrine is the perpetuation of capitalism, denial of its general crisis and of the historical inevitability of its replacement by socialism. Neo-Kantianism of the Baden school furnished the philosophical basis of his sociological views.

Main works: Sozialismus und Soziale Bewegung im 19 Jahrhundert, 1896; Der moderne Kapitalismus, three volumes, 1902, 1928; and Die Zukunft des Kapitalismus, 1932.

Sophistry

A deliberate application, in disputes or in proof, of specious arguments embodying a subtle fallacy. While distinguishing Sophistry from dialectics, Lenin wrote that flexibility of concepts applied subjectively is identical to sophistry. (Vol. 38, p. 110.) The most typical cases of Sophistry are the following: consideration of events out of context, application of laws peculiar to one set of phenomena to another set, and of one historical period to the events of another period.

Sophists

Wandering teachers of rhetoric and philosophy in ancient Greece, who became prominent in the 5th century B.C. They did not form a school, but shared some common views; they rejected religion, gave a rationalist explanation to natural phenomena, and upheld ethical and social relativism. The main group of Sophists ("older" Sophists) championed slave-owning democracy. Generally speaking, they had a materialist understanding of nature. The proponents of this group—Protagoras, Hippias, Prodicus, Antiphon—were the first encyclopaedists, embodying the enlightened thought of the period. Their attention was focussed on problems of cognition. Some Sophists arrived at sceptical conclusions regarding being and the knowledge of it (e.g., Gorgias). Sophists belonging to the aristocratic camp—Critias, Hippodamus—gravitated towards philosophical idealism.

In disputes Sophists resorted to methods which later became known as sophistry. This trend was particularly strong among the late Sophists (4th century B.C.), who, to use Aristotle's words, turned into teachers of "imaginary wisdom".

Sorites

A chain of (categorical) syllogisms, the conclusion of each forming a premiss of the next, one of the premisses being mutely implied. Sorites may be exemplified as follows:

2 is an even number. All even numbers are natural numbers. All natural numbers are rational numbers. Hence, 2 is a rational number.

From the first two premisses we can obtain the following conclusion: 2 is a natural number. This conclusion plays the part of a minor premiss of the next syllogism (all natural numbers are rational numbers and 2 is a natural number). However, the premiss "2 is a natural number" is mutely implied. Sorites is often used in a proof for the purpose of brevity.

Soul

A term used sometimes as a synonym for the psyche. Primitive peoples regarded the Soul as something material (shadow, blood, breath, etc.). In religion, the Soul is viewed as an incorporeal and immortal immaterial force, capable of existing separately and independently of the body in another world. In idealist philosophy, the Soul is identified with various elements of consciousness. Plato calls it the eternal idea, Hegel regards it as the lowest, sensual manifestation of the spirit in its connection with matter (sentient and active). In dualistic doctrines the Soul is looked upon as something that has an independent existence, that exists alongside the body (Descartes, Spencer, Wundt, and James).

Pre-Marxian materialism (Democritus, metaphysical materialism) regarded the Soul as something secondary to, and dependent on, the body, while reducing its activity to elementary mechanical or physico-chemical processes. Materialist philosophers were often prepared to recognise a universal soul (see Hylozoism). A genuinely scientific explanation of the human psyche was provided by dialectical materialism, unscientific notions of the Soul being refuted only when mental phenomena came to be studied experimentally and objective methods of investigating them were discovered (see Sechenov and Pavlov).

Soviet Marxist Philosophy

Appeared after the October Socialist Revolution in Russia. In its first years, it developed in struggle against the remnants of the old, bourgeois philosophy and the philosophical theories of Menshevism, Russian Machism (Bogdanov, and others). In 1922, the first Marxist philosophical journal Pod znamenem marxisma (Under the Banner of Marxism) was founded. Its third issue carried Lenin's article "On the Significance of Militant Materialism", devoted to the tasks of the journal and the development of Soviet Marxist Philosophy. This article, as well as Lenin's other creative works, has had a decisive influence on all the subsequent work of Soviet philosophers. In the initial years, the basic task was to form a new body of philosophers closely associated with the Communist Party and its entire struggle for the country's socialist reconstruction. The class struggle in the first period of the Soviet state's existence was reflected in all fields of ideology, including philosophy.

In the late twenties and early thirties, there developed a criticism of relapses into mechanistic materialism (N. I. Bukharin, A. I. Varyash, V. N. Sarabyanov, and others) and of manifestations of Menshevistic idealism (A. M. Deborin's group), which tried to identify Marxist dialectics with Hegel's, divorced theory from practice, and underestimated the Leninist stage in the development of philosophy. The first Soviet manuals appeared, explaining the essence of dialectical and historical materialism. The journal Under the Banner of Marxism, which ceased publication in 1944, and other periodicals were bent on elaborating philosophical problems of building socialism and cultural revolution, reviewing the past history of philosophy in the light of Marxist philosophy, working for an alliance with the naturalists and for their transition to the positions of dialectical materialism. The first publications of Dialectics of Nature by Engels (1925) and Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks (1929) gave an impulse to research into new questions.

But the development of Soviet philosophy, as of other social sciences, was seriously retarded in the period of the cult of Stalin's personality. His work On Dialectical and Historical Materialism was unwarrantedly declared the peak of Marxist philosophy. The Party's criticism of the personality cult and the decisions of the 20th Congress of the CPSU laid the foundation for a new stage in the development of Soviet philosophy. A feature of this stage is a considerably wider range of subjects for philosophical research and a deeper approach to urgent questions in modern philosophical science. A large place has been given to the study of Lenin's philosophical legacy. New textbooks and manuals have been written, in which the dogmatic features associated with the cult of Stalin have been overcome.

The chief trend in the development of contemporary Soviet philosophy is determined by the tasks of communist construction outlined in the decisions of the 20th, 22nd and 23rd Congresses of the CPSU and its new Programme. The Party decisions summing up the experience of communist construction in the USSR and the entire world development have a profound philosophical content and reveal the laws governing social development in contemporary conditions. A number of Soviet philosophers, mainly sociologists, are working on questions concerning the laws of communist construction, the dialectics of the transition from socialism to communism, the development of the Soviet state, the merger of the two forms of socialist ownership into communist ownership, the elimination of the essential distinctions between town and country, between physical and mental labour, the development of socialist culture, and others (G. M. Gak, G. I. Gleserman, F. V. Konstantinov, T. A. Stepanyan, V. P. Tugarinov, P. N. Fedoseyev, V. A. Fomina, G. P. Frantsev, D. I. Chesnokov, and others).

Although concrete social problems are still not sufficiently studied in philosophical literature, many sociological works have been published in recent years. Some of them are devoted to the raising of the cultural and technical level of the working class, the obliteration of the distinctions between town and country, the elimination of religious survivals, etc. A large place in the studies of Soviet philosophers is taken up by problems of dialectical materialism. Moreover, they generalise the achievements of contemporary natural science, further elaborate materialist dialectics, study the new forms in which its laws are manifested under socialism, questions of dialectical logic and the theory of knowledge, the categories of dialectical materialism, the problem of a materialist system of categories and philosophical questions of the natural sciences (E. V. Ilyenkov, B. M. Kedrov, P. V. Kopnin, I. V. Kuznetsov, M. E. Omelyanovsky, M. N. Rutkevich, V. I. Svidersky, Y. P. Sitkovsky, A. G. Spirkin, B. S. Ukraintsev, V. P. Chertkov, and others).

Soviet philosophers are working extensively in the field of Marxist studies of the world history of philosophy; in recent years much has been achieved in the study of Russian materialist philosophy; a group of philosophers are studying contemporary philosophy in the capitalist countries, critically analysing idealistic philosophical conceptions (V. F. Asmus, M. P. Baskin, B. E. Bykhovsky, A. M. Deborin, M. A. Dynnik, M. T. Iovchuk, I. S. Kon, G. A. Kursanov, A. O. Makovelsky, Y. K. Melvil, M. B. Mitin, K. N. Momjyan, I. S. Narsky, T. I. Oiserman, O. V. Trakhtenberg, B. A. Chagin, I. Y. Shchipanov, and others).

Communist construction has posed as one of the most important tasks in the field of philosophy the elaboration of problems in communist morality, Marxist ethics, the struggle against the survivals of capitalism in people's consciousness and behaviour, against the influence of religious views, and so on. A number of philosophers: Y. A. Levada, A. F. Shishkin, and others, devoted their works to these problems. In the last few years Soviet philosophers have been devoting their investigations to problems of aesthetics: the history of aesthetics, the aesthetic categories, the theory of socialist realism, criticism of bourgeois aesthetic theories, and so on (Y. B. Borev, A. G. Yegorov, M. A. Lifshitz, M. F. Ovsyannikov, Z. V. Smirnova, G. M. Fridlender, and others).

Whereas formerly philosophers specialising in the field of formal logic devoted their efforts mainly to the study of traditional logic, in recent times they have begun to concern themselves with urgent problems of logic which require dialectical-materialistic generalisation of the achievements in mathematical logic, semantics, and so on (K. S. Bakradze, Y. K. Voishvillo, D. P. Gorsky, A. A. Zinoviev, P. S. Popov, P. V. Tavanets, S. A. Yanovskaya, and others). Works have been published dealing with the philosophical analysis of cybernetics, its essence and connections with other sciences, questions of psychology in general and social psychology in particular (B. G. Ananyev, A. N. Leontyev, S. L. Rubinstein, B. M. Teplov, and others).

Soviet philosophers are faced with great tasks, the principal of which are: a more profound generalisation of the real processes of communist construction, development of the new culture, the formation of the man of communist society, elaboration of the human morality of communism.

Space, Multi-Dimensional

An abstraction of space having more than three dimensions, as distinguished from the usual space as studied in elementary geometry, through every point of which only three straight lines perpendicular to one another can be drawn and, therefore, the position of each of the points can be determined by three numbers. In Multi-Dimensional Space with n-dimensions, the position of a point in space is defined by n-numbers, while space can have a finite or an infinite number of dimensions.

The concept of Multi-Dimensional Space appeared in mathematics as a result of the development and the consequent generalisation of the concept of space. It is the outcome of a complicated process of abstraction and idealisation and serves as a powerful means of studying reality. In physics, for instance, the abstraction of n-dimensional space found an important application. The three numbers defining the position of a point in space, and the number defining its position in time are considered together, and this gives the four-dimensional space, four-dimensional space-time continuum, of the theory of relativity. Infinite dimensional functional spaces are applied in quantum mechanics.

However, it should not be deduced from the fact that the concept of Multi-Dimensional Space is effective in science that the multi-dimensional space is a form of the existence of matter; the latter is three-dimensional and its properties are disclosed in the various systems of geometry.

Species and Genus (in logic)

Categories expressing the range of concepts in relation to one another. If the range of concept A constitutes a part of concept B, A is a species of B, and B is the genus of A. Similarly, A is spoken of as a special concept in relation to B, and B as a generic concept in relation to A. For example, animals are a species of organisms; organisms are the genus that includes animals. The relation of Genus to Species is that of the general to the particular.

Speculative Philosophy

1. A system of philosophical propositions inferred without reference to experience. Relying on the "sheer power of intellect", the speculative philosopher creates this or that set of speculative principles, with which he seeks to embrace all objective reality. However, no speculative system has yet stood the test of time, for in the final analysis reality is incalculably richer than any variety of Speculative Philosophy, which may, indeed, contain some correct inferences, but solely because it passes off properties of reality for its own speculative definitions. Descartes was the first consistently speculative philosopher. The speculative method is extensively employed by the modern scholastics (see Neo-Thomism).

2. The philosophical systems of Fichte, Schelling and, particularly, Hegel, inferred from one principle by means of the dialectical deductive method. According to Hegel, speculative examination is a synonym of dialectical analysis. The achievements of this trend of Speculative Philosophy stem from the fact that examination of the dialectics of ideas enabled the philosophers to guess some aspects of reality. However, the striving at all costs to explain all aspects of reality by means of speculation made the exponents of Speculative Philosophy slavishly subordinate to the object, whose fortuitous and individual definitions they were compelled to construct as absolutely necessary and universal.

3. In the broad sense of the word, speculative thinking connotes theoretical thinking.

Speech

Man's activity by which he communicates with his fellow men, expressing and conveying his thoughts by means of a language. Speech is the process of using language. Thanks to Speech the consciousness of the individual constantly reflects the world, being enriched by what is reflected in social consciousness and associated with the achievements of the social productive practice of mankind.

In this intercourse, constant exchange of thoughts takes place: on the one hand, the comprehension of another's thoughts and their mastery, and on the other, the formulation and utterance of one's own thoughts. In this connection Speech is divided into passive, sensory, speech as perception and comprehension of the Speech of others, and active, motor, speech as the utterance of one's own thoughts, feelings, and desires. What is divided between the speaker and the listener is united psychologically by the internal structure of Speech into an integral whole: speaking, man hears and comprehends; hearing and understanding, he speaks. Physiologically, this is explained by the unified work of the linguamotor and auditory analysers, by the links between them (see Signal Systems).

The main kinds of speech are oral, that is, spoken and heard, and written. The latter appeared in human history much later than the oral and developed through a number of stages from pictography, the transmission of thought by conventional schematic pictures, to contemporary phonetic writing. A special kind of speech is internal Speech, the particular feature of which is inaudible articulation of sounds.

Speech is the object of psychological investigation, which studies the process of mastering language, the formation of Speech in the process of man's individual development, the conditions of the influence of Speech, of its perception, comprehension and pronunciation, etc.

Spencer, Herbert (1820–1903)

English sociologist and psychologist, one of the founders of positivism. His philosophical views were strongly influenced by Hume, Kant, and Mill. The notion of the "unknowable" was highly prominent in his system. A scientific concept, Spencer held, was conflicting and, therefore, incomprehensible. The contention that science is based on the limited experience of the individual, that is, on a false foundation, was another proof Spencer advanced for his notion that science is unable to penetrate to the essence of things. Recognition of the "unknowable" is one of the corner-stones of religion, which gave Spencer cause to maintain that science and religion were contiguous.

Subjective idealism and agnosticism combined in the teaching of Spencer with elements of objective idealism, recognition of "absolute reality" as a source of human sensations and impressions, and a spontaneously materialist interpretation of the problems of specialised sciences. The spontaneously materialist approach was prominent in Spencer's teaching on evolution. Spencer spread the idea of evolution from living beings to all things and phenomena. However, he conceived evolution in a mechanistic way, as redistribution in the world of matter and motion, and thereby blotted out the distinctions between different spheres of the material world.

Spencer's conception of evolution lay at the root of his sociological views, of the so-called organic theory of society, which attempted, quite unscientifically, to analyse social life in biological terms. Spencer was strongly opposed to socialism. His most notable work is System of Synthetic Philosophy (1862–96).

Spengler, Oswald (1880–1936)

German idealist philosopher, ideologist of the Prussian junkers, one of the theoretical forerunners of German fascism. His main work, Der Untergang des Abendlandes (Eng. trans. Decline of the West), 1918–22, in 2 volumes, embodying his philosophy of history, was published soon after the defeat of Germany in the 1st World War, and was a success with the ideologists of imperialism. Spengler extols the "old Prussian spirit", the monarchy, the gentry, and militarism. For him war is "the eternal form of the highest human existence".

Denying the notion of historical progress, Spengler opposes fatalism to the materialistic understanding of history. He is a follower of historical relativism, according to which history falls into a number of independent, unique "cultures", peculiar superorganisms possessing individual fate and going through the periods of origin, efflorescence, and death. According to Spengler, the task of "the philosophy of history" is to understand the "morphological structure" of each "culture", at the basis of which lies the "soul of culture". To him, Western culture beginning from the 19th century, that is, the establishment of capitalism, has entered the period of decline. Its efflorescence was the epoch of feudalism.

In our time the British historian Toynbee is propagating a "philosophy of history" close to that of Spengler.

Spinoza, Baruch or Benedict (1632–1677)

Dutch materialist philosopher; excommunicated for his free-thinking by the Jewish community of Amsterdam. His main works are Tractatus theologico-politicus and Ethica. Spinoza was the founder of the geometric method in philosophy.

Spinoza's doctrine originated in a historical environment which made the Netherlands a foremost capitalist country after its liberation from the yoke of the Spanish feudal monarchy. Like the leading thinkers of his age, Francis Bacon and Descartes, Spinoza considered mastery over nature and the improvement of man to be the main purpose of knowledge. Spinoza supplemented the doctrines of his forerunners with a teaching on freedom: he showed how human freedom was possible within the bounds of necessity.

In solving this problem, Spinoza built on his teaching on nature. In defiance of the dualism of Descartes, Spinoza maintained that only nature existed, being the cause of itself and needing nothing else for its being. As "creative nature", it was divine substance. Spinoza differentiated between substance, or unconditioned being, and the world of individual ultimate things, or modes, both corporeal and thinking. The substance was one, while the modes were infinitely many. The infinite intellect could apprehend infinite substance in all its forms or aspects. But finite human reason apprehended the essence of substance as infinite in but two aspects: as "extension" and as "thought". These were attributes of substance.

Spinoza's teaching on the attributes of substance is, on the whole, materialistic, but metaphysical, because he does not consider motion an attribute of substance. These are the propositions Spinoza drew upon in creating his teaching on man. According to Spinoza, man is a creature in whom the mode of extension, the body, is coupled with the mode of thought, the soul. By token of either, man is part of nature. In his teaching about the soul mode, Spinoza reduced the complexities of psychic life to intellect and emotion: joy, grief, and desire. He identified will with intellect.

Man's behaviour, Spinoza maintained, was motivated by his inclination for self-preservation and personal advantage. Spinoza repudiated the idealistic notion of freedom of the will and defined will as always dependent on motives. At the same time, he believed freedom possible as a behaviour based on knowledge of necessity. However, according to Spinoza, only a sage, and not the mass of people, can be free. This interpretation of freedom is abstract and unhistorical.

In his theory of knowledge Spinoza continued his rationalism. He elevated intellectual knowledge based on reason above the lower order of knowledge derived from the senses, and belittled the role of experience. Spinoza described direct apprehension of the truth, or the intuition of the mind, as the highest type of intellectual knowledge. In so doing, he followed Descartes in declaring clarity and intelligibility the criteria of truth.

Spinoza did a lot to promote the development of atheism and free-thinking, both scientific and religious. The purpose of religion, he held, was not the comprehension of the nature of things, but merely inculcation of high moral principles. This is why neither religion nor the state should encroach on freedom of thought.

Spinoza's teaching on society makes him a successor to Hobbes. Unlike the latter, Spinoza considered not monarchy, but democratic government as the highest form of power and restricted the omnipotence of the state by freedom. Spinoza exercised a strong influence on 17th- and 18th century metaphysical materialism, and his religious free-thinking affected the development of atheism. Engels held Spinoza's philosophical views in high esteem. "It is to the highest credit of the philosophy of the time", he wrote, "that from Spinoza down to the great French materialists—it insisted on explaining the world from the world itself and left the justification in detail to the natural science of the future." (Dialectics of Nature, pp. 25–26.)

Spiral in Development

A figurative description of the outcome of development employed by Engels and Lenin in elucidating the law of the negation of the negation. The process of development produces in phenomena an "apparent return to the old" (Lenin) in the course of change; this implies the repetition at a higher level of some features of a lower level. This may be depicted graphically as a Spiral in which each new turn repeats the preceding one, but at a higher level. The general impression of ascendant and progressive development is thus created. Development in a spiral form is at once opposed to the typically metaphysical idea of development as being motion along a closed circle without any new elements.

Spirit

(Lat. spiritus—breath) A concept broadly associated with concepts of the ideal, and of consciousness as the highest form of mental activity; in the more restricted sense, synonymous with the concept of thought. In the history of philosophy, a distinction is made between the subjective Spirit, the subject, individual, the absolutisation of which leads to subjective idealism, and the objective Spirit, social consciousness, objectivisation of human capabilities, admission of the primacy of which leads to objective idealism.

The ancient philosophers regarded Spirit as the activity of abstract thought, for example, for Aristotle, the highest activity of Spirit is the perception of perception, delight in theory. It is also regarded, however, as super-rational principle, apprehended directly, intuitively (Plotinus). This point of view is associated with religion, according to which Spirit is God, a supernatural being, which can be known only through faith.

German classical philosophy stressed the active quality of the Spirit, regarding it as the activity of self-consciousness. Hegel conceived of Spirit as the unity of self-consciousness and consciousness achieved in reason, and as the unity of practical and theoretical activity of the Spirit on the basis of practical activity: Spirit exists insofar as it is active, although its only activity is cognition. According to Hegel, Spirit overcomes the natural and achieves selfhood in the process of self-consciousness.

Materialist philosophy regards Spirit as secondary in relation to nature. For the ancient materialists Spirit was the most reasonable part of the soul, and it pervaded the whole body. The materialists of the 17th and 18th centuries (Hobbes, Locke, La Mettrie) regarded Spirit merely as a form of sensual knowledge. Dialectical materialism does not reduce the spiritual to the simple sum of sensations and rejects the conception that it is something existing independently of matter. The spiritual is the function of highly organised matter, the result of the material socio-historical practical activity of human beings.

The spiritual life of society—social consciousness—is the reflection of social being. At the same time it actively influences social being and the practical activity of mankind. The concept of Spirit is also used in the metaphorical sense as a synonym of essence, for example, Spirit of the age, Spirit of the times (cf. Soul, Thought, Consciousness, Psyche).

Spiritualism

1. An idealist teaching about the spiritual origin of the world. For some spiritualists the material world is a medium for the manifestation of God and his abilities, while for others it is an illusion of human consciousness. Exponents of Spiritualism maintain that the soul exists independent of the body. Consistent spiritualists, who falsify modern knowledge, suggest replacing science by blind faith in spirits and divine providence.

2. Term used by some modern philosophers to denote idealism.

Spontaneity

Action without deliberation, used, in reference to processes impelled not by outside influences, but intrinsic causes; also, ability to act on intrinsic motives. The philosophical conception of Spontaneity was first treated by the antique atomists in relation to the problems of necessity and chance, possibility, reality and probability, and freedom of the will. Epicurus, for example, associated the spontaneous deviation of the atom from a straight line in falling with chance and freedom of the will, and rejected mechanical determinism.

Dialectical materialism defines Spontaneity as a specific property of matter, a token of its self-movement. From the standpoint of materialistic dialectics, wrote Lenin, "the condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their 'self-movement', in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites" (vol. 38, p. 360). Recognition of spontaneous motion and development does not rule out the need for considering external influences on the developing object, and its interrelation with the objective world as a whole. The idealistic conception of Spontaneity as independent of the objective world and of the non-determinative "freedom of man's will" is groundless and conflicts with the facts of science (see Will).

Spontaneity and Consciousness

The categories of historical materialism defining the relation between an objective historical regularity and the purposeful activity of men. By spontaneity is meant a process of social development whose objective laws are not cognised by men and are, therefore, beyond their control, operating often with the devastating force of a natural calamity, while the conscious efforts of men do not lead to the materialisation of set goals and even bring about results entirely unexpected by them. Historical activity is said to be conscious when people pursue it in accordance with cognised objective laws of social development and direct it purposefully towards the materialisation of set goals.

All pre-socialist socio-economic formations developed as a rule spontaneously. Transfer of power to the working class headed by the Communist Party and the substitution of public ownership of the means of production for private ownership ushered in a new period in history, a period of conscious historical pursuit. But the difference between the historical activity of men under socialism and in the previous formations is not absolute. Previously, too, men based themselves to some extent in their activity on the objective laws of history and gradually cognised individual manifestations of historical necessity. On the other hand, elements of spontaneity still survive under socialism, because various problems of social science have not yet been exhaustively elaborated or because of a lack of skill in utilising objective laws to the full, or again because of the certain lag of social consciousness behind social being.

In the context of historical materialism, the question of Spontaneity and Consciousness is treated in close association with the tactics of the communist and working-class movement. It is politically important, because it concerns the Party's leadership of the people and is an object of acute struggle against reformism and revisionism.

Square of Opposition

The term proposed in the 16th century by Julius Pacius, translator and commentator of Aristotle. It served for a long time as a mnemonic device for memorising the relations between the four main types of premises of Aristotelian logic. Square of Opposition is given in the form of a diagram in which these relations are graphically shown. The letters A, E, I, O respectively symbolise universal affirmative, universal negative, particular affirmative and particular negative premises.

Stages, Theory of

The conception of US sociologist Walt Rostow set out in his book The Stages of Economic Growth. A Non-Communist Manifesto (1960). According to this conception history is divided into five stages: (1) "traditional society", which includes all societies not short of the capitalist; it is marked by a low productivity of labour and the predominance of agriculture; (2) "transitional society", which coincides with the transition to pre-monopoly capitalism; (3) "stage of take-off", marked by industrial revolutions and the beginning of industrialisation; (4) "stage of maturity" (completion of industrialisation and emergence of industrially developed countries); (5) "stage of high mass consumption", claimed to be attained as yet only in the United States.

For relations of production, the real basis of historical development, Theory of Stages substitutes an eclectical interaction of a variety of factors—technical, economic, psychological, political, cultural, historical, and the like. Taking the share of capital in the national income as the basis for dividing society into stages, Rostow arbitrarily classifies different socio-economic formations under the head of "traditional society" and thereby ignores the qualitative differences between them. Theory of Stages endeavours to identify phenomena which are qualitatively different in social substance by placing them under the common head of "industrial society" (e.g., the attempts to identify socialist and capitalist industrialisation).

Eager to vindicate colonialism and US capitalism, Theory of Stages repudiates the need for socialist revolutions and maintains that the whole world is moving towards an "integrated industrial society" as exemplified by the United States, and thereby attempts to goad the peoples recently liberated from the colonial yoke on to the capitalist path of development. Rostow's conception claims to be a materialist interpretation of society and endeavours to capitalise on its outward resemblance to Marxism (acknowledgement of technical and economic factors, and the like). Theory of Stages is aimed against the Marxist teaching of socio-economic formations and has been elevated to the rank of an official political doctrine in some capitalist countries.

Philosophically, it is based on subjective idealism and voluntarism. While eclectically recognising the interaction of a variety of factors, it ultimately accentuates the subjective ones, such as "free choice" of historical path, "free solution", and the like.

Stalin (Dzhugashvili), Joseph Vissarionovich (1878–1953)

A theoretician of Marxism-Leninism, close associate of V. I. Lenin, General Secretary of the Party Central Committee (1922–1934), Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (1934–1952). He was born in the town of Gori, Tiflis Governorate. After graduating from the Gori Ecclesiastical School (1894), he entered the Tiflis Theological Seminary, from which he was expelled in 1899 for propagating Marxism among workers.

He entered the revolutionary movement at the age of fifteen, establishing ties with underground Marxist groups in Transcaucasia. In 1898 he became a member of the Tiflis organization of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). Together with V. Z. Ketskhoveli and A. G. Tsulukidze, he formed the leading core of the revolutionary Marxist minority within the group Mesame-dasi, which opposed the opportunist majority of that organization.

In the work The Russian Social-Democratic Party and Its Immediate Tasks (1901), Stalin emphasized the necessity of uniting scientific socialism with the spontaneous workers’ movement and advanced the task of organizing an independent political party of the proletariat. During the years of the First Russian Revolution (1905–1907), he led the struggle of the Transcaucasian Bolsheviks for the Leninist strategy and tactics of the revolution.

In 1906–1907, Stalin’s works Anarchism or Socialism? were published, devoted to the defense and development of the worldview of the Marxist party—dialectical and historical materialism. In the years of reaction following the defeat of the 1905–1907 revolution, he carried out extensive work to build and strengthen the illegal revolutionary party. The Prague Party Conference of 1912 elected Stalin in absentia to the Central Committee and, on Lenin’s proposal, entrusted him with leadership of the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee. Under Stalin’s leadership, the first issue of the newspaper Pravda (1912) was prepared.

Stalin’s most important contribution to Marxist theory was his elaboration of the national question. In the work Marxism and the National Question (1913), he gave a classical definition of the nation and its distinguishing features. Lenin wrote that in Marxist theoretical literature on the national question, “first and foremost… the article by Stalin stands out.”

Stalin opposed the bourgeois-nationalist concept of “cultural-national autonomy” advanced by the Austro-Marxists and developed Marxist principles for resolving the national question under conditions of socialist construction. He emphasized that the right of nations to self-determination must be subordinated to the principles of socialism and serve as a means of struggle for socialism, not the imperialist aims of the bourgeoisie. The development of the Marxist approach to the national question in Stalin’s works was of great importance for the federal structure of the RSFSR and the state construction of the USSR.

After Lenin’s death (1924), in the works The Foundations of Leninism and The October Revolution and the Tactics of the Russian Communists, Stalin provided a systematic exposition of Leninism as the development of Marxism as applied to the epoch of imperialism and proletarian revolutions. Stalin defined Leninism as “Marxism of the epoch of imperialism and the proletarian revolution,” as “the theory and tactics of the proletarian revolution in general, the theory and tactics of the dictatorship of the proletariat in particular.”

A central place in Stalin’s theoretical legacy is occupied by the development and substantiation of Lenin’s teaching on the possibility of the victory of socialism in one, separately taken country. In the struggle against the Trotskyist theory of “permanent revolution” and Right-opportunist conceptions denying the possibility of building socialism in the USSR, Stalin, in the work Questions of Leninism (1926), demonstrated that this doctrine logically follows from Lenin’s theory of imperialism. Stalin emphasized that the victory of socialism in one country is possible and sufficient for the construction of a complete socialist society, although the final victory is possible only with the victory of the proletariat in a number of countries. Without clear prospects and confidence in the possibility of building socialism, Stalin pointed out, the Party cannot lead socialist construction.

In the work Dialectical and Historical Materialism (1938), Stalin provided a systematic exposition of the foundations of Marxist philosophy. He formulated a definition of dialectical materialism as the worldview of the Marxist-Leninist Party and set forth the main features of the Marxist dialectical method and Marxist philosophical materialism.

Stalin devoted special attention to questions of historical materialism: the material conditions of the life of society, the mode of production and its two aspects—productive forces and relations of production—and the main types of relations of production. He emphasized that “in its practical activity the Party of the proletariat must be guided not by any accidental motives, but by the laws of the development of society, by the practical conclusions drawn from these laws.”

Stalin formulated the most important characteristic of socialist society—the complete correspondence between productive forces and relations of production: “Under the socialist system, relations of production are in full conformity with the state of the productive forces, since the social character of the process of production is reinforced by social ownership of the means of production.”

In the work Marxism and Problems of Linguistics (1950), Stalin creatively applied Marxist philosophy to problems of linguistics, opposing N. Ya. Marr’s vulgarizing conception of language as a superstructure. In this work, he substantiated the necessity of free scientific discussion and criticism for the development of science, spoke out against the monopolization of theoretical questions by a narrow group, and emphasized the inadmissibility of creating a “closed group of infallible leaders.”

Developing Lenin’s propositions on the laws governing the transitional period from capitalism to socialism and generalizing the experience of socialist construction in the USSR, Stalin, in the work Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR (1952), formulated the basic economic law of socialism, substantiated the limited character of the operation of the law of value under socialism, and demonstrated the objective character of the economic laws of socialism.

Stalin outlined paths for the further development of the Soviet economy and advanced the idea of a gradual transition from commodity exchange to direct product exchange by raising collective-farm property to the level of all-people’s property and replacing commodity circulation with a system of product exchange. This work was of great importance for the discussion on the creation of a Soviet textbook of political economy.

Under Stalin’s leadership, the Communist Party carried out the socialist industrialization of the country and the collectivization of agriculture, which made it possible for the USSR to be transformed from an agrarian country into an advanced industrial power. In the works A Year of Great Change (1929), Dizzy with Success (1930), and Reply to Collective-farm Comrades (1930), Stalin defined the correct line in carrying out collectivization. The victory of socialism in the USSR found its expression in the USSR Constitution of 1936. The Eighteenth Party Congress (1939), on the basis of Stalin’s report, set the task of catching up with and surpassing the most developed capitalist countries economically and outlined a program for the gradual transition to the higher phase of communism.

During the years of the Great Patriotic War, Stalin headed the State Defense Committee (from 1941) and was Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the USSR (1941–1945). Under his leadership, the Soviet Army crushed Hitlerite Germany and militarist Japan, played a decisive role in the creation of the anti-Hitler coalition and the postwar world order. After the war, under Stalin’s leadership, successful work was carried out to restore the national economy of the USSR, create atomic weapons, and develop jet aircraft construction and rocketry.

In the final years of his life, Stalin undertook a number of measures aimed at democratizing Party leadership and combating the bureaucratization of the apparatus. At the Nineteenth Party Congress (1952), the post of General Secretary of the Central Committee was abolished, the composition of the Central Committee was significantly expanded, and the principle of collective leadership was established in order to ensure democratic centralism (these measures were abolished after his death).

Stalin’s contribution to the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism, to the cause of building socialism, and to the strengthening of the Soviet state has historical significance for the development of the international communist and workers’ movement.

Stankevich, Nikolai Vladimirovich (1813–1840)

Russian idealist thinker; graduated from the linguistic department of Moscow University (1834); founder and leader of a circle frequented by Belinsky from 1833 to 1837 and, at different times, by Bakunin, K. S. Aksakov, and others. Stankevich centred his attention on questions of ethics as the key to various social problems. He was opposed to serfdom and attacked the corruption and egoism of the Russian gentry. He appealed for moral improvement and enlightenment, and for the unity of men on the basis of "the principle of love" which he cloaked in a religious garb.

Despite the utopian nature of his conception of social progress, his propaganda had a beneficial effect, because it criticised the Russia of his day and called for civic dedication. The philosophical views of Stankevich (judging by his correspondence and his writings, collected in the book Verse. Tragedy. Prose, 1890) were originally borrowed from his Russian teachers, M. G. Pavlov, N. I. Nadezhdin, I. I. Davydov, M. P. Pogodin, etc., and the school of Lyubomudry (Lovers of Wisdom).

Later (1834), he studied the works of Schelling, Kant, and Hegel, in which he sought answers to questions that troubled him. His views were coloured strongly by idealist dialectics. In the last years of his life, Stankevich arrived at the conclusion that philosophy had to be brought closer to reality, approved of the ideas of the Young Hegelian Cheshkovsky and of Feuerbach, who had begun to criticise Hegelian philosophy. The work and personality of Stankevich were highly commended by Belinsky, Herzen, and Dobrolyubov.

Stasov, Vladimir Vasilyevich (1824–1906)

Russian art theorist, music and art critic. His outlook was affected by Diderot, Lessing, Chernyshevsky, Belinsky, and Dobrolyubov. Stasov was an exponent of the materialist aesthetics of the Russian revolutionary democrats. The chief demands Stasov made on the arts were: realism, service to the people, ideological orientation. None but the art that meets all these demands, he maintained, can perform its basic purpose—to promote the democratic reconstruction of society.

Stasov opposed the proponents of "art for art's sake", idealist aesthetics, formalists, decadents, and the like. He had a very strong influence on the democratic trend in Russian music and painting (the "Big Five" and the "Wanderers"), on the development of Russian art in general. His works include Dvadtsat pyat let russkogo iskusstva (Twenty-Five Years of Russian Art), 1882–83, Iskusstvo v 19 vyeke (Art in the 19th Century), 1901, etc.

State

The political organisation of the class dominant in economy; its purpose is to safeguard the existing order and to suppress the resistance of other classes. It appeared when society broke up into classes as a tool of the exploiting class for the suppression of the exploited population. The emergence of State consisted in the formation of a special public authority with an army and police, with prisons and various institutions of coercion.

In a society based on the private ownership of the means of production, State is always a tool of the dominant exploiting class, a dictatorship, a special force for the oppression of the exploited masses regardless of the specific form of government. The socialist State is different in principle. It is also a tool of class dictatorship, viz., dictatorship of the proletariat, but it operates in the interests of all working people, that is, in the interests of the vast majority of the people, by suppressing the exploiters. The socialist State may be of different forms, but its substance is always the same—dictatorship of the proletariat.

After the Second World War, States of people's democracy sprang up in a number of European and Asian countries. They, too, like the Soviets in the USSR, are a specific form of socialist State. Engels wrote that the proletarian State is not State in the full sense of the word. State in the full sense of the word is a force that alienates itself more and more from the people, opposes the people and is intended to keep the people under the domination of the exploiting class. The proletarian State, on the other hand, essentially expresses the interests of the people.

Hence its other distinctive feature, which Lenin described as "withering". State will not exist eternally. In the future it will give place to communist public self-administration. The state of the whole people is a phase which brings us nearer to stateless society. State of the whole people develops from state of the working-class dictatorship at a certain stage in the building of communist society.

State and Collective-Farm and Co-operative Forms of Property

Two forms of socialist ownership. Both forms are based on collective ownership of the means of production. State property is the property of the whole people, while co-operative property is the property of individual collective farms and co-operatives. Land is placed at the disposal of collective farms in perpetuity, and they use it as they see fit. The results of labour and all movable and immovable property belong to the collective farm.

Besides commonly-owned property, members of collective farms have at their disposal personal plots of land, domestic animals, etc. At a definite stage, when the collective farms are able to satisfy the requirements of their members out of the common result of their labour, these personal plots will gradually become redundant. The state form of property, or national property, is the leading form, and the co-operative form is secondary. Merging of the two forms proceeds gradually in the stage of full-scale communist construction.

The Programme of the CPSU defines the means by which they will merge into a single form of communist property. State property is perfected by concentration and centralisation of production, progressive co-operation and specialisation. Co-operative property is raised to the level of national property by the further economic development of the collective farms, growth of their fixed assets, co-operation of collectively-owned property with state property, and the development of production links between collective farms through the building of joint collective-farm power stations, factories processing farm products, etc.

"The State and Revolution"

The Marxist theory of the state and the tasks of the proletariat in the revolution, a book by Lenin written in August–September 1917 and published in May 1918. When the socialist revolution was being prepared in Russia questions concerning the attitude of the proletariat to the state were of keen theoretical and practical political significance.

In his book, Lenin dealt with the main aspects of the Marxist theory of the state, with its development by Marx and Engels on the basis of the experience of the 1848–51 revolution and, particularly, of the Paris Commune of 1871. Lenin substantiated the Marxist conclusion that the main task of the working class in revolution with regard to the state is to break down the bourgeois state machine and to establish dictatorship of the proletariat.

In describing the two phases of communist society, Lenin analysed the economic reasons for the withering away of the proletarian state and outlined the chief ways of developing socialist statehood: extending democracy, giving the masses a growing share in state administration, etc. Lenin's book contains devastating criticism of anarchism and opportunism, the trends which distorted the Marxist teaching on the state and emasculated its revolutionary content (chiefly by rejecting dictatorship of the proletariat).

The book is unfinished. Lenin left unwritten a chapter that was to sum up the experience of the 1905 and 1917 revolutions. Lenin's main ideas on the socialist state were developed further in the Programme of the CPSU adopted by the 22nd Party Congress.

State and State-Monopoly Capitalism

Forms of capitalist economy in which private capitalist enterprises are transformed into state enterprises and economic matters are controlled by the state. In the pre-monopoly stage, state capitalism served to accelerate capitalist reproduction. In the imperialist epoch, it is succeeded by state-monopoly capitalism, in which large monopolies merge with the bourgeois machinery of state, subordinating the latter to the monopolies with the object of extracting the highest possible capitalist profits.

State-monopoly capitalism represents the highest degree of socialisation of production under capitalism, for which reason Lenin described it as a "complete material preparation for socialism". However, state-monopoly capitalism is not distinct from imperialism and does not imply peaceful growth of capitalism into socialism. It does not alter the nature of capitalism and does not eliminate the contradictions between labour and capital, or anarchy of production and economic crises. Instead of strengthening the capitalist system, state-monopoly capitalism deepens its main contradictions.

State-monopoly capitalism which intensifies exploitation of working people and suppresses the labour and national movements, should not be confused with state capitalism obtaining in the developing countries, such as India, Indonesia, etc., which is progressive and promotes economic progress and national independence. Appraisal of state capitalism must take into consideration whose interests it promotes, those of the monopolies or of the people.

In a proletarian dictatorship, state capitalism is not the dominant economic form and is fundamentally different in nature, because it is controlled by the working class and is utilised to develop large-scale production. "The transition to communism," Lenin said, "is also possible through state capitalism, provided state power is controlled by the working class." (Vol. 33, pp. 403–04.)

State of the Whole People

A state expressing the interests and will of all the people, an instrument for building communism. It arose as a result of the complete and final victory of socialism in the USSR and it is the successor to the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat, after the latter had fully discharged its historical tasks and society had entered the period of full-scale building of communism.

The main features of the State of the Whole People are that it is not an instrument for the suppression of some class, it rests on a single social foundation and is a landmark in the transition to communist public self-administration. It remains in being until the complete victory of communism. "Expressing the will of the people, it must organise the building up of the material and technical basis of communism, and the transformation of socialist relations into communist relations, must exercise control over the measure of work and the measure of consumption, promote the people's welfare, protect the rights and freedoms of Soviet citizens, socialist law and order, and socialist property, instil in the people conscious discipline and a communist attitude to labour, guarantee the defence and security of the country, promote fraternal co-operation with the socialist countries, uphold world peace, and maintain normal relations with all countries." (Programme of the CPSU.)

Statement

In modern formal logic, a sentence in a particular language considered in relation to the appraisals of its truth (true, false) or modality (probable, possible, impossible, necessary, etc.). Statement which covers other Statements is said to be compound. Otherwise, it is said to be simple. Every Statement expresses an idea. This idea constitutes its content and is said to be the meaning of Statement. The appraisal of the truth of Statement is said to be its truth-value. The material term to which Statement refers is said to be its subject. Sometimes Statement is referred to as "proposition" or "judgement".

Statistical Physics

A department of physics dealing with the properties of groups of particles (from elementary particles to galaxies). Even in classical Statistical Physics, which deals with particles governed by the laws of classical mechanics, we observe irreducibility of the properties of the whole (a group of particles) to the properties of its parts (see Part and Whole).

The conclusions of Statistical Physics revealed the limitations of the metaphysical conception of causality, the so-called Laplacian determinism (see Determinism and Indeterminism). Modern Statistical Physics is associated with the quantum theory and deals with particles governed by quantum laws. However, in certain circumstances modern Statistical Physics slides back to classical Statistical Physics (see Correspondence Principle).

Stirner, Max (1806–1856)

Pseudonym of Johann Caspar Schmidt, German idealist philosopher, founder of anarchistic individualism; he was close to the Young Hegelians. In 1844, he published a book, Der Einzige and sein Eigentum, where he developed the system of anarchism. The sole reality, according to him, is "I", the egoist, and the whole world is his possession. The notions of morals, justice, law, society, etc., are thrown overboard and declared to be "illusions", "constraining husk". Each individual is himself the source of morals and justice.

According to Stirner, private property must be preserved, as the self-hood of the "ego" is expressed in it. The social ideal of Stirner is the "union of egoists", wherein everyone sees in the other nothing but the means of achieving his own ends. Regarding history as the product of ideas, Stirner believed that by overcoming the dominant concepts we can change social relations. He openly opposed communism and the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat.

His outwardly "rebellious" slogans are merely the cover for the interests of the petty bourgeois who tries to preserve his economy from bankruptcy. In The German Ideology Marx and Engels criticised all aspects of his speculative idealism and showed his loss of touch with the real social relations in Germany in the mid-19th century.

Stoics

Exponents of a philosophical school that appeared within the framework of Hellenistic culture in the 4th century B.C. under the impact of cosmopolitan and individualistic ideas and technical developments impelled by the expansion of mathematical knowledge. Zeno and Chrysippus were the most prominent exponents of the school in the 4th and 3rd centuries B.C.

The role of the sciences treated by the Stoics was defined by them as follows: logic is the fence, physics the fertile soil, and ethics its fruit. The chief task of philosophy concerned ethics; knowledge was no more than a means of acquiring wisdom and skill of living. Life, the Stoics held, had to be lived according to nature. This was the ideal of every wise man. Happiness lay in apathia, or freedom from emotion, in peace of mind, in imperturbability. Fate pre-ordained everything in life. He who consented was led on by fate; he who resisted was dragged along.

The Stoics were materialists in their conception of nature. All there is in the world, they said, are bodies of varying density. The true has to be distinguished from the truth. Nothing but bodies really exist. The true, on the other hand, is incorporeal and does not exist. The true is no more than a statement. With the Stoics, materialism combined with nominalism. The senses apprehend reality as individual things. Science strives to apprehend the general, but this general, as such, does not exist in the world.

The Stoics acknowledged four categories: (1) the substratum (the existing); (2) quality; (3) state (e.g., "to be"); (4) relative state ("to be to the right of something"). In contrast to logic of predicates (see Aristotle), Stoics created a logic of propositions, based not on categorical judgements, but on relative ones. The Stoics established the varieties of the connection of judgements which modern logic designates as material implication.

The most prominent Stoics of the subsequent epochs were the disciples of Chrysippus: Zeno of Tarsus and Diogenes of Seleucia; Boethus of Sidon (d. 119) and Panaetius of Rhodes (2nd century B.C.). Stoics appeared on Roman soil in the first centuries A.D.; they applied themselves to the moral and religious ideas of the stoic school; chief among them were Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Musonius Rufus, Epictetus and Emperor Marcus Aurelius.

Stoletov, Alexander Grigoryevich (1839–1896)

Russian physicist, one of the founders of Russian physics and modern electrical engineering. Stoletov took a materialist view of natural phenomena. He was the first Russian physicist to come out against the philosophy of Machism in his article "Helmholtz and Modern Physics" (1894), which he qualified as decadent. In his early period he tried to reduce all physical phenomena to the basic principles of mechanics, but under the influence of the new discoveries in the natural sciences he gradually transcended the limitations of a mechanistic materialism. He frequently used the term "mechanical" to denote "materialist" and "scientific", and for him "mechanism" was virtually a banner under which he campaigned for materialism in natural science.

His world outlook was shaped under the impact of forward-looking Russian materialists. For his ideas, he was harassed by the tsarist government, which debarred him from being elected to the Academy of Sciences.

Stratification, Social

A sociological doctrine on society's structure, which holds that society is stratified into social layers; these are identified on the strength of a wide range of criteria, including economic, political, biological, racial, religious, etc., there being no agreement among its exponents as to which of these is decisive. Social Stratification also includes the division of society into classes but this is based on arbitrary and inessential criteria (e.g., occupation, housing, residential area, size of income, etc.).

According to modern sociologists, Social Stratification is in a state of flux, for it depends on social mobility, that is, the movement of men between various strata and classes. This doctrine is unscientific and false, for it gives a distorted picture of the class structure of modern bourgeois society and ignores the real criterion of class divisions, namely, the relation of men to means of production.

Stress Conception

A doctrine developed by Canadian physician Hans Selye (b. 1907). Stress is that state of the organism which responds with adaptive reactions to the effect of strong irritants. In philosophical terms, this doctrine has much in common with J. Müller's physiological idealism, for both overrate the role of the organism's internal state in its interaction with environment. Selye virtually reduces the role of environment to that of a "trigger mechanism", which activates the "eternal" adaptive mechanisms. He holds that the great qualitative diversity of external influences tend to produce a standardized reaction.

Objectively, the Stress Conception is aimed against the theory that the central nervous system has the leading part to play in the organism's vital activity (see I. Pavlov). Selye succumbs to autogenesis and the teleological idea in biology. Some modern sociologists (Jasmin, R. Francis, K. Meninger, and others) mechanically apply the Stress Conception to men and society. Man is defined as a teleological centre and human aims as the drive to attain "egoistic" biological requirements. The origins of egoism and altruism, revenge and gratitude, etc., are viewed in a strictly biological light.

Selye's followers have been trying to formulate concepts of social, commercial, ethical, aesthetic, and psychological stress. This tends to build up the concept of a "social Selyeism". The doctrine is unsound because it is based on a one-sided transposition of biological concepts to society.

Structure

The law-governed and stable connection and interrelation of parts and elements of a system or a whole. A precise definition of Structure in mathematics and mathematical logic is based on the concept of isomorphism. The category of Structure is closely bound up with the categories of law, form, necessity, etc. It remains immutable despite the continued alteration of its parts and the whole itself, and changes only when the whole undergoes a qualitative leap.

On the other hand, all the elements of the whole are essentially dependent on its Structure, and have a qualitatively distinct role to play depending on the mode and system of their concatenation and organization. Thus, graphite and diamond differ from each other in the different arrangement of their atoms of carbon. Much more importance is now attached to the concept of Structure in science, as mathematics, physics, and biology have come up against the fact that their objects of study are integral.

In particular, there is a method of studying the structure of an object before the study of its elements and parts. It has transpired that three dialectically connected and dialectically cognizable types of structure can be brought out in any organic whole. The first step in cognition is to determine the mechanical Structure of the whole, which shows how it is divided into parts. The discovery of the fact that the "part is equal to the whole" (Hegel) and is the source of the whole points to the very fact of organic integrity. The complete cognition of the whole means a cognition of its organic Structure as the realization of the whole complexity of relationships between the parts of the whole. In this connection, there has been a sharp rise in the importance of studying the epistemological aspects of the Structure concept.

Structure has a specific place in linguistics (the so-called structuralism—the study of language as a system of signs) and in psychology (the concept of the integrity or structural nature of the psyche, which is especially characteristic of Gestalt psychology).

Struggle for Existence

Resistance of organisms to the factors of animate and inanimate nature unfavorable to their life and propagation. As a result of this struggle the species best adapted to their environmental conditions survive and produce the most abundant and viable progeny. The struggle for existence is one of the forms of relationship between organisms within one species and between representatives of different species and is a factor in the evolution of plants and animals.

Application of the idea of the struggle for existence to human society has given rise to the reactionary theory of Social-Darwinism.

Struve, Pyotr Berngardovich (1870–1944)

Russian bourgeois economist and philosopher, and leader of "legal Marxism". Struve criticized Narodism, advocated the development of capitalism in Russia and propounded bourgeois objectivism; he declared his "adherence" to Marxism but revised its basic propositions; he ascribed to Marx an "economic materialism"; he criticized the labour theory of value from the standpoint of vulgar political economy, and propounded Malthusianism. From 1905 leader of the Right-wing Cadets.

In philosophy (Diverse Topics, 1902, Patriotica, 1911, et al.) he was a follower of Kant and subsequently a proponent of mystical idealism. From 1917 a whiteguard émigré, an enemy of the Soviet power. His ideas were exploded by Lenin in The Economic Content of Narodism and the Criticism of It in Mr. Struve's Book and other works.

Style in Art

A historically derived and stable integrity of an imaginative system, the means and methods of artistic expression predicated by the sameness of the aesthetic and social content. This sameness is achieved on the strength of a definite creative method. Style reflects the socio-economic conditions of a society, as well as the peculiarities and traditions of the nation concerned. Take archaic, Hellenistic, Roman, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Empire, modern and other Styles. Each Style gains its fullest expression in some definite types of art.

A new Style appears in order to express deep-going social changes whenever a fundamentally new correlation emerges between the artistic form and the ideological content. Formalistic aesthetics produces either an exaggeratedly broad conception of Style, identifying it with the artistic method (which reduces, say, realism to one of the Styles), or an exaggeratedly narrow conception, identifying it with the artistic mannerisms of this or that artist.

The concept of "Style of the epoch" is also wrong, for it divorces Style from the world outlook and from the artistic method. There is always a variety of artistic methods in every epoch, and it is within the framework of these methods that various Styles develop, which, in turn, embrace artists of different artistic mannerisms and approaches. Multiplicity of Styles and mannerisms is a typical feature of socialist realism.

Subconscious

A characteristic of the active mental processes which, not being at the time the centre of conscious activity, influence the course of conscious processes. Thus, that which man does not directly think about at a given moment, but which he knows in principle and which is associated with the object of his thoughts, may influence the train of thought that accompanies it in the context of its meaning.

In exactly the same way the perceptible (although direct and unconscious) influence of the condition, situation, automatic actions (motions) are present as the subconscious perception in all conscious actions. A definite conscious role is played by the context of language, an idea unexpressed but implied by the very structure of the sentence.

There is nothing mystical or unknowable in the Subconscious. These phenomena are the by-product of conscious activity, and they include the mental processes which have no direct part in the comprehension of the objects on which man's attention is concentrated at the given moment. For the idealist distortions of the understanding of the Subconscious see Unconscious, Freudism.

Subject and Object

Philosophical categories. Subject was initially (e.g., Aristotle) taken to be the repository of certain properties, states and actions, and in that context was identified with the concept of substance. This meaning of the term Subject is still current. But beginning from the 17th century, Subject, like its correlative, Object, were used chiefly in the epistemological sense.

Today, Subject is taken to be an active and cognizant man, endowed with consciousness and will; Object, as that which is given in cognition, or that towards which Subject's cognitive or other activity is directed. The Subject and Object relationship is a problem that is connected with the fundamental question of philosophy, and has, accordingly, been given a different interpretation by materialists and idealists.

Materialists regard Object as existing independently of Subject and take it to be the objective world, and in a narrow sense, the object of cognition. But mechanistic and metaphysical materialists were unable to produce a scientific answer to the problem of the Object and Subject relationship, because they held this to be based only on the action of Object on Subject, with Subject being regarded as something passive and receptive of external influences. Subject was understood to be an individual, whose substance was seen only in his natural origin. Subject remained passive not only in the sphere of cognition but also in practical activity, for the old materialists were incapable of understanding the objective law-governed nature of human activity towards the attainment of subjective aims.

The idealists take the opposite view of this. They deduce the relationship between Subject and Object and the very existence of Object only from the activity of Subject, trying to explain the Subject's active role in cognition on that basis. Subjective idealists take the view that Subject is the unity of the individual's psychic activity; this virtually eliminates Object, for it is held to be nothing but the aggregate of the states of Subject. The objective idealists, notably Hegel, have made some valuable suggestions on the role of practice in the Subject and Object relationship, the dependence of this relationship on history and the social nature of Subject. But because the idealists tended to absolutize the epistemological activity of Subject they drew the conclusion that Object was the result and product of the activity of Subject, who was regarded besides as a purely ideal being or substance.

Dialectical materialism holds that Object exists independently of Subject, but the two are regarded as a unity. Subject himself becomes an Object in another aspect and is, therefore, subject to objective regularities. There is, accordingly, no gulf between Subject and Object in principle. Their interaction is based on man's socio-historical practice, which alone gives a clue to Subject's epistemological activity. This means that man becomes Subject only in history and in society, and is for that reason not an abstract individual, but a social being all of whose capacities and potentialities have been shaped by practice.

Man, being the active force in the interaction between Subject and Object, nevertheless depends on Object in his activity, for the latter sets definite limits to the Subject's freedom of action. This produces the need for cognition of the laws governing Object for the purpose of adapting one's activity to them. The Subject's activity is also objectively conditioned by his requirements and the level of production. Depending on this and also on the level of cognition of the objective laws, man sets himself conscious goals, in the attainment of which both Object and Subject undergo change.

As society develops, subjective factors play a progressively greater part, especially under socialism, where social development is controlled by men, which does not, of course, signify any change in the principles behind the Subject and Object relationship.

Subjective Method in Sociology

An idealist method which demands that society be viewed only as the product of the activity of outstanding individuals. It ignores the objective laws of social development, denies the decisive role of the masses in history and is equivalent to voluntarism. Active proponents of it in Russia were the Narodniks (Lavrov, Mikhailovsky, et al.) who declared that history is made by the "critical thinker". Hence, the negative attitude to the revolutionary initiative of the masses, and the tactics of individual terror against tsarist statesmen.

Lenin gave a profound critique of the method in his What the "Friends of the People" Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats. Modern sociologists who accept the method most frequently subscribe to the elite theory, which says that history is directed by the will of a small group of the "elect", chiefly businessmen (H. Magid, J. Schumpeter, et al).

Sublime

A category expressing the aesthetic meaning and significance of heroic deeds and great events and their reproduction in art. Events and phenomena regarded as sublime are aesthetically perceived by man as the opposite of everything base and commonplace. The Sublime evokes feelings that lift a man above the trivial and mediocre and spur him on to fight for lofty ideals.

The Sublime is closely connected with the beautiful, for, like the beautiful, it is the embodiment of the progressive aesthetic ideal. In contrast to the Sublime, everything base and trivial is always ugly, though it may sometimes be beautifully adorned. Whereas idealist theories attribute the Sublime to the subject or to ideas of divine infinity and eternity, Marxist aesthetics attributes it to objective reality, at the same time attaching great importance to the conscious cultivation of lofty aesthetic feelings and ideas.

Substance

In pre-Marxist philosophy, the immutable primary principle underlying all existing things, and remaining intact in all transformations, as distinct from the concrete mutable objects and phenomena; that most general and deep-going essence, whose cause and foundation consist in nothing else but in itself. Idealism takes Substance to be God, universal reason, idea, etc.; pantheism (Nicholas of Cusa, Bruno), God who is identified with nature and matter. Materialists take Substance to be something material. Dualistic theories (see Descartes) accept a dual Substance: a material and an ideal one, both being absolutely equivalent, which clashes with the very idea of Substance.

Dialectical materialism rejects the idea of any immutable, uniform, homogeneous Substance and holds that matter, which is in constant motion and development, is the Substance, foundation of the world. This concept is more precise and clear (see Unity and Diversity of the World).

Substance and Field

Fundamental concepts of physics, denoting the two basic forms of matter at macroscopic level, Substance being the aggregate of discrete formations possessing rest mass (atoms, molecules and their combinations), while Field is a form of matter characterized by continuity and having zero rest mass (electromagnetic field and gravitational field).

The discovery of the field as a form of matter was of enormous philosophical importance because it showed the fallacy of the metaphysical identification of matter with Substance. Lenin's formulation of the dialectical-materialist definition of matter was in many respects based on the philosophical generalization of the doctrine of the Field.

At the subatomic level (i.e., the level of elementary particles) the distinction between Substance and Field becomes relative. The fields (electromagnetic and gravitational) lose their purely continuous character; they are necessarily compared with discrete formations, the quanta (photons and gravitons), and the elementary particles of which Substance is composed (protons, neutrons, electrons, mesons, etc.) emerge as quanta of the nucleon, meson, etc., fields and lose their purely discrete character.

It is wrong at the subatomic level to make a distinction between Substance and Field even on account of their possessing or not possessing rest mass, since the nucleon, meson, etc., fields do possess rest mass. In modern physics, fields are contrasted to and compared with particles, forming two inseparably connected aspects of the microcosm and expressing the unity of the corpuscular (discrete) and wave (continual) properties of microobjects. Concepts of Field also form the basis for the explanation of the processes of interaction embodied in the principle of immediate action (see Immediate Action and Action at a Distance).

Substratum

The material foundation for the unity of the diverse properties of an individual object or thing; the material foundation of the unity and uniformity of various objects. Substratum is usually viewed as the foundation of the particular or the individual.

Successive Continuity

The objective and necessary connection between the old and the new in the process of development, one of the main features of the law of the negation of the negation. As opposed to metaphysics, which absolutizes the simple reproduction of objects, materialist dialectics turns to the investigation of the processes of progressive development in nature, society, and thought.

The very genesis of the forms of the motion of matter shows that every higher form of motion, succeeding lower ones, does not annul them but includes them in and subordinates them to itself. A dialectical understanding of negation presupposes not only the liquidation of the old but also the conservation and further development of the progressive and rational in what was achieved in previous stages, without which the movement forward, whether in being or in cognition, would be impossible.

A correct understanding of the processes of Successive Continuity is of particular significance in analyzing the laws of development of science and art, and in fighting both the uncritical attitude to the achievements of the past and the nihilist negation of cultural heritage.

Sufficient Reason, Principle of

A general principle of logic, according to which a proposition is considered true only if sufficient reason for it can be formulated. Sufficient Reason is a proposition (or set of propositions) which is known to be true, and from which the conclusion may be logically derived. The truth of the reason may be demonstrated by experiment, or derived from the truth of other propositions.

The principle characterizes one of the essential features of logically correct thinking—proof. The principle was first formulated by Leibniz, though it was implied in many earlier systems of logic (e.g., in Leucippus and Aristotle). It was the subject of Schopenhauer's doctor's thesis (Über die vierfache Wurzel), 1813. In character it is an extremely general principle with a wide field of application.

Sufism

A mystical religious teaching in Islam which arose in the 8th century and spread in the countries of the Arab khalifate. Early Sufism is characterized by pantheism with some materialist elements. Subsequently, under the influence of Neo-Platonism, Indian philosophy, and Christian ideas, asceticism and extreme mysticism dominated Sufism.

Sufism accepted the existence of God as the only reality, with all things and phenomena being his emanation. Accordingly, the supreme goal of life was communion with the deity through contemplation and ecstasy. Among the prominent exponents of Sufism were the Persian philosopher al-Suhrawardi (12th century), the Arab thinker al-Ghazali (1059-1111), the Central Asian philosopher Sufi Alayar (d. 1720), and others.

Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925)

Chinese revolutionary democrat. Received medical education at Hongkong. In 1894 set up China's first revolutionary organisation "Alliance for the Renascence of China". Under the influence of the Russian Revolution of 1905-07 Dr. Sun Yat-sen rallied the revolutionary forces for the overthrow of the ruling dynasty, with a programme based on three political principles: nationalism (China's national independence), democracy (establishment of a republic), and people's welfare (elimination of social inequality).

Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary-democratic programme was given a high evaluation by Lenin, who criticised, however, Sun Yat-sen's utopian idea that capitalism in China could be "averted". The victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution had a great impact on Sun Yat-sen. He drew close to the Communist Party of China, reorganised the Kuomintang and supported demands for a new democratic revolution.

In the new conditions, he restated his programme of the three People's Principles and adopted the threefold policy of alliance with the USSR, alliance with the Communist Party of China, and support for the peasants and workers. His economic programme included the demand to "restrict capital", i.e., nationalise big foreign and local capital.

Sun Yat-sen's philosophical views were the theoretical basis of his revolutionary democracy. He took a materialist view of the relationship of mind and matter. He regarded the process of cognition in connection with man's practical activity, and held that the results of cognition, ideas and principles were an active force helping to remodel the world. In the interpretation of social phenomena he remained, on the whole, an idealist. His main philosophical work: The Doctrine of Sun Wen.

Superstition

A term denoting false faith. In theological and bourgeois writings, Superstition is usually contrasted with true faith in general and is associated with primitive magic. The adherent of any religion tends to regard the dogmas and rituals of all other religions as Superstition. Marxist atheism denies that there is any difference in principle between religious faith and religious Superstition.

Surrealism

A trend in modern art which originated in France in the early 1920s. It is a characteristic expression of the crisis of capitalist society, and its philosophical roots lie in the subjective idealist theories of Freud, which regard art as nothing but the product and function of erotism. According to Surrealism, the content of art boils down to "sexual impulses", the instincts of the fear of death and also of life.

The contradictions which are tearing capitalist society asunder, the feelings of horror and impotence in face of the real world produced by these contradictions have impelled some surrealist artists to embody them in images which tend to breed disgust towards reality and life itself. Hence, the stress of surrealist art on depicting nightmares, hallucinations, pathological states, hopeless pessimism, etc., as exemplified in the works of such writers as T. S. Eliot, L. Céline, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Ezra Pound, and the sculptor Henry Moore, and the painters Salvador Dalí, A. Kubin, etc.

Survivals of Capitalism (in people's consciousness)

Remnants of bourgeois ideology and psychology, of the morality of private ownership, manifested in opinions, habits, traditions after the victory of the socialist revolution. Parasitism, alcoholism, hooliganism, roguery and cupidity, red tape and religious prejudices are harmful to socialist society.

The tenacity of the old prejudices in the consciousness of a certain section of Soviet people is accounted for by human consciousness lagging behind social being and by the ideological influence of the capitalist world. The existence of the survivals may be affected by certain economic difficulties, and other factors (e.g., difficulties resulting from the war).

The Old in men's consciousness manifests itself with particular frequency where educational work is neglected, or where distortions of the socialist principles of community life are tolerated, where there is a breach of socialist democracy and revolutionary law. Communist education of working people, above all labour education, is the basic means of overcoming survivals in man. In the struggle against the Survivals of Capitalism a great role falls to society, to criticism and self-criticism, popularisation of Marxism-Leninism and atheism and also to literature and the arts, which stigmatise the Survivals of Capitalism and create positive characters.

Swedenborg, Emanuel (1688–1772)

Swedish natural scientist who subsequently became a mystic and theosophian. Swedenborg is known for his works in mathematics, mechanics, astronomy, and mining, was an honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. His philosophical works are permeated with the spirit of rationalism of Leibniz and Wolff.

As a result of nervous shock and hallucinations Swedenborg lapsed into mysticism and proclaimed himself a "ghost-seer". Swedenborg undertook to interpret the Bible allegorically "on a mission of Christ himself". The theosophian doctrine of Swedenborg was influenced by a number of systems of gnosticism and the Jewish cabbala.

The mystic doctrine of Swedenborg was criticised by Kant in his Träume eines Geistersehers. Swedenborg had followers in Germany, France, and Russia. Main works: Arcana Coelestia (1749-56) and Heaven and Hell (1758).

Syllogism

See Syllogistic.

Syllogism, Figures and Moods of

Varieties of a syllogism (see Syllogistic) which depend on the position of the middle term in the premisses and their number and type (general assertions, particular assertions, general negations, particular negations; see Judgement).

In the first figure the middle term is the subject in the major premiss and the predicate in the minor; in the second figure it is the predicate in both premisses; in the third it is the subject in both premisses. These figures were introduced by Aristotle. The fourth figure, in which the middle term is the predicate in the major premiss and the subject in the minor, was added by Aristotle's followers.

Classical logic has 19 moods; contemporary logic excludes, as not applicable in all cases, four moods which lose their general significance when they deal with empty sets (for example, "all golden mountains are golden"; "all golden mountains are mountains", but from this it does not follow that some mountains are golden—example given by Russell).

Syllogistic

A doctrine of inference, historically the first logical system of deduction formulated by Aristotle. The main purpose of Syllogistic is to ascertain the general conditions in which a definite conclusion follows or does not follow from propositions containing the assertion that the predicate involves or does not involve the subject and serving as premisses of the conclusion.

Every syllogism consists of a triad of propositions: two premisses and a conclusion. Propositions which contain a term that does not enter in the conclusion (it is called the middle term) are the premisses of a syllogism. Depending on the position of the middle term in the premisses, all syllogisms are divided into four figures in which, depending on the type of logical constants binding the terms (proper to all, proper to none, proper to some, not proper to some), moods are singled out (see Syllogism, Figures and Moods of).

Alongside the assertoric Syllogistic, the foundations for the modal Syllogistic (see Modality) were laid by Aristotle. From the viewpoint of modern formal logic, the assertoric Syllogistic is a relatively narrow theory of deduction. The use of means and methods of mathematical logic makes it possible systematically to construct Syllogistic as a formal logical system: it is strictly axiomatised and its non-contradiction, completeness and decidability are demonstrated.

Symbolism

A trend in literature and the arts. It originated in French literature in the 1880s (P. Verlaine, A. Rimbaud, S. Mallarmé, J. Moréas). Subsequently, the influence of Symbolism extended to G. Rodenbach, M. Maeterlinck, S. George, H. Hofmannsthal, R. Rilke, S. Przybyszewski, and others.

In Russia, Symbolism started in the 1890s (N. Minsky, D. Merezhkovsky, K. Balmont and V. Bryusov). Early in the 20th century, A. Blok, A. Bely, Vyacheslav Ivanov, J. Baltrušaitis, and others joined the symbolists.

The ideological aesthetic conception of Symbolism is extremely eclectic. It is based on Platonism, on Kant's doctrine of the phenomenon and noumenon, the voluntarist philosophy of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and the mysticism of Solovyov. The symbolists preached mystic idealism and the anarcho-individualist "freedom" of the artist and the idea of the self-value of art and denied the social mission of art.

The real world is a reflection of the ideal, "transcendental" world, about which only the mystic intuition of the poet can bring us something by conveying this "something" in an artistic symbol (in this symbolists see the mission of art). But the symbol, too, is indefinite because it portrays something indefinite. The idea of reproducing nuances of the soul (connected with the "eternal"), everything unstable and unclear, brings Symbolism close to impressionism in literature. Although some symbolists speak of the kinship of art with the people, Symbolism is a decadent trend.

Syntactics

A branch of semiotic.

Synthetic and Analytic

Concepts in logical semantics. All propositions in a system fall into two types: those whose truth can be established only on the basis of the rules governing the given system without recourse to facts, and those whose truth or falsity cannot be ascertained by the rules alone but requires recourse to facts. The former are analytic, the latter synthetic.

A strict distinction between Synthetic and Analytic has a meaning only for a given formalised language. In the history of philosophy, the problem of the Synthetic and Analytic is closely associated with the distinction between empirical (factual) knowledge and theoretical knowledge (of laws). Leibniz expressed this distinction by the division of all truths into necessary truths (theoretical knowledge) and accidental truths (factual knowledge).

Kant defined as analytic, in opposition to synthetic, those judgements whose predicate is contained in, and identical with, the subject. They are independent of experience. Continuing this tradition, modern formal logicians distinguish between logical truth (analytic statements) and factual truth (synthetic statements). Analytic statements do not communicate any information about reality (they are tautological); they constitute the content of the formal sciences (mathematics and logic); synthetic statements are based on experience and constitute the content of the empirical sciences. The former are a priori statements, the latter a posteriori.

From the standpoint of dialectical materialism, all statements of any science are based in the last resort on experience. The division of statements into Analytic and Synthetic is conditioned by their place in a definite logical system of knowledge.

System

A set of interconnected elements constituting a unified whole. Analysis of a System, of system-objects, is one of the characteristic features of modern sciences. A system-object cannot be divided into individual elements and the relations between them; it cannot be studied merely by revealing some relation or other which is present in it; the specific feature of such an object is the presence of interdependent connections, and the study of their interdependence is an important task both of specially scientific analysis and of theoretical-cognitive (logico-methodological) analysis.

Relatively long ago philosophers realised the necessity of analysing system-objects. Efforts have been made ever since antiquity to establish the laws for constructing a system of knowledge; in some branches of science, for instance, in mechanics in the 17th-18th centuries, a number of concrete system-objects were studied. But the characteristic tendency up to the middle of the 19th century was still to try and divide the object studied into its components, with the result that the specific features of the system were lost sight of.

The development of scientific knowledge revealed the inadequacy of such a method of study and the necessity for finding an adequate method for studying system-objects. A strict formulation of the task of studying system-objects was given by dialectical materialism. Marx and Lenin analysed an extremely complex developing object, the System of economic relations in capitalist society, and expounded the basic methodological principles for such studies. Further elaboration of these principles is one of the chief tasks for the methodological study of System, and its successful accomplishment will be of inestimable assistance to many modern sciences dealing with the analysis of System (physics, chemistry, biology, linguistics, psychology, sociology, and others).

Systems, General Theory of

A concept of the study of objects which represent a system, put forward by L. Bertalanffy, an Austrian biologist now working in Canada. The main idea of this theory is recognition of the isomorphism of the laws governing the functioning of objects of different types representing a system. It attempts to construct a mathematical apparatus describing these laws.

Bertalanffy has rendered an important service by studying the discovered systems which constantly exchange substance and energy with the environment. As a branch of natural science, General Theory of Systems is of definite importance for the development of science. But Bertalanffy clearly exaggerates its methodological content. This theory is above all descriptive and completely abstracts itself from an analysis of the structure of knowledge capable of reflecting objects in a system.