#gdr

🔬 I. THE NATURE OF SCIENCE & STALINIST SCHOLARSHIP

Science must not content itself with surface appearances — it must excavate the deep-operating forces, the very essence of things and processes in nature and society

Science must concern itself above all with the NEW, the emerging — that which, though initially appearing in imperfect form, nevertheless owns the future

Science must clear the path for the genuinely new by equipping the social forces championing it with intellectual armaments and necessary scientific foresight

Stalin's greatness as scientist and philosopher consists precisely in:

🦅 His bold confrontation of problems upon whose resolution the entire further progress of society depends

⚔️ His refusal to shy away from breaking with obsolete theories and drawing new conclusions

🚫 His absolute intolerance of any concealment of contradictions, any pretense of "neutrality" in science

✅ His consistent defense of the standpoint of advanced science in ALL questions

📚 II. THE WORK ITSELF — A LANDMARK OF MARXIST-LENINIST THEORY

"Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR" — together with the 1950 work "Marxism and Questions of Linguistics" — constitutes:

A brilliant enrichment and further development of Marxist-Leninist theory

A new stage of Marxist science — not a footnote, not a revision, but a full-blown advance

Primary subjects addressed by Stalin in this masterwork:

🏗️ The gradual transition of the Soviet Union from socialism to communism

🌍 The construction of socialism in the people's democratic countries

💥 The sharpening of the general crisis of capitalism after the Second World War

The XIX Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, early October 1952: the program of gradual transition to communism was developed and proclaimed

🧱 III. MAIN THEORETICAL DISCOVERIES OF THE WORK

🏆 A. The Economic Basic Law of Socialism

Formulated by Stalin as: "Ensuring the maximum satisfaction of the constantly growing material and cultural needs of the entire society through uninterrupted growth and steady improvement of socialist production on the basis of the most advanced technology" (p. 41)

The goal of socialist production is NOT profit — it is the satisfaction of the material and cultural needs of human beings

The operation of this basic law leads to:

📈 Uninterrupted expansion of production

💡 Enormous development of productive forces

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Constant elevation of the material and cultural level of working people

The surplus product — the social product — serves NOT the enrichment of a handful, but:

Replacement of consumed means of production

Expansion of production

Creation of a reserve fund

Covering administrative costs

Maintenance of social and cultural institutions

Development of public health

Support for the unable-to-work

Satisfaction of the personal needs of working people

Primary means of realizing this basic law: unrestricted development of science and technology, especially through creative collaboration between scientists and production

💰 B. The Economic Basic Law of Modern Capitalism

Stalin's definition: "Ensuring maximum capitalist profit through the exploitation, ruination, and impoverishment of the majority of the population of a given country, through the enslavement and systematic plunder of the peoples of other countries, especially backward countries, and finally through wars and militarization of the economy serving to secure maximum profits" (p. 40)

Marx discovered the law of surplus value as the source of profit and capitalist-class wealth — Stalin extends this into a fully formulated economic basic law

Modern capitalists — seizing colonies, enslaving peoples, instigating wars — are not satisfied with average profit; they drive relentlessly toward maximum profit

Results of the operation of capitalism's basic law:

🔥 Catastrophic deterioration of living conditions for the popular masses in capitalist countries

🏴‍☠️ Systematic plunder of colonies

⚔️ General sharpening of contradictions between capitalist countries

🪖 Resort to organizing new wars as instruments for achieving economic world domination

Science and technology in modern capitalism are subject to this basic law:

Development of technology proceeds discontinuously, with periodic interruptions accompanied by destruction of productive forces

New technology is introduced only insofar as it promises maximum profits

Atomic energy, jet propulsion, and other inventions are developed exclusively as instruments of war — NOT for peaceful purposes

As Stalin aptly observes: the human being in capitalist society is crushed against the wall, condemned to heavy suffering, poverty, and bloody wars

⚙️ IV. THE PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS — DIALECTICAL & HISTORICAL MATERIALISM

🌐 A. The Objective Laws of Nature and Society

Stalin proceeds from the premise that in nature and society we are dealing with regularities of processes that unfold objectively — that is, independently of human will

This reinforces the fundamental principle of philosophical materialism: the world is material by nature and is subject to the laws of motion of matter

Denial of objective regularity leads inevitably, as Stalin demonstrates, to:

🧠 Agnosticism

🫧 Subjective idealism

Idealist philosophical schools from Bishop Berkeley through Mach and Avenarius to the contemporary Logical Empiricists claim:

External nature is merely a complex of sensations

Necessity, causality, regularity are merely "ordering concepts" created by the human mind

Science is nothing but a collection of symbols and conventional signs

This denial particularly leads, in our era, to a close union of idealism and fideism, to the undermining of science, and to attempts at reconciling science with religion — which is precisely the kind of intellectual cowardice Marxism has zero tolerance for

Stalin declares: "Men can discover these laws, get to know them, study them, reckon with them in their activities, and utilize them in the interests of society, but they cannot change or abolish them. Still less can they form or create new laws of science" (p. 4)

🔭 B. The Dialectic of Appearance and Essence

Distinction between appearance and essence is indispensable — without it all science becomes superfluous

There is no insurmountable gulf between appearance and essence: the essence of things appears in a determinate form, and every appearance has essence as its foundation

Lenin established (in his Philosophical Notebooks, Dietz-Verlag, p. 61) that the concept of law is one of the stages of human cognition of the unity and interconnection, mutual dependence, and totality of the world-process

The law expresses not the accidental or individual, but the essential, the necessary connection of phenomena — what phenomena share, the universal

Philosophical materialism, unlike agnosticism, does not deny the knowability of the world:

"That the world and its laws are fully knowable, that our knowledge of the laws of nature, tested by experiment and practice, is authentic knowledge having the value of objective truth, that there are no things in the world which are unknowable, but only things which are as yet unknown, but which will be disclosed and known by the efforts of science and practice." (Stalin, "On Dialectical and Historical Materialism," Dietz-Verlag, p. 15)

⚡ C. Causality and the Critique of Physical Idealism

Stalin's arguments serve specifically the struggle against contemporary physical idealism, which:

Denies the principle of causality in atomic processes

Claims that chance governs the movement of electrons within the atom

Chance, however, does NOT mean absence of cause — as Engels already noted: chance is conditioned by an inner, hidden regularity

If we do not yet know why atomic processes behave as they do, this does not mean they are processes without causality — it means the movements of the atom are determined by processes within the atom that we have not yet discovered but will disclose through science and practice

🔄 D. Against Fatalism — The Creative Role of Human Beings

Stalin explicitly opposes both agnosticism/subjectivism AND a narrow, fatalistic objectivism — the fetishization of laws

Once laws of nature and society are known, human beings are capable of reckoning with them and utilizing natural forces in the service of society

Stalin's example: In ancient times, floods of great rivers were regarded as unavoidable natural catastrophes; with the development of human knowledge and the building of dams and hydroelectric power stations, it became possible to protect society — and to harness the destructive forces of nature, putting the power of water in the service of society through irrigation of fields and energy generation

Marxism is an thoroughly optimistic worldview that strengthens confidence in the forces of science and practice

🏭 V. PRODUCTIVE FORCES AND RELATIONS OF PRODUCTION — THE LAW OF NECESSARY CORRESPONDENCE

🔧 A. The Two Sides of Production

Historical materialism holds that the mode of production of the material means of existence is the most important condition of the material life of society — it stamps society and determines the character of the social order and the development of society

Production encompasses two inseparable sides:

🛠️ The productive forces of society — its relationships to nature and natural forces

🤝 The relations of production — the mutual relations of human beings in the production process

Stalin in "On Dialectical and Historical Materialism": "In the process of production men establish between themselves relationships of cooperation and mutual assistance free of exploitation, or relationships of domination and subordination, or transitional relationships from one form to another"

The means of production — above all the instruments of production, mechanical means of labor — play the decisive role in comparison to all other means of production (e.g., raw materials)

Instruments of production, together with the production experience and labor skills of human beings, constitute the productive forces — the most mobile and revolutionary forces of production

📊 B. Composition of Relations of Production

Stalin identifies the relations of production as consisting of:

(a) Forms of ownership of the means of production

(b) The resulting position of different social groups in production and their mutual relationships — or, as Marx says, "the exchange of their activities among one another"

(c) The forms of distribution of products completely dependent upon the foregoing (p. 74)

The productive forces are studied primarily by the technical sciences; the developmental laws of the relations of production — the economic relations of human beings — are studied by political economy

⚖️ C. The Law of Necessary Correspondence

When relations of production correspond to the character of productive forces: those forces can develop freely, production advances with giant strides

As Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto: "The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarcely one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together" — subjugation of nature's forces, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, cultivation of entire continents

When relations of production do NOT correspond to the character of productive forces (as is the case in contemporary capitalism): they become a fetter on development, leading to severe economic disruptions, crises, destruction of productive forces — this is the economic foundation of social revolution

The dialectical development of relations of production: "New production relations cannot of course remain new for ever, they begin to grow old and lag behind the development of the productive forces, they begin to come into conflict with them... Then, in place of these already outmoded production relations, new production relations arise" (p. 63)

The Great Socialist October Revolution was itself an application of this law: the Russian working class, relying on it, overthrew the power of the exploiters

🇩🇰 D. Application to the German Democratic Republic

In Eastern Germany, the victory of the Soviet Army over Hitler fascism enabled:

The expropriation of monopoly capitalists and Junkers

Transfer of a substantial portion of industry into public ownership — i.e., social property corresponding to the social character of the productive forces

New socialist relations of production on the land in the DDR take the form of production cooperatives (Produktionsgenossenschaften) — corresponding to the character of productive forces developed by Machine-Lending Stations (Maschinenausleihstationen)

Walter Ulbricht at the II Party Conference of the SED declared: "Workers need the assistance of peasants who supply the city with food and industrial raw materials. Peasants cannot do without the assistance of workers, since urban industry supplies peasants not only with consumer goods but also with the means without which modern agricultural production is impossible: machines, equipment, fertilizer, etc. Without the leading assistance of the working class, the peasantry cannot build a new, better life at all" (W. Ulbricht, "The Present Situation and New Tasks of the SED," Dietz-Verlag, p. 94)

Result: the creation of the publicly-owned sector in industry, trade, transportation, and agriculture led to a powerful surge in production, premature fulfillment of the Two-Year Plan, and significant successes in fulfilling the Five-Year Plan

🧮 VI. SOCIALIST VS. CAPITALIST PRODUCTION — THE DECISIVE CONTRAST

🏭 Feature 🔴 Capitalism 🔵 Socialism Goal of production Maximum profit Maximum satisfaction of social needs Development of technology Discontinuous, driven by profit Uninterrupted, driven by social need Use of science Subordinated to profit motive Freely developed for society's benefit Human condition Crushed against the wall Progressively liberated Surplus product Enriches a handful of capitalists Serves the entire society Military spending Mechanism for maximizing profit Anathema to the social purpose World market Unified under imperialist domination (now broken) Parallel socialist market emerging

🌐 VII. THE COLLAPSE OF THE UNIFIED WORLD MARKET & DEEPENING CRISIS OF CAPITALISM

As a result of the Second World War, the unified world market has disintegrated

Two opposing markets now confront each other:

🕊️ The market of the countries of the peaceful, democratic camp

🪖 The market of the countries of the aggressive, imperialist camp

Modern capitalism has no perspective of general ascent — any temporary growth of production occurs only in connection with militarization of the national economy

Stalin treats the question of the inevitability of wars between capitalist countries and the character of the democratic peace movement

🚀 VIII. PREREQUISITES FOR THE TRANSITION TO COMMUNISM

Stalin lays out three fundamental prerequisites:

🏗️ First Prerequisite — Continuous Growth of Production

The entire social production must be uninterruptedly increased, above all the production of means of production — otherwise expanded reproduction cannot be realized

🌾 Second Prerequisite — Elevation of Collective Property to the Level of General Public Ownership

Collective-farm property must be gradually raised to the level of general public property

Commodity circulation must be gradually replaced by a system of product exchange

🎓 Third Prerequisite — Cultural Growth of Society

Society must achieve a level of cultural development guaranteeing the all-around development of the physical and intellectual capacities of all members of society

This requires:

⏰ Reduction of the working day to 5 hours

📐 Introduction of universal obligatory polytechnical instruction

🏘️ Improvement of housing conditions

💵 Increase in real wages

Stalin quotes Marx: labor must become "the prime necessity of life"

Stalin quotes Engels: labor must become not a burden but a pleasure

Only after fulfillment of ALL these prerequisites in their totality can one hope that social property will be regarded by all members of society as the unshakeable and inviolable foundation of the existence of society (p. 70)

📖 IX. THE UNITY OF MARXISM — PHILOSOPHY, ECONOMICS, POLITICAL STRUGGLE

Already in 1906, Stalin wrote in "Anarchism or Socialism?": "Marxism is not only the theory of socialism, it is an integral world outlook, a philosophical system, from which Marx's proletarian socialism logically follows" (Works, Vol. I, p. 260)

This unity and internal consistency of Marxism is confirmed anew by "Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR"

The Marxist-Leninist worldview was elaborated in Stalin's "On Dialectical and Historical Materialism"

"Marxism and Questions of Linguistics" (1950) dealt primarily with the nature, structure, and history of language, and with the interrelations between:

The economic order — the base of society

Political, legal, aesthetic views and institutions — the superstructure

"Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR" concretizes and enriches the Marxist dialectical method specifically through expositions on:

🔗 Relations of universal and particular

👁️ Relations of appearance and essence

📦 Content and form

🌱 Possibility and actuality

🌊 The interpenetration of the new by the old in the transition to communism

⚡ Antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions — a crucial distinction with enormous practical implications

On the worldview foundation rises the edifice of economic teachings and conclusions for the struggle of progressive forces for peace, democracy, and socialism

🏛️ X. THE OBJECTIVE CHARACTER OF ECONOMIC LAWS — CRITICAL IMPLICATIONS

🔑 A. Against Voluntarism and Adventurism

These teachings are directed specifically against unscientific attitudes and adventurism in the practical activities of economic organs

They strengthen the scientific foundation of the policy of Communist and Workers' Parties

They teach these parties always to be guided by knowledge of the economic developmental laws of society

🛡️ B. Against Agnosticism and Subjectivism

Stalin's exposition of the objective character of scientific laws constitutes a powerful weapon against:

Machism and Logical Empiricism — both of which deny that science reflects objective laws

Social Darwinism and Neo-Malthusianism — which falsely equate natural laws with social laws

Subjective sociology — which denies the existence of social regularities altogether

Key distinction: natural laws operate continuously; social laws — especially the economic developmental laws of society — are operative only in the course of a definite historical period, after which changing economic conditions cause them to yield to new laws

🔴 C. The Class Struggle and the Victory of New Laws

The new laws assert themselves in the development of society through the sharpest class struggle — through the conflict of progressive forces against the obsolete forces of society

The working class was able to utilize the law of necessary correspondence to overthrow capitalist relations of production — not because of any special abilities, but because it had the deepest interest in doing so

The bourgeoisie — having transformed itself from a progressive force into a counter-revolutionary force — resisted with all means, not due to disorganization but above all because it had the deepest interest in preventing the law from being realized (p. 50)

The victory of socialism requires a social force that takes up the struggle for socialism — this force is the alliance of the working class with the working peasantry

🌟 XI. INTERNATIONAL AND PRACTICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE WORK

The work possesses enormous international significance because:

🌍 It transmits to peoples approaching the construction of socialism the experiences of socialist construction in the Soviet Union

☮️ It enables peace forces in all countries to orient themselves in the current international situation

For the working people of the German Democratic Republic specifically — who, following the resolution of the II Party Conference of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), are laying the foundations of socialism and thereby strengthening the basis in the struggle for German unity and peace — the work is of immediate theoretical and practical significance

It contributes to:

🧑‍🔬 Training scientific-technical cadres for socialist construction

🧠 Developing the socialist consciousness of the working class and all working people in the struggle against hostile bourgeois ideology

Practical implications for the DDR specifically include:

🏭 Greatest attention to heavy industry (Schwerindustrie) and mechanization of production

🏅 Raising labor productivity through socialist competition and study of Soviet experiences

🌾 Helping production cooperatives on the land break through

💪 Strengthening the worker-peasant alliance in the struggle against reactionary elements

🎨 Broadly unleashing the creative initiative of working people

🔄 Boldly approaching the transformation of the economy into a socialist economy

📌 XII. CONCLUSION — THE WORK AS INEXHAUSTIBLE SOURCE

Stalin's work is an outstanding example of the inseparable connection of theory and practice and the creative, undogmatic application of Marxism

The rich content of this work is by no means exhausted by any single commentary — numerous philosophical, social-scientific, and economic problems remain to be explored

The work will deepen understanding of:

🔬 The tasks of science

⚙️ The operation of objective regularities

🌊 The essence of the fundamental social processes of the present

"Once you realize how many traffic accidents Soviet Soldiers caused in East Germany (the reporting of which was actively suppressed by the Stasi) - it's no longer surprising to find German Roadsign and traffic rules plastered all over the now abandoned Soviet barracks."

"In the U.S. they do not have 'Do not shoot black people' on the walls in police stations."

Every time someone brings up an example of a moral failure of the Soviet Union as proof of how oppressive it was, there is always an example of how the "free" U.S. is even worse, especially in regards to Black and Indigenous people.

"The Berlin Wall was a zone of death." U.S. Border Patrol causes more death in one year than the Stasi did in its entire history.

There's a new movie called Fatherland that has an emphasis on censorship in the GDR. Where's the movie about COINTELPRO and how they imprisoned people and others had their professional careers destroyed? The US government killed many black radicals, and they even a president to protect its asset known as Israel (JFK).

Smettetela di giocare a fare i ragionieri. La vostra scheda non è un personaggio, è un modulo delle tasse per pigri. Selezionare "Guerriero" e spaccare tutto non è interpretare, è obbedire a un algoritmo. Avete il coraggio di essere l'anomalia o siete solo l'ennesimo clone in un foglio Excel?

Siete chef o solo fattorini di pizze surgelate? Traducete guru d’oltreoceano ignorando i mostri di casa nostra. Spegnete YouTube: abbiamo bisogno di pensatori originali, non di fotocopiatrici umane che scimmiottano il supereroe del momento nella marana capitolina!