Culture

Culture is the complex of material and spiritual goods created by the activity of mankind in the process of its social development, often used as synonymous with civilization. Material goods, in particular the forces of production, belong to the realm of material culture. All that is created in terms of the social superstructure makes up the realm of spiritual culture —political institutions, productions of science, and art, customs, manners, ethics, and the like. Material and spiritual culture are closely interconnected.

The level of development of spiritual culture depends on the level of material culture, particularly on the productive forces of society (see Historical Materialism). Culture in class society inevitably possesses a class character. The direction of its development is determined by the interests of the ruling class.

The proletariat, constructing its own culture, utilizes all that is valuable in what has been created by preceding generations, critically developing and testing it in the light of social practice. “Proletarian culture must be the result of the natural development of the stores of knowledge which mankind has accumulated under the yoke of capitalist society, landlord society, and bureaucratic society.” (Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. IX, p. 471.)

Proletarian socialist culture becomes radically different from the culture of all other social classes, by virtue of its wider appeal, its organic connection with the masses of the people. The process by which the toiling masses gain possession of culture represents in itself a whole revolution, a cultural revolution, which constitutes one of the most important aspects of the construction of communist society.

The path to the universal human culture of communism lies through the growth of culture national in form and socialist in content wherever the proletariat has attained power.