Glossary of Marxist Philosophy

 

 

Antithesis of Town and Country,

the historically formed relations expressing the extreme backwardness of the country in relation to the town in economy and culture, the antithetical contradiction between the basic interests of the working people of the countryside and those of the ruling exploiting classes. The antithesis between town and country is the upshot of the social division of labour (q.v.). The economic basis of this opposition is the exploitation of the peasantry, leading to its ruin. In socialist society, as a result of the liquidation of all kinds of exploitation and the transformation of agriculture on socialist lines, the antithesis between town and country disappears. The town with its working class acts as the friend and ally of the labouring peasantry, as its leader, helping to overcome its former backwardness. The character of agricultural labour changes, coming closer and closer to industrial labour. The culture of the countryside grows on an unprecedented scale. At the same time the presence of two forms of socialist ownership (public and collective-farm and cooperative) leads to the preservation of a substantial difference between town and country. The elimination of this difference and the consequent removal of the distinctions between the working class and the collective-farm peasantry, is part and parcel of the building of communism. The concrete way of eliminating these distinctions is outlined in the Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The main task is the creation of the material and technical basis of communism (see Material, etc.) which promotes the raising of collective-farm and co-operative property to the level of public property, the conversion of agricultural labour to a variety of industrial labour, the raising of the social and economic conditions and the standard of life of the countryside to the level of the town. However, even under communism some non-essential distinctions between industrial and agricultural labour will remain owing to their specific peculiarities.

 

 

 

Source: M. Rosenthal and P. Yudin, Editors

                A Dictionary or Philosophy

                Progress Publishers

                Moscow 1967