Abstract

- a model, a norm, an ideal image, determining the mode and nature of behavior of an individual or a class in society. Creativity in accordance with an ideal, the shaping of natural materials in accordance with an ideal, constitute a specifically human form of life-activity distinguishing it from the activity of animals. As a universal aspect of goal-directed activity, the ideal appears in all spheres of the life of society: social, political, moral, esthetic, etc. The category of the ideal has profound social meaning. Over the centuries, progressive classes have, in the struggle against outdated forms of societal relations, embodied their enthusiasm in the high ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity. In our day, the ideal of the laboring masses of the entire world is communism, the building of a communist society, which is being effectuated in the USSR. "Each new step toward the shining peaks of communism," states the CPSU Program, "inspires the laboring masses of all countries, and constitutes vast moral support in the struggle for the liberation of all peoples from social and national oppression, accelerates the triumph of the ideas of Marxism-Leninism on a world scale"