Academic Labor as a Type of Social Practice

L. S. Kopysov

(Presented by the scientific seminar of the Department of Scientific Communism)

The modern era of scientific-technological and social transformations, the tasks of communist construction set forth by the Program of the CPSU in the sphere of developing all aspects of social life, determine the place of education in the system of social phenomena and its role in the formation of an all-round developed personality. One of the elements of educational activity is academic labor, which appears as an objectively necessary component of human activity and is increasingly becoming a continuous process for every person.

In the present article the task is posed of showing the essence of this labor as a specific type of social practice.

The term “academic labor” is beginning to be used ever more frequently in our sociological, philosophical, and other literature, and even in earlier times scientific thought did not conceive of learning without definite labor expenditures. In confirmation of what has been said, let us refer to statements by a number of authors and publications on this subject.

Democritus already observed that “beautiful things are produced by learning only through labor”¹). M. V. Lomonosov, emphasizing the social significance of learning, wrote: “In it, one who applies his labors serves not only himself, but also the whole of society, and sometimes the entire human race, for its benefit”²).

K. D. Ushinsky regarded any labor, including mental labor (learning), as “labor in its psychological and educational significance”³). S. G. Strumilin, analyzing the time budget of students, divides their activity into “labor and leisure.” Under “labor” he includes study and the activities connected with it in schools, circles, etc., the reading of books and newspapers, attendance at and listening to lectures, visiting exhibitions, and social activity⁴). On the “proper alternation of hours of academic labor—

¹) See: Materials of Ancient Greece. A Collection of Texts by Heraclitus, Democritus, Epicurus. Moscow, Gospolitizdat, 1955, p. 172.
²) M. V. Lomonosov. “Discourse on the Usefulness of Chemistry.” Works, GIKhL, Moscow, 1957, p. 459.
³) K. D. Ushinsky. Selected Pedagogical Works. Moscow, vol. 1, Uchpedgiz, 1953, pp. 301–326.
⁴) S. G. Strumilin. Problems of the Economics of Labor. Moscow, 2nd ed., 1957, p. 330.

and rest” is also spoken of in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia^5). M. A. Danilov, in his work “Lenin’s Theory of Knowledge and the Process of Instruction,” speaks of a “system of difficulties” and of the “conditions and means of involving students in active creative academic labor”^6). S. I. Zinoviev also speaks of the role of the textbook for students in “making their labor easier” in learning^7). Academician I. G. Petrovsky likewise noted: “Study is labor, and at times difficult labor. This labor deserves the same respect as any other”^8). Characterizing the role of educational cinema in students’ acquisition of knowledge, S. I. Arkhangelsky writes: “True knowledge, as a rule, is acquired not through impressions, however vivid they may be, but through the labor of study”^9). V. F. Asmus, drawing attention to the labor-related and creative essence of the process of reading fiction (and this applies all the more to the reading of scientific literature, as well as of textbooks), writes: “For reading to prove fruitful, the reader must labor, and no miracle can free him from this labor”^10). The same idea—that one must apply one’s own efforts in overcoming difficulties in learning—was expressed by the outstanding German educator A. Diesterweg. “Development and education,” he wrote, “cannot be given or communicated to any person. Anyone who wishes to partake of them must attain this through his own activity, by his own powers, by his own exertion”^11), i.e., through the labor of learning. A. V. Sukhomlinsky, characterizing the labor of school pupils, writes of the “proper organization of academic labor,” of “work to introduce a regime of academic labor,” and of the “purposefulness of academic labor”^12). N. F. Krasnov raises a number of questions in the field of the “psychology, physiology, and ethics of academic labor”^13).

I. M. Pavlenko, considering the essence of military labor, notes that its most important constituent part is the academic labor of soldiers. “Academic labor,” the author writes, “is embodied in the combat mastery of soldiers—the ultimate goal of military training”^14). It is not without interest here to recall the fact that in the difficult year 1920, the Decree of the Council of People’s Commissars “On the Urgent Graduation of Engineer-Specialists” of March 24, 1920, and the resolution of the Council of Labor and Defense “On the Mobilization of Medical Students and Female Medical Students of All Years of the Medical Faculties of All Universities and Military-Medical Academies” of July 23, 1920^15) spoke of the “academic labor obligation of students” and of “academic” labor discipline, which indicates that study was regarded as labor and, in terms of social significance, was equated with labor in the sphere of material production. In Poland, by the draft Code of Laws

^5) Great Soviet Encyclopedia. 2nd ed., vol. 44, p. 450.
^6) Journal Soviet Pedagogy, 1968, No. 1, pp. 95, 104.
^7) S. I. Zinoviev. The Educational Process in the Soviet Higher School. Moscow, Higher School Publishing House, 1968, p. 347.
^8) Newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, May 21, 1966.
^9) S. I. Arkhangelsky. Film in the System of Controlled Instruction. Bulletin of the Higher School, 1968, No. 9, p. 34.
^10) V. F. Asmus. Reading as Labor and Creativity. Problems of Literature, 1961, No. 2, p. 37.
^11) A. Diesterweg. Selected Pedagogical Works. Moscow, 1956, p. 118.
^12) See: A. V. Sukhomlinsky. The Education of a Communist Attitude toward Labor. Moscow, Academy of Pedagogical Sciences Publishing House, 1959, pp. 120, 121, 145, 192. Pavlysh Secondary School. Moscow, Prosveshchenie Publishing House, 1969, pp. 197, 259.
^13) N. F. Krasnov. Expand the Front of Research, Actively Introduce Advanced Experience. Bulletin of the Higher School, 1969, No. 9, p. 10.
^14) I. M. Pavlenko. Pedagogical Foundations of the Education of Soviet Soldiers in the Process of Military Labor. Author’s abstract, Moscow, 1971, p. 19.
^15) V. I. Lenin on Science and Higher Education. Moscow, Publishing House of Political Literature, 2nd ed., 1971, pp. 332, 335–336.

regarding labor a monthly vacation is provided for all those having 10 years of service, which includes years of study (in schools above the primary level) on an equal basis with years of work¹.

The illustration cited shows that the concept of “academic labor” is becoming socially recognized, is being established in our literature, and is entering scientific circulation more and more widely.

In the literature relating to educational-cognitive activity, such concepts are often used as “educational activity,” “study activity,” “instruction” and “learning,” or simply “study,” and, finally, “academic labor.”

As for “educational activity” and “study activity,” concepts such as “educational activity” and “study activity” are often used without any essential distinction. Educational activity is a broader concept. It pertains to all types and forms of social practice and is their component part; it includes both purposeful study actions and involuntary moments that produce an educational effect. Study activity, while coinciding with educational activity in its cognitive essence, at the same time does not encompass, does not cover the scope of its content. Study activity appears as purposeful cognitive activity, determined by a given program, topic, etc., in accordance with a socially and personally conditioned need that has been posed. It requires the expenditure of certain mental and physical efforts by the subject carrying it out. In this respect, study activity is equivalent to the concept of “academic labor.”

Unclear, in our view, are the thoughts of a number of authors concerning the definition both of the concepts “instruction” and “learning” themselves and of their interrelations.

A. N. Shimina, dividing the process of instruction into two poles, writes: “If at the pole of the teacher, under conditions of organized instruction, it appears as activity for transforming the data of science and practice into a form suitable for assimilation, then at the pole of the learners it appears as activity for assimilating the achievements of socio-historical experience”². The same thought is pursued by E. Shekhterman. “The process of instruction and teaching,” he writes, “appears as practice in relation to the teacher, to his cognition, and as a form of cognition (theoretical and practical) in relation to the pupil, student, schoolchild”³. But here it should be noted that it is not “instruction” that is a form of cognition, but study activity, which may proceed both with the aid of influence from the teaching side and without it. A. N. Shimina asserts that “activity in the process of instruction, in its objective content, is activity as a result of which an ideal mastery of reality is effected”⁴. This proposition contradicts the essence of the Soviet educational-upbringing system. It is aimed only at the theoretical form of cognition in instruction and does not take account of the contemporary requirements and forms of educational-cognitive activity. It is known that V. I. Lenin sharply opposed academicism and theorizing in instruction.

Nor can one agree with the definition given in the pedagogical encyclopedia. “Instruction,” it says, “is the process of transmitting and assimilating knowledge, skills, habits, and capacities for human cognitive activity”^20). Here everything is lumped together and, most importantly, it does not reflect how this “assimilation” is carried out: either by means of the “transmitted—received” principle, or through the manifestation of a certain creative activity on the part of the learner.

The term “learning” is a multifaceted concept. In the sense in which this term is used with reference to the system of education, learning has the following meanings. First, it is a cognitive process whose essence consists in coming to know and assimilate the laws of the development of nature and society, and the phenomena of reality, as known by science. In this sense, learning, as a process, leads—or should lead—to a change in the volume and structure of the knowledge of the person carrying out this process. Second, learning is understood as the practicing of certain skills, both of a theoretical character (the ability to analyze, control, draw conclusions, make generalizations, etc.) and of a physical character (speech, walking, movements, manual dexterity). Third, learning appears as a process of changing the motive of an action (activity) or improving it.

In addition to the foregoing, this term presupposes a definite system of social views, an ideology (Marxist-Leninist doctrine) or a direction in the field of scientific knowledge (Darwinian teaching), etc.

“As applied to school, learning, as M. I. Alekseev writes, is a process of assimilation, of a pupil’s adopting knowledge and skills from the teacher, a process by which the pupil develops cognitive abilities, mental operations, and actions in himself”^21). This definition, which reveals in brief form the content of the given process, may be accepted as learning in the narrow sense. It makes it possible to master those items of knowledge, habits, and skills that are predetermined by the school curriculum in accordance with age characteristics and the level of previous preparation.

Thus, the imprecision and vagueness of the definitions of the terms “instruction” and “learning” do not make it possible, when analyzing activity, to focus attention on one side or the other. Therefore, instruction should be understood as a unified process of influence upon the learner. From the word “instruction” also comes the word “to instruct,” which in the four-volume dictionary of the Russian language means: “to communicate to someone, to instill in someone some knowledge or skills; to teach”^22). “I demand pupils,” said Peter I during his foreign campaign, thereby emphasizing the necessity of a teaching side for the side wishing to learn. In expounding the theory of instruction, J. A. Comenius, in his Great Didactic, considered the conformity to nature of instruction and learning. B. G. Ananiev writes that learning was regarded by him as a form of the organic development of the naturally unfolding history of the mind under conditions of properly organized instruction^23). Hence it follows that learning is carried out not so much by virtue of the teacher’s activity as by virtue of the learner’s own activity, through his theoretical and prac-

^20) Pedagogical Encyclopedia, pp. 153–154.
^21) M. I. Alekseev. “The Essence of the Process of Instruction,” Soviet Pedagogy, 1965, No. 1, p. 43.
^22) Dictionary of the Russian Language of the USSR Academy of Pedagogical Sciences. Institute of the Russian Language. Moscow: State Publishing House of Foreign and National Dictionaries, 1958, p. 784.
^23) B. G. Ananiev. “Questions of the Psychology of Instruction and Education of Jan Amos Comenius,” Soviet Pedagogy, 1971, No. 2, p. 51.

theoretical activity with assistance and influence from the teacher. Learning requires the expenditure of nervous-mental and physical effort. It has important socio-political, socio-economic, and cultural significance, and in this respect it may be equated with labor activity as educational activity or educational labor.

The compilers of the Pedagogical Dictionary do not use the term “educational labor,” although, as follows from the definition, by the concept of “learning” they mean precisely educational labor actions.

“Learning,” the dictionary says, “is a set of actions by pupils in the sphere of mental work (observation, reading textbooks and other educational books, assimilation of information communicated by the teacher, performance of various educational assignments), and physical work (work in workshops, at enterprises, or on the school plot and in collective-farm work).”^24 Thus, educational labor is a “set” of actions of a mental and physical character. In this definition the goal-oriented and resultative aspect of the given process is not expressed.

Taking these remarks into account, as well as the new aspects of this process, we propose the following definition of educational labor.

Educational labor is an objectively conditioned, socially and individually organized process of useful activity, expressed in the application of definite techniques, actions, and means, systematically used by a person for the purpose of knowing and assimilating the laws of the development of nature and society and of social reality, and of developing definite skills and abilities in accordance with the requirements of scientific and technological progress and of all social practice.

Educational labor is a composite concept. It unites within itself “learning” and “labor.” If “learning” expresses the cognitive essence of this process, the main content of which is the comprehension of truth, then “educational labor” includes both this essence and the very process of expending effort in overcoming difficulties, which makes it possible for this essence to unfold along the path of realizing the goal that has been set. The concept “educational labor” expresses more concretely the content and social essence of the educational-cognitive process and excludes other meanings, unlike the concept “learning.” It allows pupils (regardless of age and the level of knowledge and skills they are acquiring) better to become aware of their social role at the given stage of life, or, finally, of this particular type of activity. In the process of development all concepts are subject to the factor of change. In this connection V. I. Lenin pointed out that one must “look at every question from the standpoint of how a given phenomenon in history arose, what main stages this phenomenon passed through in its development, and, from the standpoint of this development, examine what the given thing has become now.”^25

Of course, the emergence of the concept “educational labor” is determined by a whole series of objective causes and, above all, by all-human progress, the most important result of which was the emergence of the socialist social system, with conditions for the fullest and freest development of every individual, the high development of science and technology, and the ever greater intellectualization of all forms of human labor activity. It is conditioned by the growing social significance of this type of activity as an objective necessity in the matter of improving the productivity of labor and other types of activity. Acquiring the features of labor organized by society and by the individual and constantly carried out, learning enters into an inseparable connection with profes—

^24 Pedagogical Dictionary. Moscow, vol. 2, 1960, p. 544.
^25 V. I. Lenin. Collected Works, vol. 39, p. 67.

professional labor both in the material and in the spiritual sphere, and is the basis of purposeful spiritual self-development, of the self-production of the personality.

A distinctive feature of this activity is the acquisition of knowledge, habits, and skills, as well as practical preparation for life, for professional activity or for activity accompanying the latter. All this indicates that the process of preparing a person for activity (academic labor) is a socially significant process.

The content of academic labor is determined by the curriculum, by a specific academic or academic-practical assignment, and by the goal that the subject sets for himself.

Under contemporary conditions of the scientific and technological revolution, alongside the growing role of study in the life of society, its content is also changing. This change is conditioned by the growth of scientific-technical, political, and general cultural knowledge and by the dynamism of social processes, by a close connection with life and practice.

Emphasizing the significance of study as the chief purpose of youth and, in particular, of students, L. I. Brezhnev draws attention to the fact that the concrete content of this concept has not remained unchanged, and in our days it is changing as never before”^26).

The character of study is also changing. The connection of study with life and practice is becoming ever stronger and is acquiring diverse forms; technical means are being widely applied in the educational process, as are radio, television, and cinema.

The foregoing makes it possible to conclude that study as a process of activity, in connection with the development of public life, science, and production, has changed in the direction of an ever closer connection with life and with productive labor. It has become considerably more complex both in the methods and techniques of academic classes, in the richness and orientation of its content, and in its technical equipment.

The identification of new features of academic activity, whose unfolding will increasingly reveal itself with the further development of scientific-technical and social progress, leaves a definite imprint on the essence of the process of study and makes it possible to define it as “academic labor.”

Academic labor is a definite form of activity. Human activity is the interaction of the person with the surrounding world of nature and the social world, with all the wealth of production, culture, and relations. Consequently, activity is a broader concept than labor. In addition to labor, it includes other kinds as well: play, communication, and so forth. Moreover, it can also appear as a psychological process taking place in the organs of the human being. “Every activity,” writes Rubinstein, “is at the same time a process or includes processes, but not every process appears as human activity. By activity we shall here understand such a process by means of which one or another relation of the human being is realized, a relation posed before him by life”^27).

Consequently, activity pertains to the biological and social essence of the human being and is outwardly manifested as social activity.

As the basic form of social activity, K. Marx

^26) L. I. Brezhnev. Speech at the All-Union Student Rally, October 19, 1971. Moscow, Publishing House of Political Literature, 1971, p. 13.

^27) S. L. Rubinstein. Being and Consciousness. Moscow, Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1957, pp. 256–257.

considered “material activity, on which every other activity depends: mental, political, religious”²⁸).

This methodological proposition of K. Marx indicates that human activity has a wide variety of forms and cannot be confined only within the framework of labor activity. From the standpoint of psychology, the main types of activity are considered to be play, study, and labor. M. A. Danilov and Yu. V. Sharov add to these also aesthetic activity²⁹).

B. G. Ananyev regards the human being as the subject of three basic social activities—labor, communication, and cognition³⁰).

M. S. Kagan also distinguishes the relational, value-orientational activity of the human being. Thus, the structure of real human activity appears as follows: cognition, value orientations, communication, practice. All the components of this structure “supplement, presuppose, and mediate one another”³¹). Of course, all types of activity are in a dialectical interconnection with one another and possess the property of mutual interpenetration. Thus, for example, aesthetic activity finds its manifestation both in play and in cognitive activity, and also in labor activity proper. The same can be said of cognitive and other types of activity. Cognitive activity may proceed at various levels: at the level of everyday consciousness and perception, at the educational-cognitive and scientific-cognitive levels. A person comes to know and learns in the process of any activity, including in the process of labor and even in the process of play. Under the conditions of our contemporary activity and the demands of society, play has as its aim not only entertainment but also development; it facilitates a certain kind of learning. Everyone knows the enormous educational-cognitive and pedagogical significance of the children’s military game “Zarnitsa.” Such games are not simply amusement, but above all learning, upbringing, and even the expenditure of great physical effort, equivalent to effort in labor.

In this respect we are impressed by the thoughts of E. A. Klimov on the unity of labor, labor and general educational instruction (learning), and training and competitive activity in sport³²).

Further, labor, if we abstract from its material (value) result, is a process of cognition and development (change), while learning is labor aimed at mastering “socio-historical experience in its various forms: in the form of knowledge, abilities, and skills; methods (or techniques) of cognition and of applying acquired knowledge to the solution of new (theoretical and practical) tasks; in the form of norms of behavior”³³), i.e., it is also a process of cognition and development. And from this point of view “labor” and “learning” have much in common.

Whatever type of activity we take, each of them has a direct relation to the activity of thinking, of consciousness. Marxist science regards the very process of thinking as a theoretical form of human activity, which, as psychologists assert—

²⁸) K. Marx. The German Ideology. K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 3, p. 41.
²⁹) M. A. Danilov. “The Pedagogical Process and Its Dialectic.” Soviet Pedagogy, 1970, No. 7; Yu. V. Sharov. “On the Essence, Specificity, and Classification of Spiritual Needs.” Soviet Pedagogy, 1970, No. 10, p. 71.
³⁰) B. G. Ananyev. Man as an Object of Knowledge. Leningrad, 1969, p. 322.
³¹) M. S. Kagan. “An Attempt at a Systems Analysis of Human Activity.” Philosophical Sciences, 1970, No. 5, p. 49.
³²) E. A. Klimov. Individual Style of Activity Depending on the Typological Properties of the Nervous System. Kazan University Press, 1969, p. 9.
³³) Pedagogical Encyclopedia. Vol. 4, Moscow, 1968, p. 430.

psychology, has the same structure as practical activity. “Like practical activity,” writes A. N. Leontiev, “thinking activity answers to certain needs and motives and, accordingly, experiences the regulating influence of emotions. Like practical activity, it consists of actions subordinated to conscious goals. Finally, like practical activity, thinking is carried out by one means or another, i.e., with the help of definite operations...”^34). Undoubtedly, what is at issue here is purposeful thinking, reflecting the relation of the human being to the world. “The real process of thinking, as it is given in actuality,” writes S. L. Rubinstein, “is both an activity (a person thinks, and thoughts do not simply occur to him), and a process or activity that includes within itself a set of processes—abstraction, generalization, etc.”^35). The cognitive and relational acts are necessary elements of any material-productive and spiritual activity. Therefore activity appears as the unity and manifestation of the consciousness and will (action) of the personality, of his activity and relation.

In establishing certain general features of labor as material-productive activity, and of educational labor as a specific kind of activity, we wish to draw attention to a number of points, the need to clarify which is dictated by the fact that some economists, psychologists, and pedagogues cannot in any way apply a measure of labor to learning.

In his analysis of labor, given in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, K. Marx in various places endows it with the following characteristics: “positive creative activity,” “purposeful activity,” purposeful productive activity.” And although these characteristics have a definite relation to any kind of labor activity, Marx gave them with reference to the sphere of the economy, the sphere of material production, and, moreover, under the conditions of the domination of capital. And as labor in the sphere of the production of material goods, it indeed, as K. Marx notes, has universal significance, appears as universal labor, without which the human being, humanity, could not and cannot exist.

It is also known that K. Marx distinguished labor in the material sphere and labor in the spiritual sphere. “The division of labor,” he writes in The German Ideology, “becomes a real division only from the moment when a division of material and spiritual labor appears”^36). K. Marx, albeit in the most general form, characterizes labor in the non-material sphere^37), singling out in it above all mental labor.

S. G. Strumilin, examining the essential content of the word “labor” and comparing it with the concept in the English language, writes: “...the word ‘labor’ (labour) is used in a much more abstract sense of expenditure of energy in general, of the sum of efforts in general, regardless of their form of manifestation and results”^38). But such an overly general interpretation gives rise to a feeling of indeterminacy, and sometimes even perverted, antisocial forms of the expenditure of such energy may be

^34) A. N. Leontiev. Marx and Psychological Science. Voprosy psikhologii, 1968, No. 5, p. 15.
^35) S. L. Rubinstein. Being and Consciousness, p. 257.
^36) K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, 2nd ed., vol. 3, p. 30.
^37) K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, 2nd ed., vol. 26, p. 421.
^38) S. G. Strumilin. Problems of the Economics of Labor. Moscow, Gospolitizdat, 1957, p. 11.

erroneously taken for labor. But since all labor is a social phenomenon, the expenditures of effort applied to it must also be directed toward the achievement of a definite socially significant, useful result.

From what has been said it follows, first, that the universal definition of labor should not suppress other, particular definitions applicable to various varieties of human labor activity; second, that only positive, purposeful, socially significant activity can appear as labor activity; third, that the sphere of labor is considerably broader than the production of material goods, i.e., it also embraces the nonproductive sphere (in the material sense), including the process of cognition of an object or phenomenon.

Characterizing labor in its universal form, K. Marx indicated that this concept presupposes the labor process itself, the means of labor, and its product, i.e., the result for the achievement of which the goal is set. Consequently, the components of human activity, including academic labor, are: 1) the goal, 2) the subject matter (object), 3) the means, 4) the activity itself, 5) the result.

Like any labor, academic labor is carried out only because the person carrying it out, i.e., applying effort, has a concrete goal-setting, conditioned by a vital interest, inclination, or need, correlated in a definite way with the interests of society. A consciously set goal, in K. Marx’s expression, “as a law determines the manner and character... of actions”^39). Only a feeling of a genuine need to master knowledge, skills, and abilities, which is one of the sources of the learner’s movement toward truth and is combined with the manifestation of his activity in learning, gives us an idea of academic labor as a process of labor activity. “Learning becomes labor only on the condition,” writes V. A. Sukhomlinsky, “that it contains the most important features of all labor: goal, efforts, results”^40).

K. Marx wrote: “During the labor process, labor constantly passes from the form of activity into the form of being, from the form of motion into the form of objectivity”^41). This proposition is also applicable to the question we are considering. The only peculiarity of such an extrapolation will consist in the specificity of the product of academic labor, in its predominantly spiritual “objectivity.” From this point of view, academic labor, like any other, as purposeful activity, presupposes a subject of labor, means of labor, and a product of labor, for “activity without an object,” as K. Marx wrote, “is nothing...”^42).

The form of objectivity in academic labor is a definite body of knowledge (both general and specific) from one or another field of human knowledge and practice, embodied in or contained in certain forms of information and subject to assimilation by the subject. The subject of academic labor consists of skills and abilities, methods (techniques) for carrying out both academic labor itself and the labor for which the student is preparing himself. And this “form of objectivity” must, by applying effort, be “processed,” i.e., assimilated in such a way as to become capable of action.

The form of motion here is the movement of thought, the activity of thinking with a definite expenditure of physical energy.

^39) K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, 2nd ed., vol. 23, p. 189.
^40) V. A. Sukhomlinsky. The Education of a Communist Attitude toward Labor. Publishing House of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, 1959, p. 194.
^41) K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, vol. 23, p. 200.
^42) K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, vol. 46, part 1, p. 216.

The form of being of the new objectivity will be the result of this activity. Under the appropriate conditions and manifestations of activity, this result will consist of knowledge, abilities, skills, feelings, methods, etc., in a new state. The given subject acquires them, thereby changing itself and its own state, “its own nature”^43).

The product of academic labor is specific. It is, above all, the property of the one producing it (the subject); its volume and quality depend in many respects on the degree of activity of the latter. Here, of course, we are speaking of the academic (theoretical) form of academic labor. In those cases where academic labor is carried out in parallel with, alongside, or within material-productive labor, its product may have both ideal and materialized forms at the same time.

The product of academic labor is the perfected, in a definite way developing, personality itself. As in material production, here too the products of “labor”... are “not only the result, but at the same time the condition of the labor process”^44). “Since man already exists,” wrote K. Marx, “he, as the constant premise of human history, is also its constant product and result; and man is a premise only as his own product and result”^45). Paper, writing, calculating, musical, drafting, and other instruments, various kinds of devices, aids, apparatuses, and mechanisms used by the subject in the process of cognition and the development of skills may serve as means and instruments of academic labor. Knowledge and methods applied in one or another situation of academic cognition may serve as a specific means of academic labor. The most important source of knowledge and means of academic labor is the book.

Every human activity is constantly connected with nature, directly or indirectly, and proceeds within a definite human association.

Thus, in characterizing labor, K. Marx wrote: “Labor is, first of all, a process between man and nature, a process in which man, through his own activity, mediates, regulates, and controls the metabolism between himself and nature. He confronts the substance of nature as a force of nature”^46). The interconnection of man with nature and society is no exception in the process of academic labor.

If in material production the connection of man with nature is predominantly materialized, then in the process of academic labor it, being to one degree or another mediated by the material, is ideal, spiritual. The Marxist doctrine that “the ideal is nothing other than the material transplanted into the human head and transformed in it”^47) has important significance for substantiating academic labor as a specific form of connection with the material world, with nature.

The influence of the external world on man in academic labor is realized chiefly through the cognition of its laws and phenomena and is reflected in the head of the one carrying out the given process. This influence may be both direct (in the process of various types of academic and production practice) and mediated, i.e., without

^43) K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 23, p. 189.
^44) K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 23, p. 192.
^45) K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 26, part III, p. 516.
^46) K. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, Moscow, 1969, p. 188.
^47) K. Marx, Capital, 1969, p. 21 (preface to the 2nd edition).

contact with an object of nature. In both cases, as F. Engels notes, “the effects of the external world upon man are imprinted in his head, are reflected in it in the form of feelings, thoughts, impulses, manifestations of will—in short, in the form of ideal tendencies, and in this form they become ideal forces”^48). One of the forms of this effect is reflection in the process of cognition through perception and mental activity. It is known that initially the cognition of nature was connected directly with the natural existence of the human community, which carried out primitive forms of labor activity. At that time academic labor as such did not exist; it was not socially differentiated and entered as learning elements into various kinds of activity. Only in connection with the emergence of class society, with the social division of labor and the systematization of knowledge, with the separation of educational activity into a specific sphere of social practice, does learning turn into a social activity, the learning operations of which, from being ever less directly connected with nature, become mediated, and the influence upon it increasingly acquires a scientific-theoretical and practical character. With the help of scientific knowledge and the corresponding abilities and skills acquired in the process of academic labor, a person prepares himself for purposeful action upon nature, for knowledge reveals to him its useful forces and the ways by which he can use, change, direct, and restrain them. The acquisition of knowledge as a result of academic labor increases his mastery over the forces of nature and makes him more active in the social world.

Consequently, knowledge is a sublated, reflected, and fixed in human consciousness model of a real conception of nature and the social world, a model that reflects the measure of the world cognized by him. But since man is an active being, in academic labor there is laid down and formed his definite capacity not only for the scientific reflection of the world, but also for its theoretical and practical transformation. This capacity is nothing other than a distinctive model of his activity. Knowledge, objectified in human activity, contributes to the development of production, which, in turn, as K. Marx says, “provides the means for the theoretical subjugation of nature”^49). Herein lies one of the aspects of the interaction of the material and the spiritual in human activity. This leads to the fact that under modern conditions learning and labor are becoming ever more inseparable; a process of their fusion is taking place on a new social, scientific, and techno-economic basis.

Using the words of K. Marx, E. P. Kryazhev writes that study is a process of mental activity, a process of mastering theoretical models of transforming the world^50). However, it should be noted that under contemporary conditions of scientific and technological progress, under conditions of the close connection of education with life and practice, such a statement, in our view, is not entirely precise. Academic labor, as a result of which the subject acquires not only knowledge but also skills and abilities as a consequence of practical actions, appears as a process of mastering not only theoretical but also practical models of transforming the world.

The constant striving for the cognition of the new is the driving force of this process in general and of academic labor in particular. This peculi—

^48) K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, vol. 24, p. 190.
^49) From the manuscript legacy of K. Marx. Kommunist, 1958, no. 7, p. 22.
^50) E. P. Kryazhev. Some Methodological Questions of the Student Collective and the Student’s Personality. Kaunas, 1970, p. 9.

is conditioned by material and social practice and characterizes the social nature of man. It is expressed in the manifestation of a definite goal-setting activity in the unfolding of essential powers in this process, directed toward the cognition of the world as such and of one’s own world. In this sense “learning” merges with the concept of “cognition.”

The process of purposeful cognition in society is carried out both as a process of scientific cognition, directed toward the discovery and investigation of the laws of nature, society, and thought, and as a process of educational cognition, directed toward the individual’s mastery of the laws known in society. The specific feature of educational cognition is the fact that the learner, as it were, makes a discovery. “When it is said that a person,” writes S. L. Rubinstein on this point, “as an individual does not discover, but merely assimilates the knowledge acquired by humanity, this, properly speaking, means only that he does not discover it for humanity, but for himself personally he must nevertheless discover it”^51). At the same time, the process of a given person’s cognition of reality may be carried out as a result of all forms of his practical life activity. “Like practical activity and learning,” writes M. S. Kagan, “cognitive activity unfolds on two levels: the first may be called practical cognition, the second—specialized.... At the second level cognition appears as a special spiritual activity of people specially engaged in cognition”^52). In this sense educational cognition also appears as a spiritual activity of the learning personality. However, academic labor, while having a close connection with cognition, does not entirely coincide with it. It is one of the forms of the process of cognition, one of its means as a “particular type of cognition”^53). In the narrow sense, academic labor encompasses only part of the general process of cognition, and moreover such a part as is conditioned by definite norms, by the curriculum. In this respect it appears as a demand of society upon its members, the content and character of which are conditioned by definite age characteristics and the level of prior preparation.

Thus, from what has been said one may draw a conclusion about the unity and specificity of the general, the particular, and the individual in cognition, where by the general we understand the voluntary and involuntary reflection of the real world in all life activity; by the particular—scientific cognition, carried out by people “specially engaged in cognition,” of laws and phenomena not yet known; and, finally, by the individual is meant the individual reflection in one’s consciousness of phenomena and regularities already known to science, in educational activity, with the assistance of influencing factors. Thus academic labor appears—and this is its specificity—as cognition of a definite system of knowledge, as a process and as a means by which the mastery of known laws is purposefully carried out.

Further, academic labor is connected with definite forms of action. It includes both educational-cognitive (theoretical) activity and practical activity, which contains elements of cognition and of practical action proper^54). Academic labor is connected with

^51) S. L. Rubinstein, Voprosy psikhologii, 1955, No. 7, p. 34.
^52) M. S. Kagan. An Essay in the Systemic Analysis of Human Activity. Filosofskie nauki, 1970, No. 5, pp. 46—47.
^53) V. A. Popluzhnyi. The Role and Development of Intellectual Feelings in the Cognitive Activity of the Personality. Author’s abstract, Kiev, 1969.
^54) I. Lingart also points to the two sides of activity in learning—the cognitive and the operational (active). See: The Process and Structure of Human Learning. Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1970, p. 169.

by cognition as an act of perception that includes the reflection of an object, phenomenon, or idea, their awareness and fixation in memory.

The category “academic labor” has a direct connection with the category “mental labor,” for in the process of academic labor the main share of the activity of the learner falls to mental activity connected with the work of the brain. In characterizing the connection between academic labor and mental labor, one cannot agree with those who see these concepts as identical and define their judgment by the formula: “learning is mental labor.” Mental labor, as psychologists define it, is a process of thinking, memory, attention, imagination, reasoning, and so forth—of “psychic” capacities and actions. It should be noted, however, that not every nervous and cerebral activity is mental labor, still less academic labor, but only that which is directed toward the reflection and awareness of the laws of nature and society, of various phenomena and processes, and which contributes to their intellectual development; only that which serves to carry out the tasks of their activity connected with the development of social being and consciousness.

Mental labor, as a rule, is professionally qualified labor connected with special training. Therefore, in preparing a person it presupposes preliminary academic labor, without which it is impossible to master specialized knowledge and skills. Hence academic labor appears as the foundation of mental labor in general. In this respect it is a definite, necessary step toward scientific activity. “Science advances,” wrote F. Engels, “in proportion to the mass of knowledge inherited by it from preceding generations.”^55

In the process of academic labor, the subject masters not only knowledge, skills, and abilities, but also the method of cognition in a concrete field of science. He performs a creative act in transforming and assimilating the information that comes to him. The development of the capacity for thought in the field of one or another science may serve as the basis for its creative development. Every object or phenomenon subjected to cognition is infinite by virtue of the inexhaustibility of the properties that they bear within themselves. In this infinity of cognition lies the force that governs people and directs their activity not only toward assimilating the human knowledge already acquired, but also toward its further development, toward the discovery of new knowledge. Here lies, as K. Marx noted, the chief lever of all mental progress.^56 This, of course, does not mean that everyone who has obtained a certain minimum of knowledge will necessarily take the path of its further development. But this knowledge gives a person the possibility of actively applying it in practical activity and, as creative ardor grows, opens the path into science. And here, in academic labor, just as in the labor of producing material goods, to use K. Marx’s words, “labor pours oil into the lamp of life, and thought lights it.”^57

Serving as the basis of mental labor, academic labor is its specific feature. It differs from all other forms of mental labor (teaching, medical, accounting, administrative, literary, compositional, engineering, and others). Apart from academic labor, all other forms of mental labor are connected with cognition and service. Academic labor, however, as a special variety of mental labor, contains within itself only potentially

^55 F. Engels. Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy. K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works, vol. 1, p. 568.
^56 K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works, vol. 20, p. 36.
^57 K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works, vol. 20, p. 36.

a definite orientation toward service. All other forms of intellectual labor are connected in one way or another with professional activity, whereas academic labor can only accompany it and lead to its improvement.

Characterizing academic labor as intellectual labor, however, one must not confine it only to this one-sided characterization. It contains both intellectual and physical operations, training-actions connected with muscular exertion (in music schools and conservatories, laboratory-practical work, educational production practice, and so on).

Moreover, in all general-education, technical, and higher educational institutions, academic labor also includes classes in physical culture and physical development. And do not the student production brigades and the third labor semester, in which the educational properties of labor activity are also present, relate to the physical properties of academic labor? Everyone knows the physical load in the process of academic labor carried out during military training and education, where, through training, the combat and physical qualities of a soldier are ensured both in the process of individual training and during joint exercises of subdivisions, units, and formations. Nor is there any need to prove how great the expenditure of physical effort is (and of what kind) in the process of training exercises in parachuting, as well as in the activity of production apprenticeship, and so forth.

Academic labor has a definite interaction with material-production labor, and, although it is not labor in the economic and professional sense, at the same time it has a direct relation both to the profession and to the creation of material values. Modern production and scientific-technical progress require not only, and not so much, the application of labor proper, of physical efforts directed toward changing an object, as certain fairly high levels of knowledge, habits, and skills. If in material production there is a process of the “objectification of the power of knowledge” (K. Marx), then academic labor creates this power of knowledge, which from a potential state is materialized as a result of its application in the process of production. On the other hand, academic labor (although not all of its types) has a definite practical outlet and contains elements of productive force (students’ production practice, the third labor semester, student production brigades, work in the training shop of an enterprise or vocational-technical school, and others). Taking into account this circumstance of the present state of academic labor, it can be divided formally into two aspects. On the one hand, it is labor in mastering the foundations of knowledge and theory; on the other, it is educational-productive labor; on the one hand, it is labor in learning, and on the other, learning in labor and in parallel with it. “Neither instruction and education without productive labor,” wrote V. I. Lenin, “nor productive labor without parallel instruction and education could be placed at the height required by the modern level of technology and the state of scientific knowledge”⁵⁸. These thoughts of V. I. Lenin acquire special relevance at the present time in connection with scientific-technical progress, when every worker must constantly improve his knowledge and his mastery, that is, combine labor in production with academic labor. “Life has shown,” writes B. G. Ananiev, “that not only must learning be connected—

⁵⁸ V. I. Lenin. The Pearls of Narodnik Project-Mongering. Works, vol. 2, p. 485.

with labor, but also labor with learning, and regardless of the level of professional training, qualification, and age. Such a connection is “a general law of the development of people in socialist society”⁵⁹. In essence, the same idea of the unity of professional and educational labor is also expressed by the appeal of the Bulgarian Communist Party to young people: “To labor and learning, to learning and to labor!”⁶⁰.

Educational labor, no less than other types of labor, contributes to the development of the personality that carries it out. It leads to human development not only in connection with professional activity, but also independently of it.

Being a most important, objectively necessary component of human activity, educational labor as a social phenomenon goes beyond the limits of the educational system proper, whose main links are general-education, specialized (secondary and higher) schools. From the standpoint of analyzing human development through educational activity, this sphere is considerably broader, since educational labor encompasses many other social processes.

At present in our country, various kinds of education (and consequently of educational labor) include about 80 million people. But even this general figure, it seems to us, does not encompass the entire system of educational labor. It does not include many such kinds of educational labor as educational labor aimed at mastering certain knowledge and skills in military affairs.

Training and educational labor in all branches of the armed forces set as their goal the provision to all personnel of all the necessary tactical, technical, and political knowledge, abilities, and skills, as well as combat and physical qualities, in accordance with the requirements of the time and with constantly improving military-technical means. Therefore educational labor, in a specific form, with its own distinctive knowledge, methods, and techniques, is also carried out in military affairs.

Educational labor as a social phenomenon, in addition to the basic forms of educational training (the secondary general-education school, secondary and higher specialized educational institutions), proceeds to a certain normative degree in children’s preschool institutions, in courses, theoretical seminars, in army and navy exercises, in military units, in political schools and in various kinds of special training conducted directly in production, in sports schools, clubs, including the DOSAAF. It is carried out in the form of self-education and in postgraduate study, which stands on the boundary between educational and scientific labor.

From this one may conclude that, under contemporary conditions of scientific-technical and social progress, educational labor is a law-governed process leading to the development of the human spiritual world and contributing to the formation and improvement of one’s professional qualities. Being an objectively necessary element of social practice, it at the same time serves as one of the conditions and means for increasing a person’s social activity.

⁵⁹ V. G. Anan'ev, “The Human Being as an Object of Education,” Soviet Pedagogy, 1965, No. 1, pp. 31–32.
⁶⁰ See: Students and Modernity (Learning and Labor—Labor and Learning). Partizdat, Sofia, 1970.

1. Atalia Buksdorf. The first Polish code of labor laws. Poland, 1971, No. 12, pp. 54–55. ↩

2. “Sociology and Higher School.” Scholarly Notes of Gorky State University, 1970, p. 50. ↩

3. E. Shekhterman. Gnoseological foundations of the process of instruction in the higher educational institution. In: Questions of the Economics of Higher Education and Scientific Organization of Labor in the Higher Educational Institution, Alma-Ata, 1971, p. 42. ↩

4. A. N. Shimina. Instruction as a type of activity. Sociology and Higher School. Scholarly Notes of Gorky State University, 1970, p. 53. ↩