12 Social Scientist mobilization for cooperatives and communes suggests important differences in outlook towards the peasantry, which could have important lessons for other countries building socialism. For the second stage in which the USSR and China now are, two basic contradictions may be defined by looking at the goals which Marx in his Critique of the Gotha Programme set for 'the higher stage of Communism', towards which socialist society would evolve. (1) Contradiction between 'mental and physical labour': essentially the contradiction generated by higher incomes and authority for bureaucrats, managers, intellectuals, etc., which has to be maintained in socialism for quite a long time in the interest of higher production. (2) Contradiction between town and country: this often arises in the socialist countries in the form of pressure of industry upon agriculture. It was the source of the theory of socialist primitive accumulation, abandoned in words, but often pursued in practice to promote industrialisation. There are other contradictions, which need also to be examined. Socialism has come about in a system of nation-states, and when one large economically powerful socialist nation deals with others, national contradictions are bound to arise. How such contradictions are to be resolved, raises the problem of the political system of socialism. In an old controversy (where Stalin was on the side of the angels), the question was raised whether the dictatorship of the proletariat means the dictatorship of the Party and whether they were the same. Clearly, there must always exist contradictions between the ruling Party apparatus or leadership and the Working Class, which cannot be glossed over by a mere designation of the party as a Working-Class Party. There is no doubt that until the abundance of material wealth ushers in the period of communism, these contradictions would continue to exist. This has been proved amply by the Chinese measures after the Cultural Revolution, under which even individual farming has been restored: this is relevant to our Contradiction No. 2, since both communes and collective farms could be made to surrender surpluses for industry more easily than individual farmers, who, apparently, produce more. In the Soviet Union there has recently been more concern with the contradictions between the party and the population, and measures similar to those of the Chinese are on agenda, relating to both our Contradictions (1) and (2). And yet if what Marx called 'bourgeois rights' continue in socialism, it is also important that as production advances they should be contained. Distribution is as important as production (a point not touched upon by Stalin in his essay); and 'Equality, Liberty and Fraternity' should surely be more than mere slogans in a socialist society—far more than in Revolutionary France which gave birth to them.