Marx and Marxism on the Principles Underlying Human Resettlement: a Future of "Ancestral Estates"?

In this article it is shown that the problems and inadequacies of the modern economy and society have in no sense arisen as the simple result of the ideas of Karl Marx being put into practice, but due to their incorrect implementation, arising out of a substantial failure to understand a whole series of his positions. A brief theoretical digression is provided, and the point is stressed that nature and the attitudes of human beings to it needed to have a place at the basis of the construction of the new world; in practice, however, attention was directed overwhelmingly toward the relationships in society, while nature remained on the sidelines. Singled out for examination is the concept of the “new resettlement” advanced by the researcher of the Institute of Marx, Engels and Lenin (IMEL) M.A. Okhitovich, according to which it is necessary under socialism to renounce entirely the urban and village types of settlement, striving instead for a comprehensive decentralisation of housing construction and for dispersed resettlement. On the basis of an analysis of resettlement and public services provisions in the USSR the author shows that contrary to the ideas of Marx, people to a significant degree came to be alienated from nature, and were relocated in an artificial environment, an environment of great mega-cities. In the process, the preconditions were created for a return to a condition better fitted to the cities — that is, to capitalism. Counterposed to this is the idea of a new progressive form of the interaction and mutual development of human beings and nature — the ancestral estate, whose key underlying idea consists in the development of human creative potential and the perfecting of the inhabited environment. The principles behind the functioning of ancestral estates are revealed in detail, along with the interconnections of creative activity within them, the qualities of the surrounding environment, and the necessary orienting of human activity within the framework of the concept of sustainable development