Abstract

The principal task of Marxist ethics is not to formulate particular moral principles or to implement them but to describe and explain moral reality. Ethics is not a philosophical discipline although as a science of morals in its own rights it is based on philosophical premises of historical materialism. Trying to define the principal tasks of Marxist ethics in the socialist society the author contends that Marxist ethics should determine the contents, the forms and the ways in which the communist morality develops and functions: in the analysis and scientific examination of the social reality it should reveal the causes of contradictions and moral conflicts in the socialist society, it should also identify favourable conditions for an extensive acceptance of the communist morality.