Research on ethical theories and educational systems, on the way they have formed in the past, enables us, on the basis of dialectical and historical materialism, to penetrate their scientific bases and to determine the corresponding aimscontents and methods of moral education in a socialist society.
On the basis of the fact that morals are socially and class conditioned, four basic types of morals can be distinguished: 1. The primitive communist society has the classless morals of the primitive man. 2. The slave and feudal socio-economic systems are characterized by morale justifying social inequality of people. 3. The bourgeois morals of the capitalist society, which is based on the material dependence of people, account for the exploitation of man by man. 4. The society of free social relationships of grouped individuals collectively controlling the means of production is typified by morals corresponding to the needs of the collective common life of people.
All the ethical theories and the corresponding educational systems in class societies have been marked by class antagonisms, which led to individualistic morals and moral education, which stressed, above all, the individual’s interest, no matter whether the conception involved was individualistic, materialistic or a combination of the two. It is only the educational system based on the teachings of dialectical materialism on morals emphasising their class and historical character that in a collectivist conception dialectically joins the internal and external education factors in the interest of social needs. Thus the socialist society’s morals are becoming the basis of the education aiming at a collective life of all people together.