The study deals with the definition of the basic category of pedagogy — education. The author proceeds from the third theses of K. Marx on Feuerbach. He centers his attention on the investigation of social-historical conditions under which it was possible and, as a matter of fact, necessary to separate education and „circumstances“, i. e. different aspects of social- practical relations of the (familial) man to reality. The substance of education was always defined from the standpoint of the social position of the ruling class, its interests and needs. For instance, various bourgeois conceptions of education took no account of empirical conditions of the social existence of the working class (proletariate). On the contrary, marxist-leninist pedagogy must define the basis of eduation primarily from the standpoint of the dialectics of the conscious transformation of „circumstances“, i. e. from the standpoint of revolutionary practice jthe object of which is the working class and its allies in socialist society. This thesis is then applied to the conception of polytechnical education: it is the general education of the socialist epoch because it reflects general conditions of the social existence of the working class as a ruling class, it is the expression of corresponding aims and universal means of production, politics, culture and furtherareas of social practice.