Political Values as Ideas of Social Needs

Abstract

Values are considered abstract, culturally objectified ideas about phenomena. Such ideas have a lasting significance for the satisfaction of the needs of political subjects. Values can be called the "ideas of needs." Political values are of a dual nature, which is both the source of an inner conflict and is also overcome on the basis of a system of political values. The political value system is always the value system of a particular class, of a specific stratum as an organized social force. Thus political values are ideas expressing the attitude of large social groups as wholes toward the needs of other large social groups and of society as a whole, in respect to the awareness of their own needs. A basic task of Marxist political axiology is the examination of the characteristics governing the emergence of a political value system in order to find a concrete solution to a problem that each social group must cope with—that of correlating its own needs with the needs of the entire society.