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p Automation is the truest sign of our times. Without automation modern production would never have achieved its present level. Automation has made possible the launching of spaceships, the operation of the giant nuclear-powered ice-breaker, the mass production of diverse machines, and the attainment by atom particles of incredible velocities in accelerators.

p There could be no question of the technology of communism without automation. In order to get a picture of this technology, of the industry of the future, let us glance into the workshop of a large factory.

p It is a spacious and bright building with rows of busy machines, a large quantity of various equipment and numerous devices. Only a few people operate all this machinery. One of them is on duty at the control panel with its multitude of switches, push-buttons and gauges.

p Is this huge workshop operated by only one person? Indeed, there is only one person, but he has numerous assistants in the form of his all-seeing, all-knowing and versatile machines and instruments. They feed the workblanks, process them and pass them on in the required sequence. As though at the wave of a magic wand, the finished parts move from the different departments to the assembly workshop, where they are put together to form the finished article.

p This then is an automated plant, where all the technological and transport operations are accomplished without man’s direct participation. Man only controls the automated machines and instruments, adjusts them and programmes the technological process.

p The Soviet Union has many automated production lines and workshops, but their number is still far too few and they do not characterise industry as a whole. Under socialism far from all labour processes are mechanised, let alone automated. In particular, this is true of auxiliary, loading and unloading operations. In communist society automation, to say nothing of mechanisation, will become widespread. Machines will operate not only workshops and factories but also huge power stations, entire power grids, oilfields, mines and air, sea and railway transport.

p Comprehensive mechanisation and automation are the 216 key trend of technical progress and a feature of the material and technical basis of communism. They effectively boost labour productivity, thus helping to step up output, improve its quality and reduce production costs, deliver man from arduous physical effort and change and creatively enrich the very nature of labour.

Soviet industry is confronted with the task of supplying the economy with all types of modern machines and mechanisms, particularly with means of automation, remote control and electronics. This is stressed in the Programme of the C.P.S.U., which envisages an unparalleled rapid growth of the output of the most diverse means of automation and electronics.