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p A special relationship exists between man and the machine. This relationship always bears the stamp of its times and is, essentially, a manifestation of a definite system of labour organisation which, in its turn, depends on the relations of production predominating in society. Man is not an abstract being. He is a social product and is linked up with an intricate network of social relations, which, in the final analysis, determine the nature of his relationship with machines. His role in this relationship is not confined to the physical manipulation of switches. This manipulation necessarily acquires a social hue.

p From the purely technical aspect, there is no difference between the machines used in capitalist and socialist production, but the social role played by machines in these societies is different. The reason for this is that under capitalism machines are privately owned, while in socialist society they are public property. In capitalist society, machines come first in the man-machine system, and man is, more often than not, turned into an accessory of the machine. The capitalist’s principal objective is to preserve and speed up the rate of production in order to beat 227 competitors and obtain the highest possible profits. To this end the capitalist improves technology and machines and is least of all concerned with man.

p In socialist society man is the prime element in the manmachine system. He not only operates the machine but owns it together with his fellow workers. Hence the concern to promote technical progress and increase labour productivity goes hand in hand with concern for the welfare of man, with the aim of furthering his intellectual and physical advancement. Under socialism there is a marked trend to design machines in such a way as to make them conform to man’s mental and physical potentialities and ensure conditions for normal work and periodic rest during work.

p The man-machine system develops side by side with the growth of production with emphasis on freeing this system from man’s physical limitations. Man’s physical possibilities are limited and the general trend of technological development is therefore to surmount this limitation by gradually transferring more of man’s production functions to machines. This is giving man a new role in production. At the pre-automation phase of technological progress man’s role is chiefly that of a physical subject fulfilling definite physical functions. At that stage, by virtue of the inadequate level of technical development, these functions cannot be turned over to machines. But with the advent of automation, which converts production into a continuous process, man’s physical functions gradually give way to social functions such as adjustment, control and regulation.

p The replacement of man’s physical functions by social ones is made possible by automation, by the creation of systems of automatic regulation. Here man ceases to be a mechanical component of the man-machine system in which he directly fulfils those production functions that the machine cannot fulfil. “The worker,” Marx wrote, characterising automated production, “is no longer what he used to be when he wedged a changed object of nature between himself and the object of labour; now between himself and inorganic nature, which he is harnessing, he is wedging a natural process that he is transforming into an industrial process. He is taking his place beside the 228 process of production instead of being its principal agent.” The machine is becoming the chief element of the manmachine system (in the sense of the fulfilment of the production function proper), while man, Marx wrote, “with regard to the very process of production is its overseer and regulator".

p Here it is not a question of man’s complete and absolute liberation from participation in production but of his gradual liberation from participation in production as a physical being and thereby of the liberation of technical progress from man’s restraining physical limitations. This is a process of man’s self-liberation and does not in any way imply a belittlement of his role in production or of his complete replacement by machines. The machines created by man free him from excessive physical strain, from fatiguing and monotonous mental work, but no machine can free him from his social functions, from his duties, acts and activities as a member of society. Even when comprehensive automation will have been achieved under communism, man will continue to participate in production and retain his decisive role in it precisely as a member of society, as a social being although this participation will be effected indirectly, through a system of signals and control.

p It is of tremendous theoretical and, more especially, practical importance to study the principles underlying the designing and creation of integral systems of the manmachine type.

p On the one hand, the freeing of machinery from the restraining influence of man as a result of the latter’s emancipation from physical participation in the production process makes it possible to design fundamentally new types of machines and mechanisms to meet the requirements solely of the objective course of the production process itself, of the laws governing this process.

p On the other hand, these machines and mechanisms will ensure man’s active but indirect participation in this process, facilitate the development of his talents, embody his social experience and create the possibility for the comprehensive employment of this experience to achieve the greatest production efficiency. Machines and mechanisms must be designed in such a way as to make the most 229 of man’s creative abilities, the flexibility of his thinking and experience, and his ability to take his bearings in diverse and frequently unforeseen circumstances, i.e., to utilise human qualities.

p The combining of human and machine components in production and the establishment of the most effective and expedient relationship between man and machines is a complicated and difficult task which can be carried out only by pooling the efforts of engineers, psychologists, mathematicians, philosophers and other specialists.

With the growth of automation man becomes a link in extremely intricate production systems. Under these conditions the task is not to free him from participation in production and completely replace him by machines (which cannot be done), but to find the most expedient forms of relationship between him and machines, a relationship that conforms to his intellectual and physical possibilities and to his sociological experience. Inasmuch as in automated production man influences production indirectly, through a system of signals and control mechanisms, it is of particularly great importance to work out the most rational forms of relationship between him and these mechanisms. In this sphere machine designers are rendered invaluable assistance by cybernetics, which not only creates the most efficient systems of machines but also works out methods of operating intricate automatic installations and designs systems of regulation that conform to man’s possibilities and capabilities.