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p Socialism has abolished the antithesis between mental and physical labour which exists in capitalist society, where the ruling classes monopolise the management of production and mental occupations and use intellectuals to further their mercenary interests and squeeze sweat out of manual workers. Under capitalism most of the mental workers—scientific and technical intelligentsia, executives, workers in art and literature—are in one camp with the exploiters, with the capitalists, which opposes the people engaged in physical labour (workers and peasants).

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p The wiping out of the exploiting classes broke their monopoly over intellectual occupations and gave the broad masses access to education, science and culture. There emerged a huge army of intellectuals, who come from the people and serve the people in various spheres of social activity: industry, the administration of society, education, public health, science, art and literature.

p On November 15, 1965, the Soviet economy employed 4,891,000 persons with a higher education and 7,175,000 people with a secondary special education as against 136,000 and 54,000 respectively in 1913.

p Technical progress in industry and agriculture is bringing more and more elements of mental labour into physical work. Already today a considerable number of workers and collective farmers can no longer be described as purely manual workers; they are people engaged primarily in physical work, especially in view of the fact that at the beginning of 1966 over 54.2 per cent of the working population had either a higher or secondary (ten- or seven-year) education.

p There are neither antitheses nor absolute lines of demarcation between brain and manual workers, but there are considerable differences in their cultural and technical level. These differences are not accidental. They issue from the achieved level of the productive forces and the technical equipment of the economy. The present state of the economy is such that it requires both skilled and unskilled labour, i.e., the labour of workers and peasants and of intellectuals. This is due to the dissimilar levels of mechanisation, let alone of automation. The surmounting of the essential distinctions between mental and physical labour is an indispensable condition for achieving social equality, which will give all citizens equal opportunities for all-round development.

p This task will be considered as having been carried out when all people become cultured and educated, i.e., when the cultural and technical level of the workers and collective farmers reaches that of the intellectuals. Naturally, the cultural and technical level of intellectuals will not remain at a standstill; technical, scientific and cultural progress makes it necessary for them constantly to improve and 276 augment their knowledge and experience and raise their general cultural level.

p The prime factor helping to erase the distinctions between mental and physical labour is scientific and technical progress, which, as we know, changes the nature of labour, making it intellectual and creative. The change embraces not only physical but also mental work, because monotonous and fatiguing operations (computation, collection and analysis of data, and so on) will be gradually taken over by machines.

p However, this does not mean that scientific and technical progress will automatically raise the cultural and technical level of workers and collective farmers. In order to reach this goal it is necessary to open more general education, special and higher schools, improve the system of vocational and technical education and production apprenticeship and raise the political consciousness of the people.

With scientific and technical progress socialist labour will give way to communist labour, which will be neither narrow, specialised mental labour, nor purely physical labour, but a qualitatively new labour combining mental and physical effort. This will lead to the disappearance of the intelligentsia as a special social section, for all citizens will become intellectual workers of communist industry and culture. “In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”  [276•*