p Today the scientific and technological revolution has reached an important stage of its development. In the titanic scientific and technological competition against capitalism, the world socialist system must not only maintain its positions but win a victory in the name of progress and prosperity for the peoples. What is likely to contribute to the victory of socialism in this contest?

p First and foremost, all-round development of fundamental science, on whose results depend qualitative, epochmaking changes in production and intellectual life. Fundamental or “pure” science, as Marx called it, is a mighty, if unostentatious, force which, when it emerges from the stillness of the laboratories, wields its potent sway with undisputed authority. Applied science, on the other hand, is always in the public eye, always in action, yielding resujts that are obvious and tangible. It is the force that directly promotes technological progress. Yet, primacy belongs to fundamental science.

p It is fundamental science that paves the way for the scientific and technological revolution and gives scope to its development. This is the case today as was the case before. To gain victory over the capitalist world in the scientific and technological race, one must carry on with the general line of further advancing basic research, and building up its material and technical basis.

p Soviet science has won leading world positions in a number of major fields. Thanks to its achievements, many branches of the Soviet economy have in their turn reached a high level. Extensive investigation of mineral resources has made available every kind of mineral raw material. The founders of scientific communism foresaw that after the revolutionary forces had broken the chains of capitalism and thus destroyed class antagonism, mankind would concentrate its efforts on conquering the spontaneous forces of nature and placing its resources at man’s service. It is generally acknowledged in the USSR that science is becoming increasingly part of the labour process as a major productive force. “If the productive process comes to be a field of applied science" Marx wrote, “then, conversely, science comes to be a factor, a 57 function, so to speak, of the productive process."  [57•1  Marx’s scientific insight is being confirmed as remarkably accurate. Present-day research is increasingly aimed at tapping fresh sources of technological progress, finding new ways whereby to expand production, step up efficiency and provide for a steady improvement of the people’s material and cultural standards.

p The modern scientific and technological revolution has fundamentally altered the relationship between science and industry.

p First, recent scientific discoveries have given birth to more advanced technological processes, new branches of industry and new lines of material production. Thus, nuclear research has launched nuclear power engineering, while solid-state physics and high-pressure physics have given us semi-conductors, synthetic diamonds and other new materials that are revolutionising radio-engineering, radioelectronics and instrument-making. As other industries are re-equipped, the character of work changes and workmanship and efficiency increase.

p The pattern and scope of modern science call for an enormous development of research facilities. A “science industry" has come into being that uses complex installations and highly sophisticated plant and instruments. Advancing industry, on its part, is forever confronting science with fresh practical problems to tackle. This mutual enrichment of science and technology is becoming an indispensable aspect of man’s conquest of nature and is a characteristic of the current scientific and technological revolution.

p Second, at the present advanced level of applied and technological sciences the industrial development of scientific discoveries has become a highly intensive process. The interval between discovery and its practical introduction is rapidly shrinking. Thus it took 112 years (1727-1839) for the principle on which photography is based to be put into effect; 56 years (1820-76) for the telephone to emerge; 35 years (1867-1902) for radio communication; 15 years (1925- 40) for radar; 12 years (1922-34) for television; six years (1939-45) for the A-bomb; five years (1948-53) for the 58 transistor; and three years (1958-61) for the integrating circuit to go into production. To this we can add the pungent observation of Sam Lilley, who wrote: “When the world learned in 1945 about the atomic bomb, eminent scientists and eminent politicians were nearly unanimous in telling us that it would take at least fifty years to discover how to ’tame the atom’ to the peaceful use of producing power. Yet a 5,000 kw nuclear power station started work near Moscow in June 1954...."  [58•1  And still the distance between research and production goes on shrinking. Prompt practical application of scientific achievements is an essential condition of economic and social progress.

p Third, science is rapidly developing within the domain of production as such. More laboratories and research centres appear; an increasing proportion of researchers and graduate specialists are employed in industry, agriculture and other parts of the economy. Science is exerting an ever greater effect on the character and organisation of human labour, society’s chief productive force. As science and production draw closer together, scientific and technological progress gathers speed. The results of theoretical research pursued along the main lines of science make it possible to increase the efficiency of every means of production, build up the intellectual potential of industry and provide optimal conditions for new, more progressive scientific trends. The forces and resources of nature may thus be used more and more rationally, by altering the environment, reclaiming land, controlling the water regime, and managing plant and animal life and, ultimately, the climate.

p Fourth, there is growing co-operation between different sciences, especially those that had previously little connection with each other. The interaction and interpenetration of many lines of science in the course of research and its practical application are determined by the unity and community of natural phenomena that are fundamental to both living and inorganic matter. For illustration one can quote the example of such “end-to-end” sciences as biophysics, biochemistry, and so on. We find a concentrated expression of contact between numerous sciences in cybernetics, which uses mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, economics 59 and also computers, etc., to develop the theory of control in diverse spheres of human activity. Because of the continuous differentiation and integration of knowledge now taking place, development of science depends on teamwork rather than individual effort, especially when complex problems have to be tackled.

p Fifth, science is moving into every sphere of state administration and economic management. In its work of guiding the state and society the Communist Party of the Soviet Union puts’the regulation of social processes on a firm scientific foundation. In doing so, it is obeying one of the principal objective laws of social development under socialism. The need for intensive development and extensive employment of scientific methods in national economic management makes the scientists’ responsibility all the greater. Elaboration of the theoretical principles of management of the economic, social and intellectual life of socialist society becomes a major task of science. Individual industries and the economy at large have reached a level where it is possible to manage them only on a strictly scientific basis. Simultaneously it has become urgently necessary to train a special force of scientists to manage science itself.

p Sixth, under socialist conditions the scientific and technological revolution turns science into an active element of modern material and spiritual culture. Besides altering the nature of production, it exerts an ever greater effect on social relationships. This implies, above all, a change in the nature of social labour, which, owing to all-round mechanisation and automation, takes on the form of technological process control, thus becoming more and more a matter of the intellect, whether in industry or agriculture. Practical solutions are today available for such major problems of social development as the obliteration of any essential distinctions between town and country, between mental and physical work, and complete obliteration of distinctions between the working class and the peasants, which will turn all citizens of this socialist country into workers of a classless, communist society. This is the direction in which Soviet socialist society is advancing.

In a society rent by class antagonisms and based on human exploitation the scientific and technological revolution 60 produces jarring results, making the negative features of capitalist production many times worse.  [60•1  Under socialism, however, the progress of science and technology is consciously planned and controlled with the aim of benefiting society as a whole and providing for all-round development of each of its members. History has confirmed Lenin’s prediction that “socialism alone will liberate science from its bourgeois fetters, from its enslavement to capital, from its slavery to the interests of dirty capitalist greed".  [60•2