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p Konstantin Mikulsky, C. Sc. (Econ.)

p The countries of the world system of socialism are today entering a period of radical transformation of the scientific and technological foundations of production and of corresponding advances in various spheres of social life. Conditions are ripening in these countries for fundamental progress of the productive forces, destined to make social labour far more effective than ever before.

A period when socialist industry progressed as far as it could progress on what have become traditional technological and organisational principles is now drawing to a close. Today we are witnessing the beginning of qualitative changes in production, when the latest achievements of science make it possible to embark on fundamentally new solutions in the field of industrial organisation and designing, to find the optimal economic proportions, to change man’s functions in the production process and further improve economic life on a new scientific and technical basis, by fuller realisation of production potentials.

p The scientific and technological revolution is becoming an increasingly important component in the whole set of problems that have to be solved in the course of the contest between the two world systems. While clinging to the past in the field of social relations, capitalism is trying to “escape into the future" in production. In forcing the pace of the scientific and technological revolution, the leading capitalist 133 powers calculate that it will cushion the most acute class contradictions and allow them to improve and strengthen their positions in the contest with socialism. What actually happens is something quite different, however. The accelerated growth of the productive forces restructures the population socially, stimulates the people’s urge for social justice and the need for self-expression, and actually sharpens class contradictions. It becomes apparent that the system of social relations based on exploitation is incompatible with all the positive innovations that scientific and technological progress introduces in the life of society. As Lenin remarked, “ capitalist technology is increasingly, day by day, outgrowing the social conditions which condemn the working people to wage-slavery".  [133•1 

p At the same time the scientific and technological revolution creates conditions for a quicker realisation of the advantages of the socialist mode of production. Until recently the general level of development of world science and technology offered relatively modest opportunities for increasing the effectiveness of the socialist economy, for an upsurge of the productive forces. Strictly speaking, only as the scientific and technological revolution takes effect does the new system create a sufficiently highly developed material and technical basis. No matter how great the successes of the socialist countries have been in developing their economies, the present productive forces are as yet in many ways not sophisticated enough for a consistent and comprehensive utilisation of the possibilities opened up by national ownership of the means of production and for fuller application of the principles of social organisation of labour.

p For want of an adequate scientific and technical base, for example, socialist society for a long time lacked the knowledge and equipment required to carry out comprehensive and effective auditing of the economy, to select the most rational variants of economic development and so on. This reduced the effectiveness of planning and not infrequently compelled the economic agencies to take decisions based on insufficient information, on an incomplete picture of the system of economic interrelations, on only a partial prediction and estimate of the possible economic and social 134 consequences of this or that project. Now, however, the countries of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) are mastering scientific methods and acquiring the technical means that will allow them to realise the principles of socialist planning much more fully.

p Within a few years the economico-mathematical modelling of extended reproduction, the application of cybernetics and the use of computers, programming and other techniques will make it possible to raise economic guidance to a qualitatively new level, to maintain optimal proportions and tap vast reserves for accelerating the growth of the planned socialist economy. This upswing of the productive forces of the socialist countries will be accompanied by elimination of the disproportions and imperfections that are inevitable at the early stages of social and economic development of the world socialist system.

p The Comprehensive Programme for the Further Extension and Improvement of Socialist Economic Integration by the CMEA Member-Countries, unanimously adopted by the 25th CMEA Session in 1971, opens up fresh great possibilities of the further economic advance of the socialist countries. Expressing the firm determination of the CMEA members to carry out the long-term fundamental aims of their allround co-operation and win the economic competition the Comprehensive Programme particularly emphasises the need to multiply efforts in developing jointly the problems of scientific and technological progress, applying the results of the technological revolution in every sphere of the national economy, and providing for a more efficient use of the technical apparatus of production and a higher labour productivity.

p Today, as a result of the increasing transformation of science into a direct productive force, the development of many of its branches is becoming, in effect, a component of the complex process of reproduction. Research and development in the CMEA countries is now one of the stages of reproduction. Science determines the economic effectiveness of all industries. As has been shown in practice by the economically most developed countries of the world, the application in production of the latest scientific techniques yields no less than 50 per cent of the growth in national income.

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p The increase in the amount society spends on research and development is a prerequisite for raising the scientific and technological level of production in the CMEA countries. What is more, the rate of this increase must be higher than the growth rate of direct investment in industrial expansion.

p The CMEA countries, even at this stage, have a fairly powerful research apparatus to work with. These countries provide a third of the world’s scientists, although they have only a tenth of its population. The Soviet Union’s research contingent, which accounts for a quarter of the world’s scientists, is particularly significant. The number of researchers in the CMEA countries is increasing at a much faster rate than in the United States or advanced West European countries.

p Taking into account the growing importance of research and development, the CMEA countries are spending large sums in this field. In the USSR, for instance, RD investment in 1950 accounted for 1.4 per cent of the national income, in 1960 for 2.7 per cent, and in 1970 for 4.1 per cent. The share of the national income spent by the USSR on research and development is now 50 to 100 per cent greater than that spent by the West European countries, and the USSR has drawn level with the USA in this respect.

p In the other CMEA countries the portion of the national income allotted to research is also considerable.

p The CMEA countries are faced with the dual task of simultaneously increasing the number of researchers and ensuring a faster rate of technical re-equipment of laboratories and research establishments. This naturally requires increased allocations from the national budget to scientific development. At the same time, however, it is particularly important to make more effective use of the personnel and the material and technical base of research establishments. In this respect the CMEA countries have tremendous unused reserves and their utilisation will make it possible to increase both the volume and effectiveness of research and development faster than the growth of allocations for these purposes.

p As has been shown in practice, expenditure on research and development repays itself with interest in terms of production when their results are put to use. In the USSR today, 136 every ruble invested in basic and applied research, and also in development, contributes 1.45 rubles to the national income. It has been calculated that investment in research and development is four times as effective as any other investment.

p Forecasts give every reason to suppose that the benefit accruing from the application of science will steadily and rapidly increase, that the “economic barrier" encountered in the application of scientific advances will more and more successfully be overcome. For example, it has been noted that the cost of electricity produced by atomic power stations is being reduced and that within a few years they will become economically competitive. The forecasts say that by 1980 conditions should be ripe in the CMEA countries for increasing the output of electricity mainly by building atomic power stations. Basic research in these countries on a number of other key scientific problems has at present reached a stage when the gaps in certain theoretical conceptions will shortly be filled and experiments completed, thus offering a prospect of major discoveries that will have a revolutionary effect on production. Some important discoveries have already passed into the stage of technological application.

p The scientific and technological revolution implies the radical and comprehensive technical reconstruction of social production, which will be converted into a vast complex of automated production systems. In the course of this process the sphere of application of living labour will be sharply reduced and its functions in production substantially curtailed. Not only will man be liberated from direct physical participation in the production process; production itself will be “liberated” from the participation of man, will cease to be fettered by his biological possibilities. The transference of production functions hitherto performed largely or wholly by living labour to congealed labour will sharply increase the productivity of the former. At the same time the significance of the latest equipment will grow and its role in the production process will acquire correspondingly greater scope. “... Technical progress is expressed precisely in the fact that the work of machines pushes human labour more and more into the background."  [136•1 

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p The worker is liberated from direct participation in the production process by the introduction of all-round automation, when material production becomes to a certain extent and within definite limits a function of congealed labour. In the course of the scientific and technological revolution not only the interaction of the instruments and objects of labour will be automated; automation will spread to many processes of planning and regulating production and also its control, which has up to now been the province of mental work. Electronic machines will in a certain sense take over part of man’s intellectual functions.

p At the same time man’s role in the development of the productive forces will increase rather than decrease, because his activity will gravitate even more towards genuinely creative work, towards the creation of fundamentally new means of production, new systems of guiding economic and technical processes. This will make it possible to speed up considerably the processes of industrialisation of agriculture. Mechanisation and automation of economic control and service operations will acquire greater scope. All-round automation of production processes, calculations and control and also the functioning of all sections of the national economy in keeping with the principles of cybernetics form the key element in the current scientific and technological revolution.

p The CMEA countries approach this set of problems with significant successes to their credit (automation of electrical power engineering, for instance). Their industry, particularly that of the USSR, has achieved a higher level in certain branches than the developed capitalist countries. This applies to metallurgy, machine-tool building and the chemical industry. The Soviet Union’s achievements in steel-making ( continuous flow method) and welding (in space, for instance) are well known.

p One of the main conditions for success in the current situation of revolutionary scientific and technological advance is proper structuring of the national economy. The CMEA countries have already, in the main, coped with the task of giving the leading role to machine-tools, chemicals and electrical power, which now contribute two-fifths of the gross industrial output of the CMEA countries, a proportion similar to that achieved in the most highly developed 138 capitalist countries. The tendency for these branches to increase their share of total output will continue in future.

p The primary task at present, however, is to speed up the growth of ancillary branches that are particularly important for technical progress. In the engineering industry this applies to electronics, instrument-making, the production of control and measuring apparatus, etc., and in the chemical industry, to the production of plastics, synthetic fibres, and so on. With this end in view, measures have been drafted to promote specialisation and co-operation of multiple plant for the chemical and some other industries.

p It has also become exceptionally important for the CMEA countries to renew the assortment of output in all branches of industry, replacing old articles by new ones that cost less and are easier to make. Hence they are planning to accelerate the progressive tendencies in the balance of fuel power and raw materials, specifically by raising the share of oil, gas and atomic power in the whole complex of power sources, increasing the share of oil in the whole mass of raw materials processed by the chemical industry, and by making wider use of scrap metal to achieve a faster growth in steel manufacture compared with that of pig iron.

p Society’s constantly growing demand for more services, for more educational and health facilities, will have farreaching consequences. On the one hand, it expresses the CMEA countries’ new capacity to provide more input for the development of these spheres as labour productivity in production steadily rises. On the other hand, it is closely connected with the growing dependence of material production on progress in the non-productive sphere. The level of material production is at present largely determined not only by the extent to which the population can be employed but also by the rate at which people can be educated for creative forms of work. Whereas in 1950 the number of people in the CMEA countries employed in the non- productive sphere was approximately 13 per cent of the population, in 1967 it had risen to 19 per cent, according to our calculations, and continued to grow in subsequent years.

p The Communist and Workers’ Parties of the CMEA countries attach particular importance to wider utilisation of the possibilities that the scientific and technological revolution offers for improving the socialist system of 139 economic management. Long-term planning will be increasingly based on forecasts of scientific and technological and socioeconomic development, on research and development programmes, and on the training of suitable personnel. The process of managing social production will be put on a firm scientific basis—the regulation of the mechanism of the national economy on cybernetic principles, electronic data processing and so on. Forecasting, planning and control by means of computers will, in effect, become a major new branch of the economy, at both the national and local ( district or factory) levels. The mechanism for the conscious utilisation of the objective economic laws of socialism will thus become fully operational.

p The raising of the factory workers’ qualifications, the development of their ability to use the latest equipment and to improve it plays a special part in the scientific and technological revolution in the CMEA countries. “Investment in brain power" thus becomes exceptionally important for advancing the national economy.

p Engaged in the national economy of the CMEA countries today are millions of experts graduated from secondary technical schools and colleges. Graduation of young specialists here proceeds on a steadily rising scale. It is gratifying that with respect to the number of students per ten thousand of population the CMEA countries hold foremost positions in the world, leaving behind many advanced capitalist countries. In the Soviet Union, for example, the annual increase in the number of graduate engineers employed in the national economy is several times that of the United States. In 1970, 257,000 engineers graduated in this country against 52,000 in the United States, the total number of graduate engineers in the Soviet Union that year exceeding that in the United States 170 per cent. Within the next few years most of the CMEA countries will introduce universal compulsory secondary education.

p The composition of the working masses as regards trades and qualifications is also undergoing qualitative change. For example, in the coming years, according to current estimates, twothirds of the living labour expended in agriculture in the CMEA countries will be skilled. The CMEA countries are also tackling the important problem of systematic mass retraining of specialists, and raising their qualifications to 140 fit the demands of the scientific and technological revolution. It is a well-known fact that the knowledge acquired at college is quite often not enough to last the specialist more than five or six years in industry. Hence, the need to set up a country-wide network of retraining establishments, which is being done in the CMEA countries.

p The CMEA countries’ spending on education at present runs to between 5 and 8 per cent of the national income. The efforts of socialist society to raise the general educational and professional level of the working people contributes substantially to the upswing of the economy. In recent years in the USSR, for example, every ruble spent on raising the educational and professional level of the population has yielded an annual increase in the national income of 53 kopeks.

p It is also worth noting the truly mass character of the “quest for knowledge" in the socialist countries, which has seized the broadest sections of working people. That is one of the greatest social gains of the new system and a major prerequisite for the further growth of socialist production on a new scientific and technological basis. Thanks to their determined effort to provide enough qualified personnel for the national economy, the CMEA countries have been able to provide a reliable foundation for the further progress of the scientific and technological revolution. For the socialist economic system this revolution signifies a transition to a new, higher stage of rationalisation of economic processes. This is expressed primarily in the intensification of socialist extended reproduction.

p In the five-year economic period completed in 1970, the CMEA countries already achieved a faster growth of the social productivity of labour compared with the preceding five-year period. The social productivity of labour in these countries as a whole, estimated in terms of the amount of national income per person engaged in material production, increased by 35 per cent in 1966-70, compared with 29 per cent in 1961-65. In spite of the fact that in developed capitalist countries the results of the scientific and technological revolution are also applied on a growing scale, the socialist countries boast a much higher growth rate of labour productivity. Thus, while in 1961-71 the average annual increase in labour productivity amounted to 6.3 per 141 cent in Soviet and 3.3 per cent in US industry, in 1966-70 it amounted to 5.8 and 2.2 per cent respectively.

p The socialist countries seek to raise the role played by the growth of labour productivity in the economic competition with the developed capitalist countries. As is known, the Soviet Union has already attained a higher level of labour productivity in industry than that in some developed capitalist countries, and is now shortening the gap so far obtaining between it and the United States. The gap will be eliminated in the first place by increasing the productive assets and power available per worker, as well as by improving the operational characteristics of new assets and using the old ones more efficiently. An important part will be played by reducing the proportion oi auxiliary and manual labour. Of considerable importance will be the further improvement of the industrial pattern of the Soviet economy, such as, for example, the relative growth of the new industries.

p The success achieved by the socialist countries in developing the progressive industries is indicated by the following figures. In 1951-71 oil extraction in the socialist countries increased 9.6-fold compared with a 4.2-fold increase in the rest of the world; the production of synthetic resins and plastics increased 27.5- and 19.7-fold respectively; and the production of chemical fibres increased 7.6- and 4.4-fold over 1951-70.

p Under socialism, the effort to raise the effectiveness of production is closely combined with the growth of personal incomes. In contrast to capitalism, technological progress here entails no unemployment or insecurity; on the contrary, it is a prerequisite of an ever fuller satisfaction of the people’s requirements. Greater productive forces will ensure a rapid growth of the living standards of absolutely all sections of the working people, the highest national living standard in the world. During the current five-year plan period alone, real incomes of the population in the CMEA countries will increase by about a third. A higher growth of capital investment in the CMEA countries, compared with the capitalist countries, is accompanied by a more rapid growth of living standards. Thus, in the Soviet Union, the real per capita income in 1975 will be nearly three-quarters higher than in 1965. It took the United States, the richest 142 capitalist country, about thirty years to secure a roughly similar increase in average personal incomes.

p The social consequences of the scientific and technological revolution in the socialist countries will be seen not only in exceptional progress towards fuller satisfaction of the growing requirements of the masses. They will also be seen in the strengthening of the indissoluble ties between the interests of society and both the future and current interests of the collectives at enterprises and of every individual worker. The forms of social relation between the worker and the means of production that are characteristic of socialism, his role in the system of production arid management, the principles of distribution of the social product will be further developed and improved. This will be an expression of the high maturity of socialist production relations and the scientific nature of the direction of society’s social development on the basis of qualitatively new forces of production.

The socialist countries belonging to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance are solving for the good of man the many complex problems and contradictions which inevitably arise in the course of the scientific and technological revolution. These include: the problem of combining the state control of a highly centralised economy with promoting the initiative of the working people, with bringing the masses into practical participation in running the affairs of society; making the labour of people employed in the mass trades steadily more creative in character; rational use of leisure to enrich the personality; prevention of the negative effects of industrial development on the environment.

p The path of the scientific and technological revolution is likely to be long and far from easy. It would be wrong to expect automatic progress in this field, to think that one has only to wait for the “fruit to ripen”. This revolution makes serious demands on all research and planning, on the system of education and material and moral incentives, on practically all spheres of social life.

The handling of the scientific and technological 143 revolution in the socialist world is the international task of all the fraternal socialist countries and it must be solved by their combined efforts. Experience shows that only the new type of international economic relations that has formed in the world socialist system expresses truly equal and mutually advantageous co-operation, which is the great accelerator of the productive forces in every country of the socialist community.