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p Alexander Akhiezer, C. Sc. (Phil.)

p The struggle between antagonistic interests, the violent subordination of the interests of certain individuals to those of others, has been a substantial part of human development. As the communist social formation begins to take shape, a new pattern emerges: society acquires the ability to make the common interest coincide with that of the individual. But this identity of interests does not come about automatically. It is the result of an ability to guide society’s practical development in such a way that every step forward is conducive to social harmony.

p Socialist society constantly directs its practical energies towards solving the numerous problems that constantly arise in the process of its development. It seeks to raise the efficiency of material production, to stimulate technical progress, to influence the development of the individual, the education of the young, and so on. The solution of the many complicated problems that arise during this process demands more than the ability to improve the efficiency of the relevant practical activity within the framework of human relations. Any substantial improvement of that efficiency demands improvement of the human relations that are formed during the activity. This applies to everyone concerned, from small groups of people to society as a whole. This in turn means that any really complicated problem calls for effective improvement of relations in society as a whole, for guidance of its development. Thus, the need to raise economic efficiency demands a substantial improvement of 156 organisation and management. This is at present being achieved within the framework of Soviet economic reform.

p This unprecedented ability of socialist society to guide its own development is universal and constantly develops along with improvement in the processes of labour and improvement of society as a whole. The scientific and technological revolution, which makes for ever more complex management and consequently demands increasingly effective managerial decisions, entails fundamentally important changes in the whole process of management. It is, therefore, vitally important for socialist society to improve its ability to guide its own development and this calls for considerably deeper knowledge of the laws of guidance.

The main tendency in the development of management is to make each individual a part of the process of the purposeful and practical shaping of the future. This process is inseparable from the development of social relations, from the development of practice.

p Management itself is a manifestation of the specifically human ability to make “one’s own activity the object of one’s will and consciousness".  [156•1  It is this ability, understood not merely theoretically but above all practically, that is in fact management of practical activity. Man’s development, his ability to rise to a qualitatively new level of historical development, becomes the object of his practice, the object of management. But the essential difficulty in understanding man’s ability to control his own life processes lies in the fact that his ability does not remain unchanged.

p There is a wide tendency to consider the history of human society as a spontaneous process. John Lewis, for instance, writes that “social evolution is the same kind of unconscious process that we find in the animal world".  [156•2  That is true only in respect of the period when social development was a spontaneous, uncontrolled, unstudied process. The specific law of that process was excellently noted by Engels: “Thus 157 the conflicts of innumerable individual wills and individual actions in the domain of history produce a state of affairs entirely analogous to that prevailing in the realm of unconscious nature. The ends of the actions are intended, but the results which actually follow from these actions are not intended. . . . Historical events thus appear on the whole to be likewise governed by chance."  [157•1  But it is incorrect to extend the specifics of that stage to socialism, to the communist formation. At a certain stage in development, this spontaneous mechanism inevitably led to increasingly destructive results, and this demanded the creation of a qualitatively new type of society. The next stage involved the formation of a mechanism for guiding society in which social development itself was the object of society’s purposeful practical activity. Nevertheless, man’s ability to guide his own development did not appear out of the blue. It was prepared by the whole of previous history, by the development of its inherent contradictions.

p In the early stages of his history, man in order to exist strove not so much to develop and improve his labour as to preserve its historically established methods. The reason for this was that any innovation might lower labour productivity and thus endanger the very existence of primitive society. The desire to avoid this danger made society conservative and hostile to any changes both in the sphere of labour and the social system itself. Marx wrote: “Conservation of the old modes (i.e., pre-capitalist.—A.A.) of production in an unaltered form, was . .. the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes."  [157•2  He wrote of the simplicity of the production mechanism of the primitive Indian societies “that constantly reproduce themselves in the same form, and when accidentally destroyed, spring up again on the spot and with the same name".  [157•3 

p Types of society whose activity is aimed at maintaining their social relations and modes of labour unchanged are known as stagnant or traditional societies. They are inclined to follow “the behests of their ancestors”, i.e., they have an 158 orientation on the past. Actually, of course, it is a question of perpetuating past relations into the future. The individual consciousness in such societies acts like a cog in a machine, carrying out a set programme, not like an autonomous stage in its functioning. The very structure of such a society limited the development of man’s creative potentials. Progressive innovations asserted themselves more as the result of spontaneous trial and error in critical situations rather than as the outcome of a practical striving to see progress of labour and society as the very means of ensuring man’s existence. From the moment antagonistic class contradictions appeared, the ruling classes began to regard the conservation of unchanged social relations as the condition for their own existence, which they identified with the existence of society. This illusory identification was inseparable from the striving of the ruling classes to fight the spontaneously growing revolutionary changes that were essential to the development of labour and the existence of society but destructive of the outmoded system of privileges.

p The successive downfall of antagonistic class societies was needed to overcome the striving to go on reproducing the established system of relations.

p The industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries saw the final assertion of capitalist society, a social system based on machine production. It ushered in a new type of social relations, the specific feature of which was a remarkable instability, due above all to the revolutionary technical basis of industry. Modern industry “is continually causing changes not only in the technical basis of production, but also in the functions of the labourer, and in the social combinations of the labour-process".  [158•1 

p Such a system is capable of orientation on changes increasing society’s creative potential. For example, a capitalist enterprise needs to be oriented not on conservation of its particular type of organisation or of some kind of ritual, but on obtaining the maximum economic effect. The organisation of enterprises and the technology of production have to change in such a way as to ensure a sufficiently high level of activity and adequate efficiency, otherwise the very existence of the enterprise is jeopardised. Development thus 159 acts not in a destructive capacity, but as a necessary condition for existence. A specific feature of capitalist society, as opposed to preceding societies, is, among other things, the increasing significance of an intensified form of extended reproduction. Man’s practical relationship to nature becomes an object of scientific study, since the aim now is not so much the conservation of the labour process in the historically established forms as its improvement and development in order to achieve a constant growth of efficiency.

p By revolutionising man’s relationship to nature, capitalism made the development of labour something that could be practically controlled and transformed the necessity for improving labour into the daily aim and function of labour. This process, however, required constant changes in the whole system of social relations.

p Submitting to this vital necessity, capitalist society endeavours to adapt itself spontaneously to the changes in the sphere of labour. However, the atomised character of capitalist society, the prevalence of private interests and the class antagonisms produce in the ruling classes a desire to oppose these changes, to preserve the pillars of the social system by reproducing and stabilising it. Hence the theoretical inability to explain, on the basis of bourgeois relations, the mechanism of social development and the practical impossibility of subordinating this development to the inherent requirements of the dynamics of society as a whole.

The capitalist formation is a transitional society between societies orientated on conservation of the established relations and a society whose own development can be purposefully and practically controlled.

p Man controls himself from the very first stages of his existence. But initially this ability is confined to the creative mastering of established means and methods of labour. Constant change in the character of labour is inseparable from change in the character of control. But this is a question requiring special consideration.

p Practice, as a specifically human form of activity, is by its very nature a creative process. It continually improves during its historical development. The specific feature of 160 practice, above all the practice of labour, is the ability to replace acts of labour, certain aspects of practice, by natural processes. The animal is not capable of making a single tool for the making of another tool, whereas man is capable of overcoming this limitation. Any substitution of man- transformed natural processes for what man has to do himself inevitably gives rise to other acts of labour which direct and organise this substitute system. In principle the process of substitution of labour is infinite. The important thing is that the character of practice changes after every act of substitution, since substitution primarily affects the more stereotyped and routine aspects of human activity. The result is that the creative potential of labour increases and its character changes. “The general development tendencies of human technology lead to the machine making superfluous first of all the physical strength and then the skill of the worker operating the tool; at the same time, man’s organising intelligence acquires increasing significance."  [160•1  This process leads to changes in the man-means of labour technological relationship.

p Man plus the implements of production constitute the human-material working mechanism which is the historically concrete form of the “man-technology” system. Changes in this system lead to the appearance of consecutively superimposed technological modes of production. The basis of the first of these is manual labour. In the process of labour at this stage, man also acts as the source of motive power of the tool. At the second stage, the tool acts as a machine element and the worker is freed of the necessity to provide the source of power. The worker controls the machine. The third stage is connected with automation. Man stands beside a technical system to control it. The next stage is connected with cybernetics, which is capable of replacing certain aspects of brain work. The appearance of each technological mode of production is connected with a technological revolution, with a change in the means and methods of labour.

p The process of replacement of certain aspects of labour intensifies the need to increase man’s efficiency in exploiting and improving the substitute technical system in accord 161 with his developing aims. This means that every major act of replacement connected with a change in the technological mode of production must raise the practical significance of the production of knowledge. It should be noted in passing that, however far the replacement of labour by forces of nature goes, they cannot in principle replace labour, although this process does lead to increased intellectualisation of the whole of human practical activity. Marx did not separate these two aspects of labour development. He wrote: “The implements of labour, in the form of machinery, necessitate the substitution of natural forces for human force, and the conscious application of science, instead of rule of thumb."  [161•1 

p The further the substitution of natural forces for labour goes, the greater is the need for the production of knowledge. This is the result of the changed role of knowledge, of thinking in labour, that is to say, in practical activity. For example, prescientific types of thinking, which narrowed down the possibility of innovation to the extreme, were typical of primitive levels of the development of practice, at which any departure from the historically established stereotypes of activity threatened man’s very existence.

p The appearance of machine production necessitates not only the conservation of the historically established methods of labour, but also their constant development. The need arises to transform labour development itself into an object of practice. This requires knowledge of the profound essence of things, which is distinct from immediate being, the ability to find an explanation, a causal link, to re-create in terms of ideas the process by which things arise, and so on. It was this that led to “the separation of science as applied to production from labour as such".  [161•2  The process by which science was singled out from the historically established forms of labour signified at the same time that the specific form of scientific labour which had appeared was an inherent condition for the development of production at its new stage. It was no coincidence that methodology was the basic subjectmatter of new philosophy. The very renunciation of the 162 traditional canons by which labour was confined led to the necessity for labour aimed at developing knowledge and constituting a necessary condition for expanding production.

p Finally, with automation and the use of cybernetics in production, with the scientific and technological revolution, the replacement of more and more new aspects of practice inevitably goes so far that immediate prescientific labour will be cut down, as Marx foresaw, “quantitatively to insignificant proportions".  [162•1 

p Thus, whereas in the earlier stages of its development the logic of practice was implemented as the logic of empirical manipulation of things, the logic of practically successful recipes, it gradually elaborated in the form of a science, its own universal logical basis reflecting the universal laws of nature and the laws of development of practice itself, its own inherent logic. The need to convert scientific work from being a remote sphere of human activity, counterposed to labour, into an actual element of production arises simultaneously with the need to find a basis for guiding the development of man’s own vital activity, for guiding the relations established in the process of that vital activity. This need arises at first in some limited sphere of labour and then steadily goes on to embrace the whole of human practice. The scientific and technological revolution considerably intensifies this process. Its significance lies first of all in the fact that the replacement of definite aspects of practice goes so far that the very need to maintain and conserve the established production processes becomes more and more a subordinate element of their improvement. The scientific and technological revolution based on cybernetics is destined to transform the production of knowledge into a determining form of labour. All forms of production are gradually being transformed into “a technological application of science".  [162•2  This does not mean any kind of dissolution of the material in the ideal. Inasmuch as material activity becomes more and more a creative transformation of the ever deeper essence of things, it becomes necessary to mediate this process by the knowledge of the essence of things and of the universal laws of their development.

163

The process of the qualitative development of labour provides the key to understanding the motive forces of progress and society’s ability to make its development the object of its own vital activities.

p The development of labour and the improvement of society’s ability to direct labour and all practical activity should not be regarded as two interacting parallel processes. They are but two sides, two aspects of human practice. Every stage in the development of labour requires a definite level of social relations. In a society of class antagonisms, the private interests of the ruling classes at a certain stage come into contradiction with the demands of the historically matured level of labour development. Only under socialism does society become capable of making the very possibility of contradictions between the various aspects of practical activity an object of practice and of directing the removal of these contradictions, directing the development of social relations in the interests of society as a whole. “It is only in an order of things in which there are no more classes and class antagonisms that social evolutions will cease to be political revolutions."  [163•1  Social development ceases to be a spontaneous result of the strivings by many people, groups, and classes to attain their private ends. It ceases to be irrational in man’s eyes and becomes a conscious practical aim whose achievement is the necessary condition for the existence of society and each individual.

p It has already been said that the scientific and technological revolution involves such a high level of replacement of labour that the need arises for an unprecedented development of scientific labour in order to exploit and further develop the complicated technical system that replaces labour. At the same time, this very replacement provides the possibility for developing scientific labour. When developing in some narrow sphere, for instance, the field of design and technology, scientific labour has an inevitable tendency to go beyond the narrow confines of a specific field and embrace all spheres of human activity one after 164 another. The scientific and technological revolution requires that the whole of human practice, and not only individual spheres, should be transformed into a scientifically grounded and guided process. This in turn implies that full development of the scientific and technological revolution is by no means possible in all social conditions.

p In order to realise its potentialities, any scientific revolution requires a new type of production, a new type of division of labour. The scientific and technological revolution can be fully developed only with the removal of the social limitations on the process by which all forms of human practice are transformed into scientifically grounded activity. This is possible only in a society capable of considering its development as an object of its own activity, that is to say, under socialism. Socialist society, which aims at the creation of a social system under which the “development of human energy... is an end in itself”,  [164•1  inevitably finds in the scientific and technological revolution a powerful means for further all-round creative development of society as a whole and of each person individually.

The scientific and technological revolution thus finds a suitable social structure in socialist society. And socialist society finds in the scientific and technological revolution the scientific and technical basis for its progressive development. These two processes are the different sides of the single process of the development of society, which finds in science and in scientific methods of guidance the indispensable conditions for its own existence. The socialist revolution and the scientific and technological revolution are two aspects of one objective process of human development towards communist civilisation.

p The growing difficulty of decision-making in the process of guidance of a complicated, dynamic society is increasingly limiting the possibilities for arriving at sufficiently effective decisions on the basis of intuition, of past experience. Thus, the problem of effectively guiding development becomes 165 more and more a problem of taking effective, that is, scientifically grounded organisational decisions.

p Lenin’s writings are of inestimable aid in studying this question. The exceptional significance which Lenin ascribed to organisational and reforming work in his analysis of the methods of guidance has already been studied in Soviet literature. In Lenin’s opinion, the level of organisational work under the new social system becomes a decisive factor of social progress, science being the basis on which all organisational questions are settled. Lenin wrote that the task of building communism can be accomplished “only by assimilating all modern knowledge".  [165•1  He insisted that “learning shall really become part of our very being, that it shall actually and fully become a constituent element of our life".  [165•2  The reason for this is that politics has been transformed for the first time in history from chaos into a science. Lenin’s idea of the decisive significance of scientifically grounded organisational decisions is of particular importance in the epoch of the scientific and technological revolution, when the need for timely and effective organisational decisions becomes exceptionally urgent. To arrive at such decisions, we need a steadily widening production of knowledge. The very problem of taking effective decisions develops into that of effective direction of the production of knowledge. This in turn requires a study of the specifics of the production of knowledge and the ways of its development.

p The most important distinction between material production and knowledge production is that, since material things lose their use-value in the process of consumption, they must be constantly reproduced. Flour that has been consumed and machines that have been worn out must be replaced. Unlike material things, knowledge, except for certain losses, can be accumulated endlessly, and therefore the task of knowledge production is not to supply a replica of what is already known, but to acquire essentially new knowledge, to multiply it constantly. Knowledge production thus becomes an avalanche-like creative process, constantly producing new results.

p Throughout its history, the human race has subordinated 166 its practical activity to such a definitive factor as the production of material wealth, vitally necessary for society’s existence, for the biological existence of man. Under capitalism, man is subordinated to an alienated production process to such an extent, that the individual becomes practically part of the machine. Man does not use the machine; it uses him. This is expressed, among other things, in the fact that intercourse between workers in the production process is determined basically by the technology of production. The whole structure of capitalist society, irrespective of whether it is a matter of producing things or ideas or of the functioning of the bureaucratic management system, is built on subordination of man to material production. This, by the way, gives rise to the illusion that labour is productive only when it produces material goods. Marx repeatedly opposed this point of view. He wrote: “The determinate material form of the labour, and therefore of its product, in itself has nothing to do with this distinction between productive and unproductive labour."  [166•1  For this reason the refusal to recognise the production of knowledge as productive labour in the conditions of the scientific and technological revolution leads to the paradoxical and absurd conclusion that society is striving to free itself as quickly as possible from productive labour. It is more logical to assume that the content of productive labour does not remain unchanged.

p The specific feature of knowledge production is that the form of intercourse it requires is directly adapted not to exploiting machines efficiently, but to universally raising the creative potential of the people who take part in knowledge production, that is, to the creative nature of man, which is formed throughout human history. Intercourse between people is itself the “technological” basis of the production of knowledge, although the term can scarcely be applied in this sphere. Production of knowledge is characterised not so much by atomisation into producer and consumer cells as by a growing tendency to intellectual communication. The growing significance of intellectual communication makes guidance of intercourse, the creation of the most favourable conditions for developing the production of knowledge, indispensable for socialist society. Hence 167 particular significance is attached to guiding the processes of urbanisation, leading to the emergence of powerful centres of intellectual communication, which become natural centres of knowledge production, of society’s intellectual and cultural development. The development of our society’s ability to guide intercourse for purposes of knowledge production coincides with the solution of the problem of building communist society, that is, a society in which progress is measured by the individual’s degree of self-development.

p Production of knowledge is not the absolute opposite of material production. It arose in the process of the production of things as an indispensable condition for developing that production. But today knowledge production is the main instrument for raising the efficiency of social production. A most important aspect of labour substitution in the epoch of the scientific and technological revolution is the emancipation of man and the forms of his communication from subordination to the technology of material production. This is the other aspect of subordination of material production to the development of society’s creative potential. It is important to bear in mind that change in the character of labour, the transformation of knowledge production into a definitive form of production, is not a single act, but a long historical process. The fact that it has already gone pretty far explains the growing role of science in society. This process is displayed in various visible forms, particularly in the fact that the development of complicated equipment, electronics, telemechanics, etc., demands that the work of the toiler should become constantly more intellectual and that the proportion of people engaged in scientific work in a production collective should steadily increase. The ability to guide these complicated processes efficiently, according to their specific laws, is one of the most important factors in deepening the scientific and technological revolution.

p Here the question arises: how do the specifics of knowledge production concern the problem of man’s ability to make his own development the object of his practical activity? Analysis shows that, when in some field of practice, for instance, in the production of machines, there emerges some special activity for developing and improving that type of production, the need simultaneously arises to produce a 168 complicated system of knowledge that reveals the general laws of the things which are being transformed, of their transforming activity. This knowledge is a necessary condition for controlling development.

Every act of purposeful guidance of development, that is, guidance of the emergence of something qualitatively new, always includes the reconstruction of that new element in ideas, based on the creation of knowledge which did not previously exist. This new knowledge is the indispensable condition for guiding the process of creative improvement of human practice.

p In the epoch of the scientific and technological revolution, the growing complexity of society makes it increasingly difficult to analyse the intrinsic connections between social phenomena. The wealth of the whole cannot, so to speak, be embraced by the human eye. This stimulates the tendency to reduce the whole to one of its parts, which, due to the one-sidedness of education, professional or departmental limitation, or various chance circumstances, makes one liable to mistake the laws of parts of society for the laws of society as a whole. One-sided development in this direction diminishes man’s ability to take effective decisions in the process of control, and this produces growing elements of disorganisation and decreases the ability to guide development.

p The first condition for neutralising this tendency is that society should devote more attention not only to constructing one machine or another, raising harvest yields or improving the quality of school education, but also to improving the conditions for working out effective decisions in society as a whole and in each of its cells. Properly speaking, the ability of society to control its own development is inseparable from its ability to control the mechanism of decision-making. This means in effect that not a single complicated problem in social development can be effectively solved if it is considered separately from the mechanism for solving it. In other words, the process of solving complicated problems must include improvement and corresponding development of the decision-making mechanism. For instance, the need to raise the efficiency of socialist economy calls for 169 improvement of economic management at all levels. This problem is solved by concentrating attention on the fact that any complicated problem at any level of management must be solved as part of the process of improving the ability to create and stimulate the most favourable conditions for taking effective decisions at all other levels. Improvement of management under socialism is possible on the basis of a society that is becoming more united, and not by static juxtaposition of the parts to the whole, as is the case when management is reduced to manipulation.

p To fulfil this task, one must free oneself from the old idea that management of people is just a peculiar form of managing things that have no value orientation of their own. In a complicated and dynamic society, this leads to contradictions between levels of management which, if not removed in time, diminish the effectiveness of the decisions taken. The economic reform in the USSR solves this problem by further developing democratic centralism in economic management. Improved methods of economic management and increased freedom for direct decision-taking open up wider possibilities for effective decisions at lower levels. This, in turn, extends the possibilities of taking decisions at higher levels, which analyse the general conditions of economic activity. It also extends the possibilities of putting economic development on a more profound scientific foundation and harmonising the value orientation of all levels of economic management.

p As was emphasised in the Report of the CC of the CPSU to the 24th Party Congress, the growth of the scale and the qualitative changes in the Soviet economy make the questions of improving the system of management of social production particularly urgent. The possibilities for such improvement have of late considerably expanded thanks to the enhanced level of knowledge and professional training of personnel and of the working people as a whole, and thanks to the general development of the science of management and computer technology.

p Contemporary socialist society is vitally in need of a mechanism which would constantly bring to the notice of the whole of society any substantial social processes, such as the appearance of new requirements in one field or another, ineffective decisions in one sphere or another of social 170 activity, lack of co-ordination between different management levels, etc. This is an indispensable condition for effective decision-taking at all levels and for the harmonious development of the whole and all its parts. It can be accomplished only by constantly widening the participation of the masses in working out decisions at all levels. Lenin pointed out that the creativity of the masses is the basic factor in creating a new social system: “Living, creative socialism is the product of the masses themselves."  [170•1 

p That is why the Report of the CC of the CPSU to the 24th Party Congress calls the drawing of the working people into production management on an ever broader scale one of the Party’s central tasks.

p Extension of the people’s participation in management is of exceptional importance because it permanently minimises the very possibility of the common interests being replaced by the private interests and of one level of management becoming estranged from others or from society as a whole. Naturally, all levels of management will always need experts, but daily control from below will prevent their activity from being professionally or departmentally limited. Extension of mass participation in management removes the objective basis for various bureaucratic and technocratic illusions, for regarding not society as a whole but only a certain part of it as the subject of social management.

p The increased complexity of management leads to certain changes in the relations between society and the individual. In this age of the scientific and technological revolution, the striving of each individual to work well in his narrow field becomes more and more necessary and at the same time less and less sufficient. It also becomes necessary for everyone to see in his activity not some small part of the whole but all the whole, if only from the standpoint of some specific part. Accordingly, it becomes increasingly necessary to develop in every individual the desire to take part in the cultural life of society as a whole, to assume some responsibility for the future of society. Such development of the individual is due to profound changes in the mechanism of management. The increasing complexity of socialist society will inevitably 171 enhance the role of management through culture, through people’s ability to develop free association based on scientifically formed values. Particularly interesting in this respect is Lenin’s idea of a stage of social development at which “the need for government of any kind begins to disappear altogether”. Lenin linked this process with a condition in which all members of society, or at least the overwhelming majority of them, would have learned to administer the state themselves.  [171•1  The ability of the masses to manage society leads to a substantial change in the nature of management. The desire to speed up or hold back this process artificially is bound to decrease the effectiveness of decisions taken and multiply the elements of disorganisation.

The management mechanism itself needs scientifically controlled development so that the creative ability to raise the effectiveness of decisions taken will constantly be ahead of their growing complexity.

p The problem of effective guidance of social development under socialism is one of unprecedented complexity and in the epoch of the scientific and technological revolution it is bound to become even more complicated. But in a society able to control its own development according to scientific principles, it is precisely this revolution that opens up unlimited possibilities for dealing effectively with this vital problem. At the same time, one must avoid the illusion that the provision of all management levels with up-to-date technical equipment will by itself guarantee enhanced effectiveness of decisions taken. This illusion, like a number of others, stems in one way or another from the refusal to study the practical nature of society, from a superficial understanding of the behests of Lenin, who regarded social management as the creative organising activity of the masses. Persistent illusions about the substance of social management cannot fail to result in chance decisions, in decreased effectiveness of practice, and slower rates of social development.

p Man has entered a period in which he must cease to regard 172 the future as a projection of the past. On the contrary, the past and the present must be viewed through the prism of the future. Then the future itself will appear not as a fatally predetermined result imposed from outside, but as an intended result, which society has the practical ability to achieve. This requires of society and of every individual more and more intellectual exertion, constant critical reflection on each practical step, growing attention to the mechanism of decision-making and of formulating aims, and to assessing means and results.

The world competition will be won by the social system which is capable of guiding its own development, of improving its social relations to such an extent as to ensure constantly rising effectiveness of its practical activity, of making society bear maximum fruit from the scientific and technological revolution. This problem can be solved only under socialism, in a society capable of guiding the process of its own qualitative improvement and of managing its own future.