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p Nikolai Gausner, D. Sc. (Econ.)

p Technological progress brings changes in social relations, in the position of classes and social strata, in the political superstructure and ideology of society, all of which is the Marxists’ ABC. The new element is that the scientific and technological revolution which began in the middle of the 20th century involves particularly deep and far-reaching social consequences. This can be traced to a number of causes.

p The pace of scientific and technological progress has grown so much that now more scientific discoveries and technological inventions are made in one year, than in a whole century of industrial capitalism.

p The current revolution is considerably wider in scope and concerns many more people than the industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries, to say nothing of the subsequent limited changes in the means of production. It covers both industry and agriculture, and not only the sphere of material production, but also the non-productive sphere as well.

p The force of its social impact is also due to the fact that it signifies a transition from quantitative changes to a new quality. As automation and cybernisation of production develop, not only the functions of handling the objects of labour, but also sensory-reflex functions are transferred to the machine. The last function of man’s direct participation in the production process—control, regulation and management—is transferred to a mechanical device. Machines are 191 being increasingly used for operating machines, which implies a change in the nature of the interaction between man and machine.

p Mechanisation has taken the power of implements of labour far beyond the physical capacity of man, while automation and cybernisation are taking it far beyond the limits of his emotional-reflex and intellectual capacities. Unprecedented prospects are opening up for increasing the speed and intensity of production processes, for implementing the principle of aggregating machine units. The organisation of production processes is undergoing a profound re-thinking, and the whole system of the division of labour is being transformed.

p The harnessing of nuclear reactions gives man fantastic power, which can be used both for creative or destructive purposes.

p Relations among men, between man and nature, and his way of life are influenced more than ever before by technology. The development of transport, communications and mass media has made our planet a smaller place and has brought us all into closer contact.

p The far-reaching social effects of the scientific and technological revolution are also due to the fact that it is contemporaneous with the revolutionary replacement of the capitalist social formation by the communist formation, for which all previous development paved the way. The social consequences of this revolution interact with the revolutionary processes that have been generated by a structural crisis deep within the capitalist system.

The scientific and technological revolution is still in its infancy. Its social results are showing through as yet only as faintly defined trends, but the question as to what these young shoots will develop into commands the widest attention and has given birth to a vast amount of scientific writing, as well as science-fiction and pseudo-scientific publications.

p Today bourgeois political economy, for the most part, no longer denies the all-important effect of changes in the mode of production upon social and political processes. 192 According to John Diebold, a well-known US expert on automation problems, “today’s machines are far more powerful agents of social change than those of the first Industrial Revolution".  [192•1  Diebold advocates major social innovations, and recalls that disregard of social problems in the past brought about the ideas of Marx which “have had more to do with shaping the lives of all of us than we might care to believe".  [192•2 

p Social changes brought about by the scientific and technological revolution are treated by bourgeois sociology from the angle of the transformation of capitalist society into a qualitatively different “new industrial society" (J. K. Galbraith), “cybernetico-electronic”, or briefly “cybertronic society" (Zbigniew Brzezinski), or “ post-industrial society" (D. Bell).

p What are the main features of this mysterious society which to a large extent is the fruit of social prediction?

p One of its essential elements is the new, “mature corporation”, which is orientated towards social interests and not towards private profit. According to Galbraith, father of this theory, “mature corporation" leads to painless elimination of the rule of capital.

p “Technotronic society" is run on scientific lines from top to bottom. Instead of the former plutocracy a “meritocracy”, or “egghead élite" appears in its commanding posts. A prominent role in “post-industrial society" is assigned to the state, which relies on scientific knowledge and computers. The population in this society acquires a new professional and trade structure, and is largely engaged in service and white-collar occupations.

p The theory of the “post-industrial society" also reflects some of the existing trends generated by the scientific and technological revolution. The latter further intensifies the concentration of labour and capital and hastens the process of merging the biggest companies. The domination of associated forms of capitalist property with their characteristic separation of the ownership of capital from its investment and control becomes further consolidated. The financial, 193 labour and material resources controlled by giant corporations already exceed those of an average-size industrial state and their activities extend far beyond the bounds of a single country. The massive introduction of new technological processes, new materials and commodities is based on the systematic application of the results of research, the development of which runs considerably ahead of the growth of production. Increased productivity of labour in the sphere of material production, as Marx foresaw, paves the way for expansion of the non-productive branches of the economy. The United States, the most technologically advanced state, has become the first country where more people are employed in the non-productive spheres than in the productive ones. It is estimated that by 1975, sixty-two per cent of all factory and office workers will be engaged in these spheres.  [193•1 

p Mechanisation and automation are now increasingly being introduced into the non-productive branches. This may slow down the growth-rates of employment in these branches. But taking into account that automation may find only a limited application in this sphere, and, more important, that major changes in the consumption pattern and rapid growth of new requirements (education, tourism, entertainment) are already afoot, it may be assumed that employment in the non-productive sphere will in future continue to increase faster than in the sphere of material production.

p There can be no doubt that the growth of the whitecollar group exceeds the growth of the blue collars, and that this trend will prevail in future. One of the major sources of such growth is the expansion of the non-productive sphere, where they constitute the predominant part of the employed. But the share of the white-collar group also increases in the spheres of material production. At the same time the number of engineers, technicians, scientists and experts within the white-collar group shows a particularly rapid increase. In the United States the share of the white collars among the employed went up from 35 per cent in 1947 to 46 per cent in 1967, grey collars (sphere of service) —from 10 to 13 per cent, while the number of blue collars fell from 41 to 37 per cent. According to forecasts, by 1975 the share of white and grey collars will increase up to 62 194 per cent, and that of blue collars will decrease to 34 per cent.  [194•1 

p Taking as their starting point the actual processes set in motion by the scientific and technological revolution, the authors of the “post-industrial society" conception and other theories of the transformation of capitalism treat their readers to an apology for the existing social system disguised in a “deideologised” wrapper.

p This is particularly true of Galbraith’s theory of the new, “mature corporation”, which claims that in the big corporations power passes from the owners of capital to the specialised apparatus of management, to the so-called “ technostructure”. This is supposed to result in a change in the corporations’ motivation and a consequent merging of the interests of the individual corporation, the industrial system and the whole of society. In essence, this is nothing else but a revival of the old idea of the “managerial revolution" propounded by A. Berle and G. Means in the thirties.

p The fact of the matter is that in the big corporations control of property slips out of the hands of the mass of small shareholders and concentrates in the hands of the biggest property-owners. The separation of management from ownership in no sense means that management becomes completely autonomous. In fact, the manager exercises his ruling prerogatives only within the limits and to the extent that his policy corresponds to the interests of the big property-owners who control the corporations. Despite all the variety of the immediate motives of the “technostructure”, they ultimately boil down to securing the maximum possible profit in the given circumstances, regardless of the consequences this may have for society as a whole. And the reward and social prestige of the top-level managers depends on the competitiveness and profit-making capacity of the corporations they control.

p As a new social group of the “industrial society" they are by no means alien to the world of wealth; indeed they actually form an integral part of it. The salary of the toplevel manager is several times higher than that of the most highly qualified engineer and enables him to adopt the way of life of a big capitalist. Many managers have controlling 195 interests in corporations. According to C. Wright Mills, 45 per cent of the managerial staff of the corporations are big shareholders, while only 1.4 per cent of the workers hold shares at all  [195•1 . Top managers are in fact an integral part of the monopoly bourgeoisie, although they remain dependent on the financial oligarchy.

p The changing ratio of white collars to blue collars is also used by the theorists of the “post-industrial society" to substantiate the thesis of the “deproletarisation” of bourgeois society. Professor Daniel Bell of Columbia University had stated before he became chief oracle of the “post-industrial society" that automation would “create a new salariat" (i.e., salaried employees—N.G.) “instead of a proletariat as automatic processes reduce the number of industrial workers required in production".  [195•2 

p The “deproletarisation” theory is directed against one of the major conclusions of Marxism—the leading role of the working class in overthrowing the capitalist system of exploitation and in building a new society.

p A revisionist variant of the theory of “deproletarisation” is put forward by Roger Garaudy, who in his book The Great Turning Point for Socialism claims that the leading role in political and social development is passing to a “new historical bloc”, in which the intellectuals and the working class are merged.

However, the changes occurring in the social structure of capitalism do not refute but confirm the conclusion that the working class plays a leading role in world history.

p The conception of “deproletarisation” of bourgeois society, or the absorption of the working class into a new middle class is usually based on the theories of social stratification that take arbitrarily chosen and isolated facts as the criteria of class affiliation.

p As presented by the stratification theorists, the social structure is completely deprived of any objective basis. But, 196 in fact, the origin and development of classes stems from the specific conditions of the material life of society. The production of material goods has everywhere and always been social in character. In the course of this production people enter into definite relations whose character changes in accordance with changes in the mode of production. Classes are, in fact, the product of these relations at definite stages in historical development.

p In one of his articles Lenin gave the following definition of classes: “Classes are large groups of people differing from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of social production, by their relation (in most cases fixed and formulated in law) to the means of production, by their role in the social organisation of labour, and, consequently, by the dimensions of the share of social wealth of which they dispose and the mode of acquiring it. Classes are groups of people one of which can appropriate the labour of another owing to the different places they occupy in a definite system of social economy."  [196•1  These main indicators determine to a great extent such distinctive features of classes and social strata as standards and type of education, sphere of activity, status in the system of political power and specific ideological and psychological characteristics.

p Social classes are not homogeneous masses of people conforming to a definite standard. They are made up of various groups and layers that differ in the nature of their activities, their way of life, opinions and so on, but these differences do not prevent them from uniting when their basic class interests are involved.

p A genuinely scientific understanding of classes and the class struggle is of immense importance in analysing social processes. It makes it possible to discover the objective laws governing the life of society, which at first glance appears to be an accidental mingling of circumstances, to foresee the course of events and influence them through the conscious activity of the masses.

p The main classes of capitalist society—the bourgeoisie and the proletariat—are born of capitalist production relations. They cannot be removed without removing the economic 197 basis of their existence—private ownership of the means of production.

p Not only value and material elements of capital but also capitalist relations themselves are reproduced in the process of capitalist production. The very thing that is the starting point of capitalist production—the separation of the means of production from the immediate producer and their conversion into capital—is constantly reproduced by the very mechanism of capitalist economy. Just as simple reproduction constantly reproduces the capitalist relation—capitalist on one side, hired workers on the other—so reproduction on an extended scale, or accumulation, reproduces the capitalist relation on an extended scale—more capitalists or bigger capitalists at one pole, more workers at the other.

p This proposition of Marx is fully confirmed under presentday conditions. Technological progress, by intensifying the concentration of capital, simultaneously hastens the expropriation of the small and medium property-owners. In recent decades this process has been developing with particular intensity in agriculture.

p In all the developed capitalist countries since the war there has been an absolute and relative growth in the number of people working for hire. Whereas before the Second World War in several countries (Japan, for instance) the proportion of hired workers was less than half, or only a little over half (Italy and France) of the economically active population, today they constitute a significant or very large majority of the economically active population of all the developed capitalist countries.  [197•1 

p Contrary to the assertions of the theorists of “ deproletarisation”, these facts testify to an intensification of the process of proletarisation of the population. This does not mean that all people working for hire can be assigned to the working class. They include elements that are socially heterogeneous. No matter how the composition of the army of wage workers may change, the industrial workers continue to remain its largest contingent.

p Under the influence of the scientific and technological revolution the branch, professional and territorial structure of the industrial workers becomes increasingly mobile. There 198 is a general tendency for labour power to flow out of such branches as textiles, footwear, clothing and coal into branches such as machine-building, chemicals, electrical power, i.e., those with an exceptionally high level of concentration and monopolisation of production. Many old trades are dying out, while scientific and technical workers and the professions connected with servicing machines and equipment, the so-called multi-purpose professions, are rapidly multiplying.

p Despite all the social barriers with which capitalism hinders the working people from gaining wide access to the liberal arts and professional education, the tendency towards higher qualifications is nevertheless making headway in the conditions of the technological revolution.

p All this testifies to the fact that the proletariat in the technological age differs in many ways from that of the age when the large-scale machine industry was coming to the fore.  [198•1  Not only the composition of the working class, but also its technical and educational standards and working conditions are changing; it is acquiring a different way of life and mentality.

p How do these changes affect its economic and political role? The bourgeois sociologists write about the working class in the developed capitalist countries as having “lost” its former importance, but on the contrary a more highly trained, educated and intellectually mature working class is capable of playing a considerably more active role as the motive force of social progress. The wider territorial distribution of the proletariat, along with even higher concentration in the major industrial centres, the key points of economic life and the main sectors of the struggle against the monopolies, should only enhance this role.

p The changes noted above refer primarily to the industrial proletariat. But the working class does not consist solely of industrial workers. Here it is worth recalling Lenin’s remark that it is unjustifiable to equate the “ ‘unifying significance’ of capitalism with the number of factory workers”, that there are diverse social types within the proletariat and semi- 199 proletariat, that the proletariat is divided into more or less developed layers.  [199•1  It would be even less justifiable to imagine the proletariat as a uniform “grey mass”, when under the influence of the scientific and technological revolution major developments in the social division of labour in the social structure of bourgeois society are taking place.

p Here we must return to the problem of the white collars and the blue collars. What is the actual social significance of the notable increase in the proportion of white-collar workers (including engineering and technical personnel) to the total number of people working for hire?

p The change in the proportion of white collars to blue collars in the sense in which these terms are used by the national statistics of the countries in question, merely signifies a change in the proportion of people engaged in predominantly mental work to those engaged in physical work. This change does not in itself determine the social position of any group of the population. If one applies the criteria of class affiliation mentioned above it becomes clear that the employees, the white collars, are socially a very mixed conglomeration, including members of various classes. A substantial part of them make up the middle classes of society occupying an intermediate position between the main classes.

p The increasing concentration of capital, the penetration of the monopolies into new spheres of the economy, the constant introduction of the latest equipment are intensifying the process of social stratification of the white-collar workers. A minority of employees involved in assisting capitalist exploitation, people who play an active part in the state apparatus of coercion or the system of monopoly-controlled propaganda, preserves and consolidates its privileged position at the expense of the working class.

p A substantial proportion of white collars, however, have throughout the 20th century, and particularly in the last few decades, been drawing closer to the industrial workers as regards their role in the capitalist system of production, their status and conditions of work. In the last century the engineers and technicians along with the commercial and 200 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1972/SATR278/20070704/278.tx" office employees, despite the fact that they worked for hire, nevertheless enjoyed special privileges that separated them from the mass of the workers and brought them closer to the bourgeoisie. Owing to the universal nature of their work and the need for lengthy training and education that were available to only a narrow circle, the salary level of this group of employees was considerably higher than that of the skilled worker engaged in physical labour.

p The comparatively small office staff was in close contact with the owner of the firm and was largely concerned with administration and disciplining of the workers. In those days commercial and office employees could count on accumulating enough funds to start their own businesses.

p Today their position has changed radically. As their numbers have increased they have come to occupy more and more subordinate positions in the bureaucratic hierarchies of the corporations. The great majority of them now have nothing directly to do with the functions of controlling and supervising the workers. They are losing their sense of identity with the management. The deepening capitalist division of labour deprives their work of its universal creative character. The same methods of capitalist rationalisation (time and motion study), that were formerly applied only to industrial workers are being applied more and more widely to office employees, a process that is intensified by the mechanisation and automation of office work and the work of engineers and technicians. The gap between salaries and wages is also narrowing. Sometimes the office workers’ salary may actually be lower than the wage of the skilled industrial workers. The stability of their position on the labour market is also becoming a thing of the past. White and blue collars alike become the victims of mass dismissals.

p Modern state-monopoly capitalism is sweeping away the remaining privileges that used to distinguish the mass of office and commercial employees, technicians and junior engineers from the workers. In the final analysis this process will create a situation in which some mass categories of white-collar workers will acquire the basic class attributes of the proletariat.

201

p As already suggested, the scientific and technological revolution and the development of state-monopoly capitalism have breathed new life into the technocratic theories, whose authors now talk of the rise of an all-powerful “ egghead”, or electrono-cybernetic elite that is taking over society. These theories get a nod of approval from Roger Garaudy, who claims that the scientists and research workers are at present bearers of the decisive power to change the world.

p Yet, no matter how great the part played by scientists, technical experts and other members of the intelligentsia, their independence is strictly limited. They are subject to the categorical imperatives of class society. Directly or indirectly through state institutions the activities of the intelligentsia come under the control of monopoly capital. Research and development financed by the big corporations are directly subordinated to the extraction of profit. Growing state intervention in the financing and organisation of science is accompanied by its unprecedented militarisation. Never before in history has such a multitude of highly educated and gifted people been drawn into the work of making and developing weapons of mass annihilation.

p Modern state-monopoly capitalism’s imposition on science and culture of aims that starkly contradict their humanitarian purposes and fetter the creative initiative and integrity of the intelligentsia is encountering growing opposition from the intellectuals themselves, who react particularly sharply to the standardisation and sterilisation of minds through “mass culture”, a kind of semi-culture that is often worse than no culture at all. They are the first to feel dissatisfaction over the general ousting of ideas by the consumer craze.

The intelligentsia cannot, however, serve the cause of progress while remaining in “splendid isolation" from the masses. Only in alliance with the working class can it play a social role befitting its capabilities and interests. The changes in the working class, particularly its increased skill and education and the enhancement of the intellectual side of labour, are creating conditions for the consolidation and expansion of this alliance.

202

p Scientific and technical progress not only changes the social structure of society. It simultaneously gives rise to extremely serious problems and contradictions.

p Unlike the panegyrics to man’s mental daring that one finds in predictions concerning the advancement of science and technology, the forecasts of many Western sociologists regarding social development are couched in pessimistic tones. Labour played a determining role in the formation and development of man as Homo sapiens. Now that automation is with unprecedented speed reducing the need for labour, some sociologists are asking whether robots do not promise the ruin of mankind through idleness. An article by Gerald Messadie, a French sociologist, bears the self- explanatory caption: “Is Man Obsolete?"  [202•1  Professor Robert L. Heilbroner of the United States foresaw the arrival of a society where technology would have generated “ immense wealth together with an equally immense vacuum of toil".  [202•2 

p Many other social aspects of the scientific and technological revolution give rise to considerable apprehensions. In his book The Year 2000. A Framework for Speculation on the Next Thirty-Three Years, H. Kahn, Director of the Hudson Institute (with A. J. Wiener as co-author), has predicted that the growth of material wealth will be accompanied by the moral and spiritual degradation of society. According to Joachim Bodamer, a West German sociologist, constantly accelerating technological and industrial progress will be paid for by accelerating human regress and depletion of the humane principle.

p It should be said that today there are indeed grounds for alarm about the consequences of scientific and technological progress, but bourgeois futurologists are looking for the source of alarm in the wrong place.

p It is a fact that the discovery of secrets of the microcosm, the harnessing of the fission and fusion reactions has brought about the manufacture and stockpiling of hydrogen bombs and the threat of a thermonuclear war which could wipe human civilisation off the face of the earth. Despite the 203 revolution in the techniques of agricultural production, the developing countries are faced with a food crisis. Contrary to established opinion, illiteracy in our “age of enlightenment" is growing, since in some countries the population is increasing faster than the number of students and pupils. The richest capitalist country—the United States—cannot cope with the problem of poverty. Intensive introduction of automation and new equipment has caused growing instability and unemployment for the working masses.

p The ruthless exploitation of natural resources based on the application of modern technology arouses growing concern. Even now two-thirds of the population of the United States breathe polluted air. For every American (including children) there is more than half a ton of pollution to be disposed of annually. Smog cuts short thousands of lives and destroys trees and plants. In the USA, as in many other capitalist countries, there is no longer a single large river with pure water. Factory waste has utterly poisoned Lake Earie. More and more people are coming to realise that the monopolies’ continued irresponsible use of chemicals could threaten the existence of life on earth.

p The more powerful the means of production, the more helpless a man feels in bourgeois society. His physical and mental activities are broken down and subjugated to the inhuman system of bureaucratic management, to someone else’s will. When at work he is at the mercy of mechanical robots. Outside he must contend with the “consumer society”, the cult of things, the power of mass media and the “ entertainment industry”, which spreads a typical middle-class conformism and system of values in the interests of monopoly capital.

p While all this is undoubtedly true, technological progress is not responsible for these misfortunes. On the contrary, the scientific and technological revolution opens up hitherto unprecedented opportunities for the enlightenment and development of man. It provides the technical prerequisites for the transition to a social system under which man becomes not a means but the object of economic activities, and along with the achievement of material abundance the creation of intellectual values acquires tremendous importance.

p The automation and cybernetisation of production lead to the elimination of strenuous and monotonous work, and free 204 man from his obligatory association with the machine. Manpower is being increasingly withdrawn from small-scale and unproductive enterprises. This process has acquired wider scope, particularly in agriculture which is becoming a highly developed industry. What Marx called “the idiocy of country life" will be eliminated and so will the domestic slavery of women, who will become associated with highly productive social labour and public life.

p Removing man from direct participation in the production process, automation makes it possible and necessary to expand considerably the sphere of application of mental, and particularly creative, labour as well as labour which requires fundamental scientific and technological knowledge.

p A certain number of men are needed to service the automatic system of machines. They are workers of a new type. They are not a composite part of the production process. They stand over it, performing functions of control and regulation. Their labour is more complex in nature. It requires vast technological knowledge and a conscientious and responsible approach, in which the intellectual functions of labour play a predominant role.

p Servicing automated production requires, of course, far fewer people than before. Yet this does not mean that the rest of them are doomed to idleness. The sphere of services will be expanded to satisfy not only the material but also the growing intellectual requirements of man.

p In accelerating the growth of labour productivity, automation creates the necessary prerequisites for reducing working hours, which in turn is an important condition for free creative activities and the spiritual development of the individual. In the future the very counterposing of working and leisure time will probably lose all meaning.

p But the realisation of these huge potentialities for facilitating labour and enriching it with new creativity, for ensuring material abundance, and developing and perfecting the human personality, which are opened up by modern technology, and still more by the technology of the future, depends on social conditions and the social system where it is applied. It is this aspect of the problem that is ignored by bourgeois sociologists, who measure social development as well as the moral and cultural progress of any future society by the standards and concepts of present-day 205 capitalist society. In this respect some sociological forecasts remind one of the technological forecasts of our predecessors who, for example, thought of future transport as consisting of a huge number of steam carriages and carts.

p The very process of social development is pictured as an automatic evolution, without conflicts, towards the “ post-industrial society" with technological progress gaining pace. This process has no place for class struggle, trade unions and workers’ parties, and mass organisations of the working people. According to Galbraith, in the “new industrial society" trade unions must inevitably forfeit usefulness as a result of the transfer of power from proprietors to the “ technostructure” and state regulation of the market, aggregate demand, prices and wages. Zbigniew Brzezinski, inventor of the “technotronic society”, proclaims that this society cannot have a “unifying ideology of political action" similar to that of Marxism.  [205•1 

The class struggle is, however, not the “nostalgic feelings of old-fashioned revolutionaries”, as some advocates of “neo-capitalism” assert. A social system based on social antagonism provides ground for class conflicts. This is all the more true in the age of scientific and technological advance, which not only deepens the old contradictions of capitalism but also gives rise to new ones.

p The class struggle, like the majority of social phenomena, is not a simple and straightforward process. It does not always fit into a simplified formula of the constant “ aggravation of class struggle”. In its course there are both ups and downs. The bourgeoisie has learnt its lessons from its historical defeats. Monopoly capital’s appropriation of the tremendous benefits resulting from the introduction of the latest technological advances provides additional resources for flexible tactics of social manoeuvring carried out both within the framework of large corporations and the whole system of state-monopoly capitalism. Changes in the way of life which became possible due to the accelerated 206 development of the productive forces, concessions won by the working people under the conditions of a highly favourable economic situation—all this can promote the spread of reformist illusions and the temporary neutralisation of a part of the working class.

p However, as the scientific and technological revolution develops in the context of antagonistic capitalist relations, an increasing importance is attached to its social consequences, which electrify and stimulate into action new contingents of the working people.

p It was no accident that in the late sixties when the situation on the economic market was comparatively favourable there should have been such mass outbursts, unprecedented in scale and composition, against key aspects of the policy of state-monopoly capitalism as the strike of ten million working people in France in May and June 1968, accompanied by mass demonstrations, setting up of action committees and the occupation of factories, or the strike of twenty million working people in Italy in November 1969. Student action in France, the USA, Britain, the Federal Republic of Germany, quite often involving barricade fighting against the police, are significant in this respect. So are the strikes by state employees. Some sociologists justifiably expect even more powerful popular outbursts in the future.

p The problems connected with the scientific and technological revolution that will give rise to formidable social conflicts can be singled out with a fairly high degree of accuracy.

p The destructive, inhuman way in which state-monopoly capitalism tends to use science and technology will almost certainly rouse growing protest and opposition. These tendencies are turning the productive forces into destructive forces. Militarism armed with nuclear missiles and swallowing up enormous funds not only threatens the world with suicidal disaster, it also acts as a powerful brake on social progress.

p The current campaign for the protection of the environment which tends to be directed more and more against the monopolies will in future play an even bigger part and attract very wide sections of the population.

p The traditional economic demands of the working class for higher wages and reduction of working hours will not 207 lose any of their significance. They will be guided to a greater degree by the possibilities opened up by the technological revolution, poverty and social inequality being even more fiercely rejected. Efforts to increase the working people’s share of the national income will proceed more and more often on a national level and will lead to direct confrontation with the system of state-monopoly capitalism.

p The predictions of a number of Western scientists, particularly Norbert Wiener, concerning the catastrophic unemployment that is likely to hit more than half of the economically active population in the near future, are probably not sufficiently grounded in fact. At the same time there is little evidence for the optimistic hopes of some economists, who believe that state control and economic growth will eliminate the problem of employment and unemployment.

p Unemployment may increase in the future even while comparatively high GNP growth rates are being maintained. The immanent contradictions of capitalism will in the course of the scientific and technological revolution call forth sharp disproportions between the rate of release of manpower and the growth of the economically active population, on the one hand, and the rate of increase of the social product, on the other. Dismissals will affect the skilled as well as the unskilled and semi-skilled, and not only workers but also whitecollar employees engaged in routine, repetitive operations. Characteristically, in the last ten years the proportion of white-collar unemployed in the United States has increased from 18.4 to 25.3 per cent.  [207•1  By mid-1971, 65,000 researchers and over 300,000 engineers and technicians in the country were also unemployed.

p Dismissals connected with the installation of new equipment and also lack of education and professional training will mean that considerable numbers of young people about to enter life will encounter great difficulties in finding work and this will stimulate their social protest against the existing system.

p As time goes on the objective need to increase the adaptability and mobility of manpower will further contribute to instability and in some cases unemployment. Acclimatisation will involve much loss and hardship, which state-monopoly 208 capitalism will seek to thrust largely on to the shoulders of the working class.

p It is highly probable that working people will in future protest not only against unemployment but also against the blocking of individual abilities and inclinations by the social rigidity of the capitalist system. The working people’s increasing lack of stability under conditions of rapid change, the development of inflationary processes and also the growing proportion of old people in relation to the population as a whole will reveal ever more clearly the basic faults of the existing system of social security.

p By the end of the century about 80 per cent of the population of the United States and nearly 90 per cent of Japan’s population will be living in towns. Huge megalopolises with populations running into tens of millions are expected to arise out of the present conurbations. Overurbanisation will evoke a whole series of acute problems and contradictions connected with housing, transport and replanning.

p The sources of social discontent will lie not only in the field of purely material interests. It will also accumulate around the problems of man’s intellectual and cultural development, his political rights, individual freedoms and ability to control his own life.

p A key role will be played by demands for the radical reform of education, for making higher education and professional training widely accessible and maintaining them on a scale suitable to the needs of the scientific and technological revolution.

p There will be mounting protests against the excesses of the machinery of coercion set up by state-monopoly capitalism, against the uniformity of thinking, taste and behaviour imposed on working people by the mass media.

p Demands for control of the activities of the monopolies (particularly with regard to the installation and use of new equipment), democratic programming of the economy, and actual participation in management at all levels will probably acquire increasing importance in the programmes of democratic reform proposed by the working people.

p The above enumeration does not, of course, exhaust all the probabilities. Scientific and technological advance will intensify many other social contradictions within capitalist society, such as the uneven development of various 209 economic regions, racial and national conflict, the contradictions involved in the use of leisure, increase in crime and so on.

p The social conflicts stimulated by the scientific and technological revolution are not an isolated phenomenon but an expression of the profound structural crisis of capitalist relations. They are the result of the ever widening gap between scientific and technical development, on the one hand, and the obsolete social structure with its inherent moral and ethical and cultural traditions, on the other.

Adequate social progress is becoming the categorical imperative of the scientific and technological revolution, and this in its turn brings to the fore the problem of revolutionary social engineering. Socialism and communism, not a modified form of state-monopoly capitalism, are now on the order of the day.