p Production does not stand still, it constantly grows, develops and improves. It could not be otherwise, for in order to live people must produce material wealth, and produce it on a growing scale. This is necessary because the number of people on our planet is continuously growing and their requirements are increasing all the time. Primitive man needed very little: coarse food, an animal skin, a cave or a roof over his head and a fire in his hearth. But the material and cultural needs of the man of today are very, very great.

p The only way to satisfy the increasing needs of the ever growing number of people is to constantly expand and improve production. Development of production is an objective necessity, a law of social life. The history of society is the law-governed development of social production, the necessary process of replacing a lower mode of production by another, higher one.

p How does production develop?

p The development of production begins with a change in the productive forces. But the productive forces, as we have learned, are instruments of production and the people who utilise these instruments. Which of these elements of the productive forces develops first? History shows that within the framework of the productive forces the instruments of production develop first. To lighten labour, to obtain more material wealth with the least expenditure of labour people constantly improve the existing instruments and devise new and more efficient ones.

p The development and improvement of the instruments of production, technical progress, are a result of the work of the people engaged in production. But together with improvement of the instruments of labour, people themselves develop. Their production know-how and skill grow and new trades emerge. In the long run, as the instruments of labour improve and the workers develop, the relationship of people in the production process, the relations of production, also change.

p The productive forces give rise to and form definite relations of production. But the productive forces existing at a 200 certain time bring into being only those production relations which correspond to the internal nature of these forces. The capitalist manufacture which originated within feudalism brought into being capitalist, and no other, relations of production.

p Arising on the basis of the productive forces, the relations of production themselves, too, do not remain passive. They actively influence the productive forces, accelerating or retarding their development. We should bear in mind that progressive, new production relations, corresponding to the nature of the productive forces, accelerate the development of social production and are the prime mover in the development of the productive forces. On the other hand, old production relations which lag behind the development of the productive forces hinder their advance.

p Production relations must conform to the nature of the productive forces for production to develop. In one form or another this has been the case in all the socio-economic formations. In the pre-socialist formations based on private property and exploitation, however, production relations cannot permanently conform to the developing productive forces. It is only at the initial stage of such mode of production that production relations conform to the nature of the productive forces and consequently act as the prime mover in the development of production. Then the production relations gradually became obsolete, lag behind the development of the productive forces, and this results in a contradiction between the new productive forces and the old production relations.

p This contradiction is not accidental, it stems from the intrinsic nature of various sides of social production. Productive forces are the most mobile element of production. They constantly change, and even within the bounds of the same mode of production these changes can be very considerable. As regards the relations of production, they, too, undergo certain changes, but basically remain unaltered within the bounds of the given mode of production. During the existence of capitalism, for example, its productive forces have undergone deep changes, but the relations of production today, as before, are based on private capitalist ownership.

p Being more stable, production relations do not keep 201 pace with the development of the productive forces and, falling behind, begin to retard their advance and come into contradiction with them. As the productive forces develop further, the retarding role of the production relations is felt more and more, and the contradiction between the two becomes more acute, growing ultimately into a conflict. Social revolution becomes a necessity in order to destroy the old production relations and introduce new ones.

This is the objective dialectics of the productive forces and relations of production in an antagonistic class society.