5

p The scientific and technical revolution (STR) is a multifaceted subject, and much has been written in the Soviet Union and other countries on its various aspects. Scientists, statesmen, military leaders, writers, journalists, teachers and physicians, in fact, almost everyone in the world takes a lively interest in the STR, its potentialities and prospects. That is quite natural because never before in the history of mankind has it had such truly fantastic potentialities both for vast creative effort and global destruction, potentialities for the tremendous enrichment of the material and spiritual content of human life (on a scale which even the boldest flights of fancy had never envisaged), and also the truly apocalyptic possibility of total destruction of all life on the planet Earth.

p Atomic and thermonuclear energy, which in the foreseeable future can provide a true abundance of energy, the automation of production, which fundamentally changes the working conditions and the character and content of human labour, the achievements of modern chemistry, which make it possible to produce virtually unlimited quantities of materials with pre-set properties, technological progress, the tremendous opportunities opened up by cybernetics, the exploration of outer space, the broad spectrum of new ways of protecting human health and prolonging man’s life, and finally, the rapidly growing means of influencing the processes of organic life, such is the far from complete list of the creative potentialities opened up by the STR.

p The Main Document adopted by the International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties in 1969 said: "The 6 scientific and technological revolution offers mankind unprecedented possibilities to remake Nature, to produce immense material wealth and to multiply man’s creative capabilities.”  [6•1 

p However, capitalism tends to block the use of the STR’s unrestricted potentialities for the benefit of society as a whole, and converts a large part of scientific discoveries and tremendous material resources for the military purposes in its wasteful use of national wealth. Among the truly apocalyptic characteristics of the devastating potentialities of the same revolution are atomic and thermonuclear weapons, -whose stockpiles are sufficient to destroy the whole of maniind and all living things on the Earth; the neutron bomb, the latest “accomplishment” of the US military-industrial complex, which has the “advantage” and “merit” of destroying “only” human beings and all living things, while leaving buildings and structures intact; the means of biological and bacteriological warfare: the global pollution of the biosphere, of its air and water; and the potential dangers of molecular biology (so-called gene engineering).

p The capitalist relations of production hamper the use of the STR’s positive potentialities, but that does not mean, of course, that the ruling circles of the developed capitalist countries do not seek to make it serve their own purposes. Monopoly capitalism of today has considerable successes in advancing and using the STR. However, only the socialist relations of production make it possible fully to realise the STR’s creative potential and to prevent the operation of its •destructive potentialities. That is their greatest advantage, as I seek to show in this book.

p One of the key problems of the economic competition between the two systems—socialism and capitalism—-is the most rapid and efficient realisation of the potentialities of scientific and technical progress. Socialism’s victory in this •competition will help to consolidate the world socialist system, to raise the well-being of the socialist nations and to strengthen world peace.

p In this book, I want to consider the STR—its present and iuture—from the standpoint of an economist, that is, to 7 present an economic, socio-economic and techno-economic analysis.

p Accordingly, I have set myself the following tasks: to present a coherent description of scientific and technical progress and the scientific and technical revolution; to show the origins of the current STR, a logic according to which it is shaped and developed, and in this context to analyse the stages and logic in the development of large-scale machine production, on the one hand, and the content .and logic of the STR’s development in the natural sciences, on the other; and to consider the STR’s impact on the basic elements of modern production (energy, instruments and objects of labour, technology, etc.).

p A study of the uniformities governing the origination and trends of development of the STR makes it possible to show the foreseeable prospects of its development with an adequate degree of scientific authenticity. While the STR’s future is truly fantastic, I have sought to consider, only that which already exists at various stages and that which can be achieved in the near future.

p The STR is running its course at a time when the USSR has already built a developed socialist society and is constructing the material and technical basis of communism.

p This chief economic task of the Soviet people is determined by the logic of subsequent progress in the development of the mature socialist society in the USSR. Let us recall the monstrous devastation inflicted on the Soviet Union by the war against the nazi aggressors. In 1941 prices, the losses (through direct destruction and plundering of property) inflicted on the economy of the USSR and its individual citizens amounted to 679 billion rubles; in addition, the Soviet state’s expenditures on the war against Germany and Japan and its loss of income as a result of the occupation came to 1,890 billion rubles (in the same prices). The greatest loss in the Great Partriotic War was the death of millions of Soviet people: that war cost the Soviet Union over 20 million lives.

p Despite the gigantic losses, the powerful creative forces of the socialist system and the Soviet people ensured the rehabilitation of the war-ravaged economy in an exceptionally short period, and then a subsequent rapid and steady growth in social production. By 1950, the pre-war (1940) level of national income and fixed production assets had been 8 surpassed, respectively, by 64 per cent and 24 per cent, and industrial output by 72 per cent.

p In the following 27 years (from 1950 to 1977), fixed production assets in the economy multiplied 10.4-fold, the national income 7.7-fold, and industrial output 10.9-fold. Energy facilities in the economy increased on a tremendous scale. The generation of electric power went up from 91 billion kwh to 1.15 trillion kwh, oil output from 38 million tons to 546 million tons, gas from 5.8 billion cubic metres to 346 billion cubic metres, and coal from 261 million tons to 722 million tons. The USSR leads the world in ferrous metallurgy: steel output went up from 27 million tons in 1950 to 147 million tons in 1977. A powerful chemical industry has been built up. The USSR also leads the world in the production of mineral fertilizers, whose output went up from 5.5 million tons (in conventional units) to 97 million tons; synthetic resins and plastics, from 67,000 tons to 3.3 million tons; chemical fibres, from 24,000 tons to 1.1 million tons, while engineering and metal-working output has multiplied over 27-fold.

p The productivity of social labour in material production went up 9.85-fold over the pre-war (1940) level, and in the past 27 years has multiplied 5.8-fold.

p The Soviet Union now has tremendous national wealth worth over 2 trillion rubles, apart from the value of land and forests.

p All these results of creative effort made it possible to set the building of the material and technical basis (MTB) of communism as a practical task, which means getting down to creating the material conditions for a gradual transition to the higher phase of the communist formation. This MTB has three main components.

p The MTB of material production is the key component of the MTB, and its content consists of the systemic, socially organised aggregation of the material elements of the productive forces.

p But the MTB of socialism, like that of communism, is not identical with the MTB of material production. The scientific definition of the MTB category must also take into account two other highly important factors.

p First, the very much higher and steadily growing role of science which is increasingly converted into a direct productive force.

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p Second, man’s crucialrole. Man is both the subject of progress in science, technology and material production and alsa the key element of the chief goal of communist production. The CPSU Programme says that the goal of communist production is to provide every member of society with material and cultural values in accordance with his growing requirements, individual needs and preferences.

p From this it follows that if the basic tasks of communistconstruction are to be solved, there is a need to consider and take into account, alongside the chief, leading and crucial sphere of material production, the MTB of two other spheres of social activity: the increasingly important sphere of science and research and the sphere of the services (everyday and cultural) and the spread of knowledge and spiritual values. The latter sphere has an especially important role to play in the all-round development of man. The development of thissphere helps to increase leisure time and to create the conditions for its creative use, so promoting the growth and enrichment of society’s spiritual potential. At the same time, the development of this sphere is a necessary condition for satisfying men’s growing requirements in services and spiritual values. The Soviet state’s economic policy is firmly directed at steadily building up society’s spiritual potential, rapidly developing the sphere of production and the spread of knowledge and spiritual values, and creating the requisite material and technical basis.

p The MTB of all these three spheres is evidently a necessary component of the MTB of communism. Ever larger amounts of resources in production and non-production accumulation need to be set aside for shaping each of these.

p The building of the MTB of communism in the USSR is a complicated and long-term task calling for echeloned planning and tremendous accumulation resources. The complexity of this task tends markedly to increase because it is beingtackled at a time when the socialist state has set itself the raising of the people’s living standards as its chief task. Consequently, there is a need to combine over the time scale a stable and rapid growth both of accumulation fund and, consumption fund.

p The present state and structure of the USSR economy bears the marks of the historical conditions of the Soviet Union’s development: the civil war; the industrialisation and collectivisation of agriculture, which proceeded in very hard, 10 conditions;’ then the war against the nazis and the postwar .rehabilitation, the cold war and the arms race imposed on the Soviet Union. There are some outstanding problems in the development and productivity of agriculture; there is some lag in the development of sectors of the infrastructure, which is fraught with losses of the social product (and this is of substantial importance considering the country’s ter.ritorial specifics); not adequate satisfaction of the Soviet people’s requirements in the services: housing, public utilities, retail trade and public catering, everyday services, -and so forth.

p If all these problems are to be solved, there must be a steady increase of inputs for production and non-production accumulation. The results of the USSR’s postwar development show that it has all the conditions for successfully fulfilling all these difficult tasks.

p It is natural that realisation of STR advances turns out to be an organic component of the construction of the material and technical basis of communism.

p In the CPSU Central Committee Report to the 25th Party Congress, Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee and Chairman of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet, said: "We Communists proceed from the belief that the scientific and technical revolution acquires a true orientation consistent with the interests of man and society only under socialism. In turn, the end objectives of the social revolution, the building of .a communist society, can only be attained on the basis of .accelerated scientific and technical progress.”  [10•1 

p The Soviet people’s advance towards the higher stage of the •communist formation largely and most importantly depends on its own creative efforts and economic strategy. The CPSU Central Committee’s resolution on the 60th anniversary of the October Revolution says: "Socialism is a society of social optimism." But this is an optimism which calls for a level-headed and scientifically grounded consideration of .all the complexities and difficulties in solving the forth•coming tasks, and the need and possibility for overcoming various non-antagonistic contradictions.

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p This optimism was also expressed in the socialist community countries’ assessment of their development prospects as they set themselves the task of ensuring stable economic growth rates over the foreseeable future. From 1951 to 1977, industrial output in the socialist countries increased by an average of 9.7 per cent a year, including 9.3 per cent in the USSR. By comparison, the figures for the developed capitalist countries were 4.9 per cent, and 4.2 per cent for the United States. In 1977, the socialist countries turned out over 40 per cent of the world’s industrial product. Socialist social production will continue to grow at high rates. The economy of the socialist-community countries does not have to face economic crises like those which regularly rock the capitalist world.

p The state of things is quite different in the developed capitalist countries. Many scientists, public figures and statesmen in that part of the world have been broadly discussing the "limits of growth", with many inclining to the need to set such a “limit”. Below, when analysing the problem of the future stages of the STR, I shall deal in greater detail with such discussions.

p Here is how the present state and the foreseeable future of the economy of developed capitalist countries are described by Alvin Toffler, a well-known US journalist and a former editor of Fortune magazine: "...We live in a schizophrenic economy, one that has lost touch with reality. And ^J incomprehensible dread’ is widespread...

p “What we are seeing is the general crisis of industrialism, a crisis that is simultaneously tearing up our energy base. our value systems, our family structures, our institutions, our communicative modes, our sense of space and time, our •epistimology as well as our economy. What is happening, no more, no less, is the breakdown of industrial civilization on the planet and the first fragmentary appearance of a wholly new and dramatically different social order; a super- industrial civilization that will be technological, but no longer industrial.

p “...All the carefully constructed stabilisers," Toffler goes on, "built into advanced economies to prevent a repetition of the 1929 are largely irrelevant."   [11•1 

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p Toffler writes that the attempts to counter the crisis are now led by economists who are "cleverer and more powerful than in those dark, ignorant, computerless days four decades ago". They use complicated computer models of the economy, input-output coefficients, and other miraculous tools for analyzing and forecasting, and they hold influential government positions, having taught presidents, prime ministers and parliaments how to apply the Keynesian medicines of counter-cyclical spending, taxation and credit control. Taken together it all sounds terribly reassuring—a formidable arsenal of weapons”.

p Toffler claims that "... a closer look reveals that, like generals, economists are busy fighting the last war. Their stabilisers and tools seem increasingly like a cobwebbed, economic version of the Maginot Line—a mighty fortress with guns pointing in irrelevant directions. Nothing in the history of traditional industrial societies has prepared them (or us) for today’s high-speed world of instant communication, Eurodollars, petrodollars, multinational corporations and ganglia-like international banking consortia.”  [12•1 

p “...The result: wave after wave of malfunctions, and dislocations—postal services, health delivery systems, traffic and transit, police and sanitation services all function spasmodically rather than with the steady, predictable regularity required by the industrial system.

p “...Millions are overwhelmed by uncertainty, their identities fragmented, their loyalties confused and cancelling".  [12•2 

p “The eco-spasm, or spasmodic economy", is a term used by Toffler to characterise "an economy careening on the brink of disaster, awaiting only the random convergence of certain critical events that have not occurred simultaneously—so far. It is an economy in which powerful upward and downward forces clash like warring armies, in which crises in national economies send out global shock waves, in which former colonial powers and colonies begin to reverse roles, in which systemic breakdowns aggravate economic disorder and economic disorder intensifies and accelerates systemic breakdowns, in which ‘random’ ecological and military eruptions hammer at the economy from different directions, in which 13 change piles upon change at faster and faster rates, creating tensions never before experienced in high-technology societies.”  [13•1 

p In contrast to aH this, for all the substantial complexities and outstanding tasks, the USSR economy has been growing steadily, switching systematically to an ever more intensive -way of development, which combines regular technical reequipment and improvement of the organisation of the whole process of production and better use of production resources.

p The STR provides socialism and communism with the most adequate technical basis. At the same time socialism and communism provide the STR with the most adequate socioeconomic form for its realisation. But the potentialities of the current STR are not realised automatically. They call for purposeful and active management of these processes by society. The chief instruments here are state scientific.and-technical and structural policy, which determines the main lines for improving the proportions and structures of social production, policy in the organisation of social production and the whole mechanism of economic activity.

p The task of historic magnitude set by the 24th Congress of the CPSU—"organically to fuse the achievements of the scientific and technical revolution with the advantages of the socialist economic system"  [13•2 —is being tackled through the elaboration and consistent and balanced implementation of the scientifically-grounded economic policy formulated iy the Party. This determines the long-term economic strategy for the development of the Soviet economy: the main goals of this development, the sources of growth and the mechanism of economic activity, and also the main lines for improving the proportions of socialist reproduction. The scientific-and-technical and structural policy shows and expresses in concrete terms the guidelines for fulfilling the key socio-economic tasks set by the economic policy of the socialist state.

p The USSR is not sealed off from the global problems now facing mankind.

p Leonid Brezhnev said in the GPSU Central Committee Report to the 25th Congress that "global problems such as 14 primary materials and energy, the eradication of the most dangerous and widespread diseases, environmental protection, space exploration and the utilisation of the resources of the World Ocean are already sufficiently important and urgent. In the future they will exercise an increasingly perceptible influence on the life of each nation and on the entire system of international relations. The Soviet Union, like other socialist countries, cannot hold aloof from the solution of these problems which affect the interests of all mankind.”  [14•1 

p The Soviet Union has been making a positive contribution to the solution of world problems taking into account the experience of world development and the consequences of scientific and technical progress and economic development which have brought the leading capitalist countries to the brink of social and ecological disaster. The organic fusing of the achievements of the STR with the advantages of the socialist economic system is a task of historical importance, while offering the only opportunity for developing the productive forces and production without apprehension and fear, steadily enhancing its efficiency and advancing not to some “limits” or “destruction” but to a social system "with one form of public ownership of the means of production and full social equality of all members of society; under it, the allround development of people will be accompanied by the growth of the productive forces through continuous progress; in science and technology; all the springs of cooperative wealth will flow more abundantly, and the great principle ’From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’ will be implemented...”  [14•2 

p Socialism, which has been built and is developing in the USSR, has also taken a great stride forward from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom. The developed socialist society gives men and women an opportunity to control their own social relations, consciously to use economic and social laws, and so to ensure the socio-economic and technicqeconomic development of the economy and society as a whole towards communism. The improvement and development of the productive forces and the relations of production 15 become an objective of the Party’s economic policy, an objective of conscious planning.

p In 1876-1878, Engels wrote prophetically in his AntiDiihring that with the transition to socialism "the whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the domination and control of man, who for the first time becomes the real, conscious lord of nature, because he has now become master of his own social organisation. The laws of his own social action, hitherto standing face to face with man as laws of nature foreign to, and dominating him, will then be used .with full understanding, and so mastered by him. Man’s own social organisation, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. The extraneous objective forces•that have hitherto governed history pass under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself, with full consciousness, make his own history—only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him.”  [15•1 

p In 1923, 45 years later, in an article entitled "How We Should Reorganise the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection"’ which is a part of his political heritage, Lenin wrote: "We now have an opportunity which rarely occurs in history of ascertaining the period necessary for bringing about radical social changes; we now see clearly what can be done in fiveyears, and what requires much more time.”  [15•2 

p The STR markedly multiplies society’s potentialities not only in prognosticating and planning its future, but also in translating these plans into material form.

p In saying this, we must be aware of the fact that the futurein which vast constructive and destructive potentialities are bound to emerge begins today. Its basic and most largescale tasks have a long cycle of fulfilment, and we are creating their beginning. The fulfilment of these tasks involves long-term and purposeful activity which includes the allocation of large-scale target-oriented resources and complex programme management.

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p Society’s potentialities for fulfilling these tasks have increased immensely.

p Socialism and communism alone produce the conditions required for the purposeful solution of the most intricate social and economic problems. The building of a developed socialist society in the USSR has created new requirements, and has simultaneously produced much greater potentialities ior meeting these. Leonid Brezhnev says: "Now the situation is changing. Not only do we wish to—for we have always wished it—but we can and must deal simultaneously with -a broader set of problems.

p “While securing resources for continued economic growth, while technically re-equipping production, and investing enormously in science and education, we must at the same time concentrate more and more energy and means on tasks relating to the improvement of the Soviet people’s wellbeing. While breaking through in one sector or another, be it ever so important, we can no longer afford any drawn-out lag in any of the others.”  [16•1 

p This book contains a detailed examination of the main lines of state scientific and technical policy and the key problems in improving the sectoral structure of material production, with special emphasis on the development and improvement of the structure of engineering, which is the material basis of scientific and technical progress and the technical re-equipment of the whole economy and the non- production sphere. I also analyse some of the problems, which I believe to be the most important ones, in improving the organisation of social production.

It goes without saying that I have necessarily dealt with only some of the broad spectrum of economic problems arising under the current scientific and technical revolution.