p The current STR forms new stages in the development of large-scale machine production. In order to comprehend the content and the basic trends in its formation and further development, there is a need to examine the main stages and logic of development of large-scale machine production, beginning with the stage of its origination, which Marx described in Chapter XV of Volume One of his Capital, up to the modern and foreseeable stages reflecting the maturity and development of the STR.

p In Chapter XV, especially in its first paragraph entitled "The Development of Machinery", Marx gives a profound analysis of the basic trends in the development of the productive forces. Summing up a vast array of facts, he analyses the contemporary and visible prospects and stages in the development of large-scale machine production, and brings out the contradictions which stimulate this development. At the same time, Marx shows how the development of machines influences the social division of labour and the complexification and expansion of the sectoral structure of industry, how it influences the nature of the process of labour itself, how it alters the functions of the worker in the process of labour and how it influences the condition of the working class and the whole process of reproduction. "Modern industry," Marx wrote, "never looks upon and treats the existing form of a process as final. The technical basis of that industry is therefore revolutionary, while all earlier modes of production were essentially conservative. By means of machinery, chemical processes and other 57 methods, it 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. At the same time, it thereby also revolutionises the division of labour within the society, and incessantly launches masses of capital and of workpeople from one branch of production to another".  [57•1  [My emphasis—S.H.}.

p If such is the influence (and it is such) that the advance of machine production exerts on the whole process of reproduction, can political economy afford to ignore the stages and logic in the development of the productive forces and the stages in the development of large-scale machine production? Of course, it cannot.

p This is all the more important because within the limits of each mode of production (notably, within the framework of capitalism and of the communist social formation) the development and stages of machine production have a substantial influence on the development of the relations of production, i.e., on the generally recognised subject-matter of political economy.

p It is quite obvious that the transition from premonopoly capitalism to monopoly imperialism is closely connected with the stage in the development of machine production which took shape in the early 20th century. It is apparently possible and necessary also to establish the functional ties between the contemporary stage in the development of machine production, which has taken shape since the Second World War, and the new phenomena which characterise capitalism and the development of the capitalist countries today.

p An analysis of the stages in the development of largescale machine production which have taken shape and will take shape in the foreseeable future is necessary from the practical standpoint, in elaborating the problems of the political economy of socialism. It is especially necessary today, in this period of the building of the material and technical basis of communism in the USSR. Under the planned socialist economy there is an insistent need to comprehend and to anticipate the basic trends in the development of production, its technical and technological aspects, and their impact on the structure of production, the nature 58 of labour and the specialisation of workpeople. Thus, the solution of such basic social problems of communist construction as the elimination of the still existing substantial distinctions between town and country, between mental and manual work, the elimination of social distinctions between men in the process of production, and the conversion of work into a prime necessity of life, is directly connected with the new advancing stages in the development of large-scale machine production.

p The building of the material and technical basis of communism is a conscious and balanced process effected by the socialist society through the purposeful use of the objective laws governing the development of the productive forces.

p The material and technical basis of communism is, in fact, already being built up. The technical policy and investments effected, say, in the second half of the 1970s will determine the technical level and sectoral structure of production in the 1980s and partially in the 1990s; those who are now being educated and trained will constitute the cadres who will have to work in industry and other sectors in the 1980s and the period beyond.

p A schoolboy who, say, in 1979 was attending the eighth grade of secondary school, will be only 36 years old in the year 2000, a second-year college student will be 39 years old, and a first-year post-graduate will be 44 years old. These are the basic cadres of the early 21st century. They will have to face the production, technology and science of the beginning of the third millennium of our era, and it is our duty to help them avoid the "future shock".  [58•1  They will be the subjects of further progress and advance in the development of science, technology and production, and it is our duty to help them cope with the vastly complicated and responsible tasks.

The curricula in secondary, secondary special and higher schools must evidently even now take these tasks into account and start from the foreseeable peculiarities of material production, and the conditions and nature of labour as these will take shape by the end of the 20th century. When it comes to training men with a broad general polytechnical grounding, it is necessary that in the teaching of sciences 59 like physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics, they should be acquainted with the basic technical and technological lines in highly developed production, and also with the basics of cybernetics. This should help them to solve the main problem, which is effective assimilation and further improvement in the technological basis of production. All of this requires thorough analysis of the basic trends in the development of production, of its technological aspects and structure. The basic assumption should be that the main elements of the material and technical basis of communism are already being shaped today, which is why any decisions on technical policy, the structure of production, specialisation of personnel, etc., should rest on wellgrounded prognostication with an eye to the main lines of the current STR.