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p A number of phases in the development of large-scale machine production have run within the framework of capitalism. Socialism finds machine production at the historical stage which has taken shape by the time of the socialist revolution in each country. It is then developed as the material and technical basis of socialism and then of communism are built up. In the USSR, the buildup of the material and technical basis of communism started from the level large-scale machine production had reached between the 1960s and 1970s.

p The period of building up the material and technical basis of communism in the USSR coincides in time with the STR, and this will naturally entail the shaping of a new phase in the development of large-scale machine production.

p The development of large-scale machine production runs in two directions: vertically, as it and each of its functional elements—machinery, production methods, objects of labour and organisation of production—are improved ,and raised to ever higher stages of their development; and horizontally, as large-scale machine production is introduced into an ever broader range of sectors of material (and subsequently also of non-material) production, the sphere of the services, 60 arid the dissemination of knowledge and spiritual values.

p This means that every phase in the development of largescale machine production is in accordance with definite trends in the changing structure of the whole of material production, and the structure of the individual industries, in the light of the potentialities of scientific and technical progress, and the conditions and specifics of the given country.

p It is also evident that at every phase of its development, the state of large-scale machine production and of the relations of production dominant in society determine the status of the worker, his functions as a participant in production, and accordingly the practical experience, skills and educational level which he must have.

p Because each given phase in the development of machine production in a concrete country has to |run within the framework of a definite social formation, its socio-economic characteristics depend on the relations of production, above all property relations, which are dominant in the society and which determine the main purposes of production, the relations among men in the process of production, the lines and nature of the use of the results of the surpluslabour of those who work and their status in production and society.

p Here I intend to analyse the logic underlying the development of machine production itself and its component material elements, and also the logic behind the changes in its sectoral structure, which is required to determine the main lines of further change in the basic elements of production in connection with the advance of the STR. I intend to examine the social consequences of these changes in subsequent chapters.

p If one were to try to comprehend the past development of large-scale machine production and its foreseeable prospects, one could (approximately, of course) map out the following phases in the development of large-scale machine production.  [60•1 

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p The first two phases relate to the past, the third partially to the contemporary large-scale machine production, and the fourth is now taking shape, and in its developed form, like those which will come after it, will evidently be fully developed only under communism.

p It goes without saying that the successive phases in the development of machine production are not separated by any “partitions”, for the elements of every future phase mature within the entrails of the preceding one. That is why the content and the time coordinates of each are fairly approximate and contain, especially when it comes to the juncture of two successive phases, some features which are typical of the preceding and of the subsequent phase.

p Let us consider the main features characterising these phases.

p Phase One. The instrument of labour provided the starting point for the industrial revolution of the 18th century, the transition from the handicraft tool to the three- element system of machines (consisting, as Marx said, of the motor mechanism, the transmitting mechanism and the tool or working machine). In these conditions, the number of tools that a machine can bring into play "is from the very first emancipated from the organic limits that hedge in the tools of a handicraftsman".  [61•1  Marx adds: "The machine, which is the starting-point of the industrial revolution, supersedes the workman, who handles a single tool, by a mechanism operating with a number of similar tools, and set in motion by a single motive power, whatever the form of that power may be.”  [61•2 

p Changes in the working machine made for changes in the other elements of the machine system. The increase in the size of various tools and instruments simultaneously set in motion by the machine ran into contradiction with the motor mechanism and required a sharp increase in its power rating and, accordingly, a new and more powerful source of motive power. The first such motor mechanism was the steam engine invented by James Watt.

p This helped to shape the complex of large-scale machine production based mainly on the motive power of steam. It is that phase of large-scale machine production that was 62 characieristic of the beginning of the second half of the 19th century (i.e., the period in which Marx wrote Volume I of his Capital) and which existed, in its essential features, up to the 1880s and 1890s.

p Such machine production used mainly natural objects of labour—natural raw and other materials, coming] from the mining industry and agriculture.

p The development of machine production, as it was noted even in that time, shapes the sectoral structure and raises the level of specialisation of production and, consequently, influences the social division of labour. "In proportion as machinery, with the aid of a relatively small number of workpeople, increases the mass of raw materials, intermediate products, instruments of labour, etc., the working-up of these raw materials and intermediate products becomes split up into numberless branches; social production increases in diversity. The factory system carries the social division of labour immeasurably further than does manufacture, for it increases the productiveness of the industries it seizes upon, in a far higher degree__ Entirely new branches of production, creating new fields of labour, are also formed, as the direct result either of machinery or of the general industrial changes brought about by it.”  [62•1 

p The development of the productive forces connected with the progress of machine production tends to complexify the structure of the whole economy, giving rise to many new industries and lines of production, developing transport, communications, and so on.

p When characterising the sectoral structure, one should note that in the first phase the products of the extractive industries within industry as a whole tended to grow at a faster rate. Their share in the whole of industry was relatively large, especially in the number of persons employed, because the fundamental technical reconstruction of the extractive industries, i.e., the introduction of machine production into these, took place in much later phases in the development of large-scale machine production.

p Among the manufacturing industries, metallurgy, including foundry production and the making of metal articles, stood out in the metal industry, and in engineering, the making of locomotives and railway cars for the rapidly 63 developing railways. The machine manufacture of mechanisms (technological equipment) began to develop, but it was still relatively unimportant. The share of the chemical industry was extremely insignificant.

p The food and the light industry had a leading place in terms of the number of persons employed and the value of the product. Wood-sawing was prevalent in the group of industries connected with wood-working, while the pulp and paper industry was just beginning to develop.

p At that phase, technology, as a rule, directly corresponded to the product of labour produced in the given industry. Differentiation and specialisation of technological processes were still relatively low. Accordingly, industry turned out a relatively limited range of articles. This simplicity of technical and technological solutions also made for a certain simplicity in the choice of forms of organisation and management of production.

p Although even in that period, the output of some manufactured articles like ferrous metals, fabrics and garments, and some foodstuffs was fairly large, there was no broad use of the methods for organising mass production on the principle of interchangeability of parts and units. Accordingly, the practice of technical measurement, like the manufacture of measuring tools and instruments was still in an embryonic stage.

p The mechanisation of labour processes boiled down mainly to the use of mechanical motors to set in motion the main working machines, and with the design and development of the latter, to a gradual mechanisation of some shaping processes.

p In these conditions, the differentiation of workers by trades and skills was almost entirely determined by the differences between the industries in which they worked. Differentiation of workers by trades within industries was limited only by the very basic character of production (weaving, spinning, finishing in the textile industry; blast, steel and rolling production in metallurgy; forging, foundry and mechanical working stages in engineering, etc.).

p The functional specialisation of working machines which was just beginning in this phase naturally tended to limit the range of trades among workers servicing these machines; the functions of auxiliary workers, apart from unskilled auxiliary workers (feeders, as Marx called them, 64 for they merely feed the material of labour into the machine) were still to separate, and their number and share was relatively insignificant.

p At the same time, even in that phase the rise in labour productivity in the sphere of material production had an influence on the general structure of employment, which "allows of the unproductive employment of a larger and larger part of the working-class, and the consequent reproduction, on a constantly extending scale, of the ancient domestic slaves under the name of a servant class, including men-servants, women-servants, lackeys, etc.”  [64•1 

p In that period, the natural sciences were still little connected directly with technology, let alone industrial production. But even then, Marx noted the trend in machine production sharply to increase the application of science. "The principle, carried out in the factory system, of analysing the process of production into its constituent phases, and of solving the problems thus proposed by the application of mechanics, of chemistry, and of the whole range of the natural sciences, becomes the determining principle everywhere.”  [64•2  But science, according to John D. Bernal of Britain, was then still in a small laboratory of the professor or the backroom of the inventor. It is true that that period saw the laying of the scientific foundations for the comprehension of the structure of substance, with the creation of Mendeleyev’s periodic system of elements, and Butlerov’s formulation of the molecular theory of the structure of organic substances, which laid the foundations for organic synthesis in the future. In physics, the initially isolated forces—light, electricity, magnetism and heat— were joined together in a coherent electromagnetic theory. In mathematics, work was in progress to develop the basic mathematical formalism, whose, most profound and fundamental sections in that period were virtually in no way connected either with technology or material production.

p Although in that period, the technology of machine production was already largely based on the corresponding level in the development of the technical sciences, at that stage in the development of material production the results of basic research in the natural sciences—physics, 65 chemistry and biology—were most conducive to an explanation of the world and not to a change of it, and had little influence on machine production. The marked isolation of mathematics from the natural sciences made it impossible to obtain a quantitative characterisation of the qualitative explanations of natural phenomena which science produced. But as the subsequent record of scientific development has shown, natural phenomena can be governed, substances and reactions artificially reproduced, and new substances created only on the basis of quantitatively measured uniformities.

p The secondphase in the development of machine production ran from the late 19thcentury untilthe start of the Second World War. Like the first, it was marked by important changes, above all in the instruments of labour. But here there were also substantial peculiarities springing from the changes in the sectoral structure of production.

p In the second phase, especially in the early decades of the 20th century, a group of industries characterised by continuous processes (electric energy, metallurgy, chemistry., oil refining, pulp-ana-paper, cement, etc.) took shape within industry and subsequently grew at the fastest pace.

p The instruments of labour in these industries differed markedly from the three-element machine complex described above. I shall deal with them in greater detail when analysing the third phase.

p Important and radical changes took place in the second phase also within the system of machines in manufacturing industry with continuous processes, as characterised by Marx.

p As each of the elements of the three-element machine system developed, the role and conditions of their interaction changed, giving rise to dynamic contradictions, which provided the motive force for the further advance of all elements of machine production.

p Improvement of technology and the progressing specialisation of operations steadily engendered more and more new types of working machines and working instruments. The development and complexification of transmitting devices, the rapid growth of the manufacture of transport facilities, and the extensive use of rack wheels called for the massive output of various types of gears. The result was the appearance, alongside lathes, drilling machines and planers, of families of milling, gear-cutting and gear-grinding machines. 66 The growing demand for frame parts, like casings and housings, in which various types of motors and transmitting devices were installed, and the development of ever more powerful energy units led to the growing output of boring and broaching machines and vertical lathes. The increasing demand for precision working led to the development of more and more new types of grinding machines. A whole range of working machines was developed to work metal by means of pressure and plastic deformation, like diverse presses, hammers, etc. Special foundry, welding, thermal and other machines appeared on the scene.

p The result was an intensive process of functional specialisation of working machines, each of which ever more productively performed a limited range of operations necessary for making various parts and articles. Similar processes occurred in other industries.

p The radical changes and complexification of the products of labour turned out on the basis of large-scale machine production and, in particular, the transition to large-scale machine production in the making of machines themselves sharply increased the number of parts constituting the manufactured products.

p The growing scale and complexification of production dictated the need for a radical restructuring of its organisation, a transition to mass production of various kinds of mechanisms and other compound articles. While intensifying the division and specialisation of labour processes, such trends sharply increased the scale and share of assembly operations. Manual performance of all the operations involved in assembly turned out to be incompatible with the scale of mass production, and this made for the emergence of an exceptionally broad range of working tools performing diverse assembly and attendant operations, which at first were entirely manual. But as the labour- intensiveness of assembly work increased, there was an ever greater need to mechanise these operations and, accordingly, to develop mechanised handtools. Such tools, most of which are very small in size, required the most diverse transformation of motive power, which was frequently very small itself.

p Thus, together with the trend towards a considerable increase in the size of working machines and tools there was a growing tendency to make many tools and working 67 machines more Compact. The growing demands of precision and interchangeability of machine parts stimulated the emergence of a broad range of precision tools and, together with them, of a numerous family of control and measuring tools and instruments ensuring the necessary precision and interchangeability of parts and units.

p These changes in working machines and, in particular, in working instruments naturally ran into contradiction with the old sources of motive power—the steam engine—and the cumbersome transmitting mechanisms. There arose an insistent need for power that, while coming in much greater volume, could at the same time be used in larger or in any desirable small quantities, however the equipment was located in space. There arose the need for radical changes in the transmitting devices as well.

p The intricate and extremely cumbersome system of drives from the central or group steam engine to the working machine made for some rigidity in the existing arrangement of equipment. This produced an acute need in a drive from the engine to the working machine and working tool that would be multi-purposeful, flexible and wieldy.

p The further development of large-scale machine production called for an individual drive that could be developed only through a transition to a new motive power, through a substitution of electricity for steam.

p Electricity did provide the new motive power which accorded to the growing and ever more complex large-scale machine production.

p The emergence and rapid development of the centralised generation of electric power, together with the development of the techniques for transmitting electric current over ever longer distances, brought out the motor mechanism from the three-element machine system of which Marx wrote. The generation of electric power became an independent industry. Current-carrying communications, individual electric drives, and built-in working electric motors, replaced the old motor mechanism and made working machines (and wherever necessary, even each working tool), their power, size and speed, their location and arrangement in space, and the regime of their operation independent of the power, the location, and operation of the central or group motor.

p The spread of the individual electric drive, for its part, 68 worked a radical change in the nature and functions of the transmitting mechanism., and it was altogether eliminated as a part of the machine complex separate from the working machine.

p Of course, the system of transmitting energy from the central motor (i.e., from the electric power station or substation) to the electric motor of the given machine-tool remained, but these functions were now performed by ordinary current-carrying communications. At the same time, the need also remained for the drive from the motor, built into the operating part of the machine-tool (be it the spindle on which the working part rotated, or the tool holder and the rest in which the working tool was fixed). But the functions of this transmitting device now no longer (and not so much) consisted in transmitting the energy itself (for with electric drive such transmission is altogether elementary), as in regulating the’type and direction of movement, the speed, etc., of the operating part of the machine.

p Accordingly, the new transmitting device, which had earlier been no more than a connecting link transmitting power from the motor to the working mechanism also became a connecting link between the operator and the operating part of that machine (and this gradually became its main and overriding function).

p With the growing range of tools in technological equipment and the sharp increase not only in the number of simultaneously operating tools, but also in their size and other parameters, this new transmitting device reduced man’s dependence on his limited physical capabilities in governing very large or very small, or simultaneously very many tools or other executive mechanisms. In this transmitting device there appeared and began to develop the embryo of the future controlling device of the epoch of automation.

p Thus, three component elements of the machine complex located side by side—the motor mechanism, the cumbersome transmitting mechanism and the working machine—were fused into a single mechanism in which the motor and the transmitting device were organically built into the working machine.

p The energy autonomy of working machines arising from the use of the built-in electric drive also helped effectively to develop the all-round specialisation of working machines and working tools.

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p This phase is also characterised by important changes in the technological processes used in the key industries. The development of diverse new functionally specialised types of labour instruments did away with the old simplicity of techniques. The improvement of working machines led to a marked intensification of technological processes and the introduction of more progressive and economical methods of shaping. This was facilitated by the development of mass production of interchangeable parts and units which required technological backup for the precision of blanks, parts and articles. Advances in the industrial use of electric power and chemical processes led to the emergence and development of electrical and chemical technological processes, which, in particular, provide for the necessary precision of parts and units, all kinds of hardened coatings, etc.

p The built-in electric drive and the potentialities which go hand in hand with it (and which it simultaneously provides) for further developing and specialising working machines paved the way for the emergence and progressive spread of a higher form of organisation of machine production: the assembly line in industrial production.

p This process went forward as follows. Earlier on, the central or group motor and mechanical transmitting devices made it inevitable that the working machines grouped round it would be largely homogeneous. Each motor had a more or less limited range of transmitted movements, speeds, etc. This predetermined the technological arrangement of production sections where mainly homogeneous working machines were grouped (turning shops, drilling shops, thermal shops, etc.).

p Meanwhile, changes were taking place in the structure of the products (especially those turned out by engineering enterprises), in the techniques of their manufacture and in the development of the working machines themselves, and these led to a situation in which the efficiency of production was constrained by the technological pattern of shops at the enterprises. Structures of the articles were increasingly compound, and the process of manufacturing each unit and part increasingly consisted of more and more operations. At the same time, two trends, which also stimulated changes in the structure and organisation of production, emerged in the development of working machines in the process of their progressive specialisation.

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p On the one hand, there was the above-mentioned functional specialisation. Alongside this trend, with the development of mass production, there emerged another trend in the specialisation of working machines: item specialisation. This developed in industries like automobile and tractor making. Specialised machine-tools were developed for the multi-positional working of cylinder blocks and cylinder heads for automobile and tractor engines, multi-positional machine-tools for working the numerous crank-cases which are component parts of the automobile, and so on.

p These trends in the development of product structure, changes in the technology and the specialisation of working machines ran into contradiction with the prevailing technological pattern of production shops and, accordingly, with the technological arrangement of equipment (according to the principle of functional homogeneity). After each operation, numerous parts had to be transported to the next functional shop, and this markedly increased the labour-intensiveness of the transfer processes, complicated accounting and control of production.

p In this period, the individual electric drive eliminated the imperative need to group homogeneous machine-tools together.

p This produced the need and offered the opportunity to develop the structure of sections and to place equipment according to items, and on that basis to use the assemblyline organisation of production, which is being ever more extensively used in modern industry and which continues to be organisationally important even under automation.

p In the second phase of machine production, corresponding changes also occurred in the sectoral structure of industrial production.

p The generation and industrial use of electric power rapidly developed, the production of ferrous metals and engineering, whose intrasectoral structure was increasingly diversified, developed at faster rates, and the electro-technical industry was ramified. With the growth of motor (and especially automobile) transport, oil refining gained in depth and grew rapidly. The chemical industry, whose inner structure was likewise complexified, developed markedly.

p The intensive growth of the manufacturing industries, together with their rapid sectoral differentiation, led to 71 a situation in which the rate of growth in the extractive industry in that period began markedly to lag behind that of manufacturing.

p In that phase, the mechanisation of production ranged mainly over the basic technological processes in the working and shaping of metals, gradually doing away with the use of the worker’s motive force in the fulfilment of the basic technological processes. Electricity and the built-in drive paved the way for the incipient mechanisation of ancillary processes in production.

p In that phase, together with the functional specialisation of working machines there was extensive specialisation of workers by trade within the framework of each industry, with a separation of the functions and trades of workers servicing the equipment. With the introduction of multioperation techniques, transfer processes tended to increase and become more complex, and that produced the need for special ancillary, notably transport, workers.

p A most important social result of these trends was the growing concentration of production and, with it, the concentration of manpower at large enterprises. This raised the level of working-class organisation; trade unions organised on the trades principle increasingly gave way to trade unions organised on the production (sectoral) principle, thereby strengthening the proletariat’s positions in the class struggle against the capitalists.

p Consequently, the second phase, with a further considerable rise in the productivity of labour, is characterised by a switch everywhere from steam to electricity, a growth of mechanisation in production and radical changes in the machine complex, which Marx analysed, the development of machine assemblies used in industries with continuous technological processes, and marked changes in the sectoral structure and trades makeup of the workers.

p Another important social result was that in that phase there was a growth of the most capital-intensive industries— metallurgy, chemistry, electric power. Because of technical progress, the most efficient enterprises were the big ones, while the ever more extensive use of chemical processing of primary materials intensified the combination of production. This created the material prerequisites and the technical necessity for concentrating production and, accordingly, for concentrating and centralising capital.

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p The growing productivity of labour brought about by the progress of large-scale machine production created in the industrially most advanced countries the material prerequisites for the export of capital, so that it is quite natural that at that phase in the development of large-scale machine production pre-monopoly capitalism developed into monopoly imperialism, which Lenin so thoroughly analysed.

p Phase Three. In the early decades of the 20th century, new trends were in evidence in the development of all the elements of large-scale machine production, and these were sharply intensified by the Second World War, which made tremendous demands on material production, science and technology. As a result of the operation of these trends there gradually took shape the contemporary machine production which was characteristic of the 1950s and 1960s, and even more so of the 1970s.

p How did the basic elements of large-scale machine production change in the third phase of its development?

p Fundamental changes occurred in the development of working machines. These were largely connected with the major shifts in the sectoral structure of industrial production. Alongside the rapid development of chemical production proper, there was an ever faster growth of industries based on various versions of chemical (usually continuous) technology: the metallurgy of ferrous and nonferrous metals, oil refining, the rubber, pulp-and-paper, and cement industries, some food industries.

p In these industries, the basic technological equipment consists of ever larger and more powerful closed container capacities, mostly with continuous operation, in which the chemical processes leading to the formation of the final product take place. The operation and efficiency of these assemblies are determined by a combination of numerous variables: the physico-chemical composition of the components loaded into them, the speeds and frequency of supply, temperatures, pressures, and so on.

p The specifics of these working machines which make them distinct from the machine complex characterised by Marx consists above all in the fact that they do not effect shaping processes, which is why they have no working tool to act on the form of the object of labour. In these machines, substances are transformed, resulting either in the 73 separation of various types of raw and other materials or the synthesis of new substances with the use of various components of the raw materials (organic synthesis chemistry, biological chemistry, etc.). At the same time, in assemblies of this type the functions of the transmitting device are markedly complexified, for instead of transmitting energy to the executive mechanisms, it has to regulate the action of numerous variable factors which determine the work of the assembly.

p The complexity of this set of variable factors gradually tends to exceed man’s capacity as the governing agent and sharply raises the problem of optimising technological regimes and processes, and determining and achieving such optimisation by means of machines and eventually, by means of computers.

p Substantial changes also take place in the traditional instruments of labour used in manufacturing industries with discrete technology and quantified products (above all in metal-working).

p The intensive spread of mass assembly production, together with the further development of the individual (single and multi-motor) electric drive, have simultaneously enhanced both the functional improvement and the item specialisation of working machines.

p At first, ever greater use is made of multi-positional machine-tools specialised in the working of a short range of parts and articles, and sometimes even of one concrete part or article. These machine-tools have an ever greater place in the rapidly growing assembly-lines of mass production and are an important condition for their high economic efficiency. These trends are vividly illustrated by the automobile industry with its multi-positional and strictly specialised machine-tools.

p However, with the development of large-scale machine production and its assembly form of organisation, the use of these highly efficient machine-tools of item specialisation runs into contradiction with the fast pace of technical progress and converts it from an accelerating into a retarding factor.

p The functionally specialised working machine is more flexible and adaptable to the possible changes in the objects of production than the item-specialised technological equipment. Strictly speaking, the functionally specialised working 74 machine, almost universal in the fulfilment of its functions, is indifferent to the object of production, because it effects a definite function of working: turns, mills, grinds, etc. Consequently, functionally specialised machine-tools react more flexibly to the change of objects of production. Meanwhile, technical progress is increasingly materialised in the ever more frequent change of objects of production—the products of labour—with the change of their structure and type and the appearance of totally new articles. Highly specialised item machine-tools designed to work an extremely narrow range of parts or articles take much effort to switch to the working of new items. At the same time, because of their complexity, they are expensive, and this prevents them from being removed with the change of the objects of production.

p On the other hand, the item-assembly organisation of production, within the framework of which corresponding multi-positional machine-tools are most extensively used, is undoubtedly the highest and most progressive form of organisation, whose economic advantages are unquestionable. There is every reason to assert that item-assembly organisation, combined with automation of production, is the most rational form of organisation of modern industry. Consequently, a return from the assembly-line to the old functional shop structure, which reacts much more easily to the frequent change of objects of production would be to slow down technical progress, and that is impossible.

p This dialectical contradiction in modern technical progress is resolved through the synthesis of the functional and the item specialisation of working machines: the development of flexible technological equipment. This synthesis is effected through the utmost improvement of functional units constituting the technological equipment, and their flexible arrangement in item machine-tool assemblies or lines.

p The requirement of flexibility becomes an ever more important criterion of the progressiveness of the working machine and one of the chief criteria of the economic effectiveness of technical policy.

p The working machine organically blending into a single whole the three elements of the machine complex (motor mechanism, transmitting mechanism and the working machine proper—the executive mechanism) is once again 75 being taken apart. But these parts are not the old elements of the machine complex, but a functionally specialised and perfected “micro-complex”, a power pack which contains and blends together the motor, the transmitting device and the working mechanism.

p Machine-tool assemblies—an item combination of such power packs—are no longer simply a single machine complex, but a real system of machines in which each element contains all the three parts of the machine complex characterised in Capital. At present, this is the highest form of the primary cell of the machine mode of production. It exerts a considerable influence both on the nature of the technical division of labour, and on the type and skill of the worker. It is also fraught with the elements which are to be fully developed in the subsequent phases of machine production.

p Two other important trends need to be noted in the development of working machines in this period. (r The first of these, which does not change the qualitative nature of working machines, although it is of great importance, (as I shall show later) consists in the multiplication of the unit capacity and productivity of the basic types of power and technological equipment. This trend continues today as the next, fourth phase in the development of largescale machine production takes shape.

p Hydraulic and steam turbines, whose capacity early in this century was rated in tens of thousands or even thousands of kilowatts, now have a per-unit capacity of 300,000 or even 800,000 kw. In the USSR, turbines with a capacity of 1.2 million kw and over are already being designed and engineered.

p Blast furnaces, whose net volume even in the years before the Second World War came to 400-500-600 cubic metres, has recently reached 1,700-1,800 cub. m. The USSR has giant blast furnaces of 2,700-3,000 cub. m. and even one of 5,000 cub. m.

p The basic technological equipment in mining have grown huge in size. Some excavators have 100 cub. m. buckets and booms 50-65 and more metres long. The load-carrying capacity of trucks used in this industry has also gone up to 40-75 and more tons. The speeds and unit productivity of metal-cutting equipment have also been multiplied.

p With the growth of the unit capacity of technological assemblies there has naturally also been an increase in the 76 scale of enterprises and a growth in the concentrati on of production.

p The second, exceptionally important trend in the change in working machines, which emerged and was developed to some extent in the third phase of large-scale machine production, is connected with the development and installation of automatic machines. This signifies the transition to a new and higher stage in the development of machines, the character of labour and the]organisation of production, i.e., the transition to automation. The automation is one of the key elements in the current STR and will be considered in greater detail below.

p Such are the key changes in the instruments of labour in the third phase of the development of large-scale machine production.

p Advances in the natural sciences (chemistry, physics and biology), which study the nature and inner structure of substance, their use of mathematical formalism, which helps to produce quantitative definitions of the structure, uniformities of development and interaction of substances, and finally, progress in the technology used in research led to important qualitative changes in the objects of labour. The industrial production of man-made, synthetic materials emerged and developed fairly rapidly. By 1950, world output of synthetic resins and plastics reached 1.6 million tons, and of chemical fibres 1.7 million tons. Problems in the development of organic synthesis chemistry and the development of polymer materials are also component parts of the STR, and they will be specially considered below.

p The use of the traditional objects of labour—various types of natural raw and other materials—was raised to a markedly higher level. New physico-chemical methods of working natural raw materials—coal, oil, wood, polymetallic ores, etc.—are developed and used ever more extensively, and this makes it possible to extract more and more valuable components from what used to be regarded as waste, and so to make more complex use of natural raw materials. New resources, not known or used earlier, are discovered in the old objects of labour.

p The third phase in the development of large-scale machine production is also marked by important qualitative shifts in technological processes. Alongside the further 77 intensification of the traditional technological processes electrotechnological and chemico-technological processes are developed and widely used.

p In metallurgy, there is an intensification of technological processes through the use of oxygen in the blastfurnace, open hearth furnace, and converter processes. The share of electric steel-smelting methods is sharply increased. In metal-working, there is a gradual replacement of conventional cutting with treatment by means of plastic deformation (pressing, three-dimensional forging, etc.). Some mechanical processes give way to chemical ones, and interrupted processes to continuous ones. Advances in the manufacture of production equipment brought about the increase in the capacity of assemblies while markedly extending the use of this progressive method. There is use of fundamentally new technological processes induced by the STR.

p Thus, in the third phase there is a complete replacement of the power of steam by electricity and a tremendous increase in the unit-capacity of every type of equipment, the fusion of all the elements of the machine complex described by Marx in the modern working machine, further development and broad application of machine assemblies, fundamental progress in the technological processes, the development of every type of specialisation of production and a further spread of the mass assembly-line organisation of production. In the middle of the phase (in the 1950s), some STR-induced elementsautomation of production and man-made and synthetic objects of labour—-were put to use.

p Marked changes take place in the organisation and management of production both at the level of the enterprise and of the industry, owing to the following factors:

p —units tend to consist of an ever greater number of parts, and technological processes of more and more operations, and this immensely complexifies the problems of combining the material and personal elements in space and time;

p —the output of an ever broader range of manufactured goods for production and everyday purposes in mass batches (cars, electrical equipment, household instruments and appliances, radio goods, television sets, etc.) intensify the trend towards a deepening of every form of specialisation and cooperation in production;

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p —specialisation and cooperation, its inevitable concomitant, markedly complexify intra-i’actory, inter- factory and inter-industry ties;

p —the vast pace of technical progress and the consequent ever more frequent change of the instruments and products of labour necessitate flexibility in the organisation of production.

p The intricate complex of organisational problems is connected with the tasks of planning and stimulating production, the organisational structuring of the organs of management at every level of the management pyramid, the correlation between administrative and economic methods of management, etc.

p The intensive mechanisation in this phase of the basic technological processes, the beginning of automation of some of them, and the emergence of computers, all of these create the prerequisites for substantially modifying the nature of work.

p There is a further differentiation of workers by trade, together with the emergence and growth of more broadly specialised workers operating multi-functional machinetools and item-specialised assemblies, and there appears a category of ancillary workers performing all the processes of movement and servicing the equipment.

p The development of production makes it imperative that workers should have an ever broader general education and polytechnical training. This gradually runs into ever greater contradiction with the social foundations of the capitalist system, a contradiction which is to play an ever more important role with the advance of the STR.

p In the third phase of the development of large-scale machine production, the sectoral structure of industry also undergoes important changes, is complexified and enlarged.

p The product of labour, designed (at the point of its production) for satisfying very definite requirements, is the result of material production and is, in consequence, usually regarded as a passive element which is obtained from the action of the instrument of labour on the object of labour (naturally, with the given technology and the given organisation of production). But in some phases in the development of large-scale machine production, the circumstances arising with the emergence of the given product of labour from the 79 entrails of industrial production tended markedly to change. Some products of labour, while having been produced for solving definite problems and satisfying the concrete requirements of material production itself, were simultaneously put to totally different uses in other fields, so creating totally new requirements and, accordingly, making heightened and diverse demands on material production, technology and science. This, for its part, led to considerable changes in large-scale machine production itself, and in the development of its key elements.

p One such highly important catalyst in the development of large-scale machine production was the internal combustion engine, which had been discovered back in the 19th century. It provided the basis for major technical changes in agriculture and the means of transport.

p The development of industry and its growing specialisation and cooperation, together with the need to transport vast masses of primary raw materials, objects and products of labour and working people from their homes to the enterprises and back again—all of these conditions ran into contradiction with the rigid, inflexible and limited means of rail transport, which, in particular, was little suited for urban transit and which required very large capital inputs.

p This contradiction was resolved by the automobile and then by air transport. In the 1930s and 1940s, the automobile industry epitomised the assembly-line production of that period and provided the ideal application for item- specialised working machines. At the same time, the motor, the aviation and then the aerospace industries acted as a unique catalyst in developing a whole range of what could be called secondary lines of production designed to service them (while being powerful and independent industries in their own right), like steel, aluminium, magnesium and titanium sheet industries, industry producing oil-refining products, rubber and tyres, plastics, etc.

p The same thing happened with electric power, which initially served mainly as a source of motive power, and then began intensively to spread into everyday life, so inducing a very rapid growth of the mass production of household electrical appliances.

p The defence needs provided an additional major impetus for the intensive development of new industries: tanks and 80 trucks, aircraft, radio Communications, radar and antiaircraft fire control, all of these made new and great demands on the automobile, aviation, electrotechnical and then also on the electronics industries.

p The new industries and their new products called for new R & D. The ever faster speed of transport vehicles stimulated research into dynamics and aerodynamics. The steady increase in the speed and height of aircraft flight came into contradiction with the internal combustion engine capacity, and this led to a rapid development of basic research into processes connected with high and super-high speeds, and the development of jet engines on that basis.

p The growth of the electrical and radiotechnical industry was connected with research into electricity, notably the field of low currents. Vacuum technology develops on a large scale following the invention of electronic tubes.

p Thus, in close interaction between science, technology and the electrical industry at the juncture of the third and the emergent fourth phase of machine production there arose a new science—electronics—and the corresponding electronics industry. Electronics has become one of the key components of the current STR, and has provided a material basis for cybernetics, a new and rapidly developing science which is of tremendous importance for the advance of the STR. Cybernetics will be dealt with in greater detail in subsequent chapters.

These trends led to the development at a high and much faster rate within modern industry of the electric-power and chemical industries, and especially of oil refining and organic synthesis chemistry, the production of ferrous and nonferrous (especially light and new) metals, power, automobile and aircraft engineering, the electrotechnical and radiotechnical industries, and especially electronics and all the branches of engineering providing equipment for these leading industries. As a result, large complexes of industries with a ramified intrasectoral structure and intricate intrasectoral proportions and ties have taken shape within modern industry: the fuel and energy industries, metallurgy, large complexes of chemical industry, engineering, etc.