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p The Marxist vision of contemporary progress is opposed by the views of bourgeois futurologists.  [274•1  Two kinds of attitudes to progress can be singled out in the motley assortment of futurological ideas. Some sociologists recognise progress, albeit with reservations, but distort its main criterion. In their view, the principal indicator of social development is technology and technological progress, which, they hold, provides solutions to all 275 social problems and class contradictions. US sociologist Brzezinski maintains that modern-day technology and especially electronics are increasingly becoming the principal determinants of social change, altering the mores, the social structure, the values, and the global outlook of society.  [275•1  In his view, the impact of science and technology on man, on society, is the chief source of social change. Describing the models of the future affluent society, advocates of this view call it “postindustrial”, “technetronic”, " superindustrial" civilisation, and so on. US sociologist Alvin Toffler, for example, holds that to save society it is necessary to pass from the sick capitalist society to a superindustrial civilisation.

A typical feature of all views on the future “affluent” society is the desire to prove theoretically that it is possible to modernise the existing capitalist system. It is specially stressed that it is possible to overcome, or at least modify, the contradiction between labour and capital. Likewise, Brzezinski sets out to prove that today the relations between entrepreneurs and workers are dominated by issues pertaining to obsolete professions, employment guarantees, leave systems, the organisation of leisure, profit-sharing, psychological well-being, and the like. Toffler sees the cause

276 of all the troubles of the masses in present-day capitalist societies as deriving from the crisis of the industrialised society. Hence, he says, it must be replaced by the so-called postindustrial civilisation.

p Another peculiarity of this viewpoint, i. e. conceiving technological progress as the force that can save capitalism,  [276•1  is the attempt to describe socialism as an industrialised society following a capitalist path. Meanwhile capitalist society, the USA in particular, is described as the vanguard of modern progress.

p Let us take a closer look at these views. First of all, they make for a one-sided treatment of the role of technology while ignoring the significance of socio-economic relations. Secondly, they art rank apologies of capitalism, while they ignore its essential antithesis to the socialist system.

p Historical materialism, as we know, attaches tremendous importance to the development ol science and technology. It also proves that the scientific and technological factor is realised exclusively through the system of socio-economic relations. Hence the difference between societies. Judging by the technological level alone it is hardly possible to determine the differences in the character of socio-economic systems. It is hardly 277 possible, if at all, to establish the difference between society in Congo and in Zaire from the purely technological aspect of production. Their levels of technological development are more or less the same. The essential difference between the two societies lies in the socio-economic relations obtaining in these countries, Congo being socialist-oriented while Zaire is capitalist-oriented.

p Advocates of "technological idylls" would have us believe that the socio-class and other antagonisms are no longer found or are fading away in the developed capitalist countries, first of all in the USA. This, of course, is not true. The class struggle is raging, racial problems are as acute as ever, and the overall crisis of the capitalist social system is deepening.

p There are no valid reasons for likening the character of capitalist society to the character of socialist society. Both world systems possess modern technology. But this is no indication of kinship.The technological basis alone does not determine the class or national relations, nor policies and ideology, nor moral values or art. The economi. basis, e. g. the system of production relations existing in the society concerned, is the material foundation for social relations, policies, and intellectual values. It determines the social function of technology: in whose interests the obtaining technological basis is used, and in what way it influences the labour and living conditions 278 of the workers. Radio and television are used in the interests of imperialist monopolies not because their technological level allows it, but because the monopolies own them.

p The number of those who advocate the technological idea of social progress tends to decline. The false optimism is the less appealing, the more apparent the deeply negative consequences of the scientific and technological revolution become under capitalist conditions.

p Disappointment in the results of scientific and technological progress and the frustrated hope of an affluent society (postindustrial, technetronic, superindustrial, etc.) appearing in the world has resulted in the revival of socio-historical pessimism, as represented by neo-conservatism. This is a new version of conservatism, the rejection of social progress and advocacy of the preservation of the traditional and obsolete. The switch-over from technological optimism to neo-conservatism occurred in a number of European countries and in the USA in the 1970s. The reactionary essence of this ideological trend is revealed in its total denial of the positive role of social science and of scientific and technological progress in presentday society. According to the neo-conservatives social science is a variety of Utopia, i. e. a fantasy of impracticable phenomena and ways of social development. Scientific and technological progress, in the neo-conservative view, is a manifes- 279 tation of arbitrariness (a meaningless process of change in knowledge and technology). Social science is said to show the way to merely the appearanc. of improvements at the price of deep and irreversibly destructive consequences for society. Civilisation is losing its effectiveness. How should this be averted? By doing away with social science and Utopia, say the neo-conservatives, as the most ruinous results of progress. The actual reactionary illusion of our da}-, they say, the idea of progress, should be rejected, and the voice of reason should be overcome. Intellectualism ( reason) and rationality (reliance on science) have resulted in the overall exploitation of nature and begot the ecological crisis. Likewise, it is the cause of sweeping urbanisation and of its negative consequences.

p Playing up the threat of an ecological crisis is one of the favourite devices of advocates of sociohistorical pessimism, including neo-conservatives. The ultimate conclusion of neo-conservatism is that modern progress threatens the very survival of Western civilisation, and thus of civilisation in general.

p Neo-conservatives aim their criticism of science, rationalism, and progress against Marxism and communism, which they see as the epitome of the idea of progress. That is why their only necessary policy is anti-Marxism and anti-communism.

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However hard they may try to find fault with, and impede, social progress, its adversaries cannot halt the forward movement of history. Reactionaries are threatening mankind with nuclear catastrophe. Honest people all over the world are sure that reason will overcome the adventurism of the madmen. The principle of reason is consonant with the objective laws of history. It is manifested in the advance of socialism and in the peoples’ striving for freedom and peace.