p Scientific and technical progress "exercises a tremendous influence on all the processes that are going on in the world, on its contradictions"  [45•1  but does not abolish the laws of social development, its social meaning and content, it was emphasised in the Political Report of the CPSU Central Committee to the Party’s 27th Congress. Scientific and technical development over the past two decades has created fresh potentialities for the growth of the capitalist economy, while deepening its organic antagonisms and producing new contradictions within it.

p Let us recall how it all began. Capital, once dominating usury and trade, began to take over the sphere of material production in the 18th century. There was a ripening of conditions for an industrial revolution, which was manifested above all in the development of working machines, first of spinning and weaving looms and then of a universal steam-engine. Marx wrote in his Capital: "It was ... the invention of machines that made a revolution in the form of steam-engines necessary.”  [45•2  He added: "The implements of labour, in the form of machinery, necessitate the substitution of natural forces for human force, and the conscious application of science, instead of rule of thumb.”  [45•3  The industrial revolution caused sweeping changes in the capitalist society and culminated in the 19th century in the start of production of machines by means of machines, i.e., in the creation of industrial engineering.

p Working machines, the steam-engine, the steam locomotive and the steamship, all products of the 19th century, expanded man’s potentialities and the effectiveness of his influence on the forces and substances of nature to an incredible degree and immensely increased the productivity of human labour. Even at that stage in the development of the social productive forces, capital did not, 46 of course, operate as a selfless champion of progress, but only as a seeker after higher profits. At the very dawn of machine production, "these powers, which by right belong to mankind, became, owing to the influence of private property, the monopoly of a few rich capitalists and the means to the enslavement of the masses”.  [46•1  The industry created by big capital separated science from labour as an independent potential of production and made it serve capital.

p Capitalism’s very first steps in material production on the basis of the new hardware and technology led to the ruin of hundreds of thousands of handicraftsmen, to their mass proletarisation, to the growing factory exploitation of female and child labour, and to an offensive by capital against broad strata of the working people. The pressure of the iron heel of capital was somewhat eased only as a result of the workers’ persevering struggle for their rights, first, in the form of economic struggle within trade unions, and then political struggle under the banner of proletarian parties.

p The maturing of industrial capitalism was one of the major prerequisites for the emergence of a truly scientific theory of social development, with its components of materialist philosophy, political economy and scientific communism. It was developed by Marx and Engels and showed the working people not only the laws of the capitalist system but also the ways of its revolutionary transformation into a classless society. The Communist Manifesto became the scientific programme of politically conscious working people, and the First International, the first form in which the international, truly revolutionary working-class movement was organised.

p The natural sciences developed ever more rapidly in the 19th century, but were not yet closely connected with each other or with production. Science largely remained the business of individual scholars, their discoveries usually took a long and tortuous way to reach hardware, technology and practice. Still, it was the scientific discoveries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that prepared the new phase in the cognition and transformation of the world, signifying a radical change and improvement in the material facilities available to production and everyday life. The basis for a fresh scientific and technical upswing in capitalist production was made up of the outstanding discoveries in chemistry and physics, mathematics and biology, the first technical inventions in the generation and use of electric power, liquid fuel, radio waves and X-rays. Internal combustion engines and automobiles, electric motors and diverse electric appliances, man-made and synthetic objects of labour went into mass production, while radio broadcasting and film-screening became generally accessible.

p The development of new hardware and technology for mass production simultaneously became one of the foundations for the concentration and centralisation of production and for the emergence of monopolies, the dominant socio-economic subject of the capitalist society in the 20th century.

p While the progress of science, technology, production and the mass media improved the material and technical facilities available to the society, so changing working and living conditions apparently for the better, it produced more privation and misfortune for the working people because of the capitalist form of social relations. "By increasing the productivity of labour," Lenin wrote, " technical progress enables the capitalists to intensify their exploitation of the workers..." And this, in turn, "leads to a growth of unemployment, poverty, exploitation, oppression and degradation".  [47•1 

p At the new stage of scientific and technical progress, imperialism was armed with unprecedented^ powerful means for annihilating human beings and carrying on its fight for a partition and repartition of the world: "It is the first time in history that the most powerful achievements of technology have been applied on such a scale, so destructively and with such energy, for the annihilation of millions of human lives.”  [47•2  Under capitalism, the death-dealing function of science and technology has kept growing throughout the whole of the 20th century, being manifested during the First World War, and especially during the Second World War, in the subsequent arms race imposed on the peoples by imperialism, and in the ever greater orientation of scientific and technical development towards the improvement of means of destruction and annihilation. Imperialism seeks to turn into instruments of armed violence such outstanding scientific and technical discoveries of the 20th century as the release of the energy of the atomic nucleus, the discovery of laser and neutron radiation, the development of diverse unmanned and manned space vehicles, and many others.

p The STR era, with its intensive integration of science, technology and production, began after the Second World War. Regardless of where it has been most markedly developed up to now, the STR is objectively connected with the social revolution that has been the hallmark of the 20th century. It is proceeding as socialism strengthens and expands its positions in the historical contest and competition between the two world systems, with the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries making a generally recognised contribution. A distinctive feature of our time is the combination of deep-going shifts in social relations and the revolution in science and technology: a new and higher stage in the development of the society and of man himself in their interaction with nature must correspond to the new and higher level of production technology.

p The first stage in the current STR was marked by an especially rapid development of chemistry and chemical technology, the science of the structure of the atom and nuclear hardware, theoretical and practical space travel, microelectronics and the computer. What has been enumerated is, of course, only a part of the 48 substantial content of the progress of science and technology in this period, but it seems to reflect the major and long-term advances.

p Indeed, the progress of theoretical and practical chemistry led to the development of hundreds of thousands of new intermediate and end-products and materials with pre-set properties, and to the use of new chemical technologies in the treatment of raw materials and semi-finished products. The use of the energy of the atomic nucleus laid the foundations of the nuclear-power industry and techniques for dividing and combining elementary particles of matter. Powerful electronic computers, which were rapidly perfected, brought about fantastic advances in computation and measurements, the storage of available and the creation of new numerical information, and the control of production and other social activity at various levels. Finally, the leap from theoretical cosmonautics to the actual exploration of outer space not only enlarged the horizons in the study of the solar system and the universe as a whole, but also helped better to understand and use our planet and the surrounding space for practical purposes.

p This period was also marked by the massive spread of the producer and consumer hardware which embodied the discoveries and inventions of the past and present. Within two or three decades, car and plane, radio and television, refrigerator and washing- machine became man’s habitual material accessories and aids. Liquid fuel and electric power became the main sources of energy for countries most rapidly industrialising their production, distribution and consumption.

p The ever deeper cognition of the world and penetration into the mysteries of its micro- and macro-structure and dynamics became ever more complicated and complex, an integration of analysis and synthesis. New methods and fields of knowledge and new lines and branches of science originated at the interface between the traditional sciences. Theoretical and experimental research was provided with powerful industrial facilities and equipped with the most sophisticated hardware, entering upon an epoch of industrialisation and overtaking or even outstripping many spheres of production in terms of technical equipment along its main lines. The fabrication of scientific instruments and devices has become an independent and rapidly growing industry in many developed countries, and its product, an important commodity in international exchange.

p The changing character of the connection between science and practice has likewise turned out to be highly important for mankind’s development, so realising the vision of the great Russian scientist Dmitry Mendeleyev, who wanted a two-way bridge to be erected between science and practice.

p The monopolies and the bourgeois state in the developed capitalist countries tightened their grip on scientific and technical creative effort, and made research and development serve the interests of the ruling class. Research and production units for product, hardware and technology improvement appeared within the framework of monopolies. Many of the biggest ones, especially in the 49 military and technical fields, worked on billion-dollar contracts awarded by the capitalist state for fabricating new means of destruction and annihilation. Capital is increasingly involved in financing basic research at universities and academic institutions with emphasis on discoveries and inventions in fields holding promise of further advantages in the competitive fight on the national and international markets.

p In the course of this century, therefore, science and technology have been gradually converted into a direct force catering for capital’s basic economic, political and social laws of functioning and reproduction. Once it had secured control of this key sphere of human intellectual activity, capital turned its results into an important commodity: the licensing of new hardware and technology has become a high-growth industry and a most profitable sphere of domestic and foreign trade.

p That is why the purposes for which the fruits of the STR are being used have become one of the basic issues in the on-going social and political struggle. It is not science and technology as such that pose a threat to peace and turn against mankind, but imperialism and its policies, says the new edition of the CPSU Programme. Lenin said: "...Socialism alone will liberate science from its bourgeois fetters, from its enslavement to capital, from its slavery to the interests of dirty capitalist greed.”  [49•1 

But even in these conditions, which tend to limit and distort the STR’s role and place in the life of mankind, it has continued to run in the capitalist world and entered upon a new stage in the 1970s.