p To begin with, let us recall the well-known proposition of Marxism-Leninism that modern man is the product of centuries of social life, which have substantially transformed his biological nature. Marx says that the "individual is the social being. His manifestations of life—even if they may not appear in the direct form of communal manifestations of life carried out in association with others-^are therefore an expression and confirmation of social life".  [59•3 

p Scientific and technical development and the mass realisation of the results of the process in practice undoubtedly have a growing impact on man’s social (primarily, labour) and personal life. The new stage of the STR is manifested in man under capitalism in forms which are specific to that social system, which has for its basic law man’s exploitation of man, rule by monopoly capital, and maximisation of profits. The question which is most important in this context is: how can the new stage of the STR influence the change in the quantity of wage-labour required by capital? What are the prospects for unemployment, which has become a chronic scourge for human beings in the non-socialist world?

p There is no consensus among bourgeois scientists and journalists on this score. The point is that electronic automation is the most important element of the current STR and it is expected to prevail at least until the end of the century, substantially boosting the productivity of living labour in the branches of material production, circulation, the services and information, thereby ousting workers and employees from these fields. At the same time, the 60 computerisation of labour and life leads to an expansion in the manufacture of new hardware, which requires to be serviced, thereby creating additional potentialities for the use of wage-labour. So far there is no unanimity among bourgeois economists as to what will be the ultimate balance between the “repulsion” and “attraction” by the end of the century.

p The optimists say that electronic automation will gradually transfer wage-labour into other industries and types of activity (which will, of course, require retraining and additional training of manpower). They add that the process of technical change will be slowed down by "market forces" in view of the unwillingness of many capitalists to write off old hardware before it has fully recouped investments, or as long as it is physically capable of functioning even if it has recouped itself, and so is capital working "free of charge”.

p By contrast, many specialists expect unemployment to grow considerably as the "electronic revolution" proceeds in the capitalist countries. US specialists have estimated that the spread of robots alone could well reduce the number of jobs in US industry by 4 million by the year 1990. According to another estimate, even the first generation robots now in use substitute for 1.2 million persons, while the second generation robots, which have now started their triumphal march, will do away with another 3.8 million jobs; 10 to 15 million manufacturing workers, and perhaps as many service workers, could see their jobs disappear by the year 2000, say the pessimists.  [60•1  Over the few remaining years, new technology will affect as many as 45 million existing jobs.  [60•2 

p The new stage of the STR is also expected to pose a grave threat to employment in the West European countries. One British study predicts that "automation-induced unemployment" of the ablebodied population in Western Europe could reach 16 per cent in the next decade.  [60•3 

p We believe that the movement of the actual balance of employment in the capitalist economy as a result of the computerisation of production, the services and management will lie somewhere mid-way between the two extreme magnitudes, although, of course, bourgeois specialists are quite right in stressing the uncertainty of these estimates. We feel, however, that this problem is most profound and is above all a qualitative one.

p First, electronic devices are bound to expel many people from the sphere of capitalist production, circulation, services and management, with a sizable (perhaps the greater) part of them being unable to find any job as electronic automation proceeds apace, because they will be unable to retrain for activity dictated by the new hardware and technology. Thus, middle-aged women and coloured people will be unable to “re-learn” for servicing the new electronic hardware because of their age, social status and education 61 standard. Besides, capital and the capitalist state can hardly be expected to make the necessary additional efforts and outlays. "Theoretically, all unemployed workers can be retrained, but retraining programs are not high on the nation’s agenda. Many new jobs, moreover, will require an aptitude in using computers, and the retraining needed to use them will have to be repeated as the technology keeps improving... Young blacks, whose unemployment rate stands today at 50 per cent, will find another barrier in front of them.”  [61•1 

p Second, electronic automation affects virtually every sphere of labour activity in the capitalist countries, so that whereas in the past growing labour productivity in agriculture and some other spheres of material production did result in the displacement of labour force, some of it found employment in the spheres of circulation, services and management, where labour productivity was relatively low and where the expansion of business led to the hire of additional workers and employees.

p The new stage of the STR will also substantially affect the sphere of non-material production in the capitalist countries, which is why it will no longer be able to act as an accumulator of some of the relatively superfluous labour as it once did.

p Third, to what extent will the growth of employment in the manufacture and servicing of electronic hardware be able to compensate for the simultaneous displacement of labour-power where such hardware is used? The well-known US economist Wassily Leontief has drawn attention to the fact that the new electronic hardware and technology have turned out to be relatively cheaper (i.e., per unit of technical efficiency) than those for which it is substituted, and that this process of cheapening has continued. In contrast to the industrial revolution of the early 19th century, when skilled labour creating and operating the machine replaced unskilled physical labour in material production, while overall employment increased, nowadays, in the age of the electronic chip, the human labour used in “mental” functions is also displaced. As a result, Leontief says, the overall demand for living labour, whether in production or in the operation of the new electronic hardware, falls far short of compensating for the loss of jobs through the use of such hardware.  [61•2  The same point was also made by Gary Hart, who said that service industries provided almost 7 million additional jobs between 1970 and 1977. Today, however, "many of those same jobs—in banking, insurance, retailing, secretarial, and clerical work—are the microprocessor’s principal targets".  [61•3 

p So, the operation of the factors making for a high level of unemployment in the developed capitalist countries is apparently bound to increase by the end of the century, thus further 62 sharpening the social antagonisms of the capitalist society. The outcome of the working people’s struggle in some capitalist countries for a shorter working week with no cut in wages, a lowering of the pension age, and for a trade-union say in deciding on the deadlines and scale of replacement of living labour by machines, retraining of personnel so displaced, and establishing procedures for covering the costs of their retraining could have an important influence on employment.

p What are then the probable changes in the quality and content of labour under the impact of the STR and the spreading application of the practical results of this process?

p On the one hand, the number of engineers, designers and technicians advancing the STR and concentrating on the creative elements of the process is bound to increase. Scientists, physicians and teachers will have greater opportunities for displaying their knowledge and intelligence through the use of electronics.

p It should be borne in mind, however, that much of the activity in the servicing of electronics will be just as monotonous and unimaginative as it was in the “pre-electronic” age of the machine division of labour.

p The computerisation of labour activity also entails other changes in its character, including some unfavourable ones for human beings. Long work "face to face" with a computer or a system of automated control of production processes tends to have a depressing effect on the working person and often produces an ever wider-spread phenomenon known as “cyberophobia”, that is, hatred for the "electronic monster" and a feeling of repulsion. The prospects of the spread of so-called stay-at-home work with a roomful of electronic gadgets cannot be a source of great joy for the working person. Work, especially in industries related to informatics, is something that requires the stimulating effect of personal contact and an exchange of ideas. A similar problem arises with the computerisation of a large part of managerial activity, where human contacts are known to be highly important in decision-making.

p That is why there is the question not only of the expected advantages of the looming conversion of the robot into “man”, but also of the dangers of a peculiar transformation of the man into a kind of robot under capitalism.

p Negative phenomena in the capitalist society’s social and spiritual life have been spreading and are bound to go on spreading in the near future. There is the spreading spirit of national and racial exclusiveness, licence, the praise of wealth and money as the main yardstick of personal worth, and the resulting growth of crime and the spread of similar other spiritual deficiencies. The economic and social nature of capitalism is, of course, the main source of these phenomena and the deepening crisis of that historically doomed social system, but the STR has intensified the social instability of the individual in the capitalist society.

p The spread of electronics to the household will certainly increase the time available for rest, leisure, entertainment, tourist travel, etc. However, the model of Western culture is not likely to undergo 63 any changes on that account; indeed, the computerisation of mass culture will amplify such of its forms and consequences as the spread of the cult of violence, primitivism in various forms, egoism, and social alienation.

p The so-called video revolution in the capitalist countries, which enables many people to see a popular TV programme or film at any time again and again, tends to make a cult of violent “heroes”, to bring pornography into the home and so spread sexual permissiveness. There is also the triumphal march of electronic games machines, yielding billions in profits for the owners of the arcades. They dull the players’ minds and breed the basest instincts, just as the makers and owners of these “games” had intended in the first place. Quite realistic, too, is the prospect of "electronic drug addiction" for the fans. The US press has reported experiments sponsored by the Pentagon to find out just how electronics can influence human mentality.

p One can well expect capital to make use of diverse "electronic joys", including some which now seem to be fantastic, in order to make more and more profits and divert the masses from the burdens and horrors of the capitalist society and from its mounting social antagonisms.

p Electronic automation has led to the appearance of a new type of crime, namely, the use of computers for “illegal” payments and plain daylight robbery (in a progressively “cash-free” economy), and for industrial espionage. In some countries, this problem has become so acute that it has stimulated the intensive development of various computer-protection systems to prevent unauthorised use of the data and programmes fed into computer memories.

p The improvement and spread of electronic facilities provides unprecedented opportunities for class espionage and political control of the population in the capitalist society. The virtually total “registration” of the basic characteristics of inhabitants in the capitalist countries in computer memories, the steady increase in these files, and electronic surveillance of those who appear to be subversive from the standpoint of the ruling class and its state—all this is an important instrument in bolstering the power of capital.

p The revolutionary transformation of the material and technical basis of informatics, one should note, goes to create additional potentialities for the ever wider use of diverse mass media in the interests of monopoly capital. The growing speed and distance of mass communications in every form and the possibility of almost instant reception of information in any part of the globe, together with the control of this sphere by the monopolies, enable the ruling class of the capitalist society to exert an ever more intense and desired influence on the mass consciousness of people on the globe. That is known as "information imperialism" and is an important social and political weapon for finance capital, the MIC and the capitalist state, and a source of additionally large profits for the monopolies.

p To sum up: the present stage of the STR is of great importance for the capitalist society. The electronic automation of many types 64 of activity earlier performed by human beings, the further penetration of science into living and non-living matter, and the incarnation of these STR achievements in the means and techniques of production, in products and forms of consumption all have a radical effect on the material and technical facilities and way of life available to the citizen and the society as a whole.

p But the present stage of the STR and especially its microelectronic strand produce fresh social problems and conflicts, even more refined methods of the working people’s stepped-up exploitation and spiritual repression under capitalism. For the bulk of the population in the capitalist countries there are numerous negative consequences, deepening the general crisis of capitalism, from the imperialist use of the STR to maximise profits, including in the manufacture and use of weapons to coerce and annihilate human beings in the satisfaction of primitive and often base requirements.

p What most Western scientists, futurologists and publicists try to ignore is the fact that the negative aspects of the STR spring from the nature of capitalism, a fact Marxism-Leninism has amply demonstrated. They either blame these phenomena on the STR itself, or claim that these are temporary and will be automatically smoothed over by the STR, or even claim that they result from the failures and shortcomings in the policy and practice of state institutions.

p The US futurologist Herbert Kahn was a frontrunner in this effort, and his views are widely advertised by his followers and supporters. His well-known book (written with two co-authors), The Next 200 Years: A Scenario for America and the World was an expression of his confidence that capitalism would surmount all the current and immediate difficulties, including those arising from the STR. Kahn used the trick of referring to Marx and Engels in a long quotation from the Manifesto of the Communist Party on the progressive changes in the economy brought about by capitalism, pretending not to notice that the great document compares capitalism with feudalism, and that the founders of scientific socialism simultaneously expose the exploitive substance of the capitalist social formation and the new and even greater oppression which it holds in store for the popular masses, and predict that capitalism has to give way to communism. Kahn and his followers claim that scientific and technical progress under capitalism intrinsically has "curative functions" which are to be ensured by the growing importance of the transnational corporations as innovators and generators of economic activity and motors of rapid growth.

p All of that is patently at odds with the facts and with their scientific explanation by the Marxist-Leninist theory.

p The examples given in this chapter demonstrate the dual nature of the STR under capitalism: it is both a further stride in the progress of human civilisation and a source of additional hardships for the working people of the capitalist world, hardships which defy any kind of “self-cures”. What is more, the monopolies acting as motors of rapid growth carry poverty and hunger to hundreds of millions of people in the less developed countries, cripple and 65 destroy animals, plants, soils and waters, and act as “innovators” in the arms race which threatens to annihilate mankind.

Indeed, while scientific and technical development is highly important for human progress, the crucial question continues to be: who carries it on and for what purpose? The working people’s struggle in the capitalist society for their rights and for social progress, i.e. the future, will show whether capital and its executive committees—the governments—will manage to capitalise on the new stage of the STR.