PROCEEDINGS OF THE TOMSK POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE
awarded the Order of the October Revolution
and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor
named after S. M. Kirov

Volume 273　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　1973

THE MODERN SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION AND THE ECONOMIC NEEDS OF SOCIALIST SOCIETY

Yu. V. SHELYAKOV

Progressive structural shifts in the productive forces of socialist society, their scale and depth, and the increase in the efficiency of social production are based on the development of productive and nonproductive economic needs, connected with the operation of the law, formulated by V. I. Lenin, of the elevation of needs.

The significance of analyzing the problem of the development of social economic needs in connection with the scientific and technological revolution, in accordance with the division into productive and nonproductive needs, may be traced along two main lines which, despite their independence, are inseparably linked with one another. These are, first, the technical-organizational line, presupposing an analysis of the material and substantive content of the process of socialist production, and, second, the line characterizing the role and place of the subjective factor. Of course, the political-economic analysis of these factors is connected above all with the nature and character of the relations among the associated participants in production in their planned, organized activity. The criteria for assessing the social significance of particular economic needs must be constructed in such a way that they reflect sufficiently fully and objectively not merely the result of production itself, but also reveal the sources of the economic growth achieved under socialism, when society is not yet in a position, by means only of direct planned links, to distribute “its means of production and productive forces to the degree and in the measure necessary for the satisfaction of its various needs...”¹ The necessity for such a criterion, evidently, remains regardless of the level of development of the productive forces and production relations at the various phases of the communist formation, as a condition for achieving a national-economic optimum, which “in static and dynamic aspects represents a certain possible state of the economy, the resultant, specifically determined functioning of it... is the resultant expression of the subordinated action and interaction of the entire system of laws of economic development”² and of political-economic categories.

¹ K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works, vol. 26, part II, p. 587.
² A. A. Kronrod. The Law of Value and the Socialist Economy. Moscow, Nauka, 1970, pp. 137–138.

The place and significance of economic needs in the system of subordinated economic laws and categories of political economy, with their differing degree of essentiality, consists in the fact that social economic needs themselves appear as objectively necessary conditions of people’s life, determined by the attained level of development of the objective and subjective factors of social production. Under socialism, the entire system of reproduction and the mechanism for the conscious use of the objective economic laws of socialism are oriented toward the satisfaction of social needs. At the same time, with the development of socialist production and the improvement of planned management, the significance of social needs and their “key” role steadily increase. This is explained not only by the material conditionedness of needs, but also by their growing functional role in the process of the increasing socialization of production, economic ties, and interdependencies in the national economy.

The functional role of an economic need consists, above all, in the fact that it acts as an impulse in the development of social production and, consequently, in this capacity passes through all phases of the reproductive process. Its influence does not disappear even after the need has imparted this impulse to production, i.e., it is not limited simply to setting production in motion. The functional role of needs also consists in the fact that they determine the character and forms of this movement under the conditions of the scientific and technological revolution. Such a passage of the functional role of economic needs beyond the limits of the impulse is connected with the fact that needs, interacting with social production, act as the most general mechanism of the movement of production. Characterizing the historically given form of production, needs do not determine its qualitative content, but reflect a feature internally inherent in the economic processes of the given mode of production and initially containing its contradictions.

However, the source of the development of social production should be sought not in the ever-growing needs themselves, but in production itself, which is manifested especially fully under the conditions of the modern scientific and technological revolution, when new needs of society and the individual are generated and traditional needs are transformed with particular intensity. This connection between production and needs is especially evident in the process of realizing the impulse imparted by economic needs. The further development of production is not free from the influence of needs, and there are no grounds for speaking of the self-development of production, at least in periods of its qualitative changes. Under conditions of a constantly increasing degree of socialization of production, what acts as an impulse for one branch may be traditional for another, and vice versa. The known limitation of social resources, the degree of urgency of one or another need, and its intensity may, in a certain way, neutralize the action of one or another impulse. Social needs influence the development of production not directly, but through a variety of forms whose content is determined by the socio-economic orientation of the given formation.

The sources of development must be sought in material production itself, in the action of the entire system of economic laws of the given formation, in the specific forms and mechanism of their manifestation. In this connection it is necessary to agree with V. V. Radaev, who holds that “the problem of new needs consists precisely in their manifestation, in explaining the mechanism of this manifestation, in explaining the fundamental …”

the correlation between new needs and production. This is not a problem of satisfying them, for a newly born need, being real, carries with it a definite technology for the production of new products, and so forth. The satisfaction of new needs, in principle, does not differ from the satisfaction of needs in general—it is carried out in the course of social reproduction, on the basis of the improvement of its technology...¹

Thus, economic needs appear not only as an impulse toward the development of social production, but also as its socio-economic orientation. Depending on their significance for social progress, society predetermines the system of incentives by means of which it influences production. Economic laws, in turn, actively shape the character and scale, the socio-economic tendencies, in which society realizes the achievements of scientific and technological progress. The fullest possible study and use of the economic laws of socialism is directly connected with the analysis of the concrete forms of interconnection, above all, between social needs and production.

It is known that technology always expresses man’s relation to nature and, as such, is not a category of political economy; but, acting as an element of the productive forces, it accumulates within itself the production experience of people. At the same time, it influences the forms of the social organization of labor, assuming, under the conditions of socialist production, the form of production funds—the economic form of the means of production. The impression is created that, since the source of the development of social production is not economic needs, there is also no direct dependence between the elevation of needs and changes in the technique and technology of production. The real connection between social needs, above all general needs, and the improvement of technology can be traced if we turn to the subjective factor of socialist production, since in the interaction of objective and subjective factors the creative principle always belongs to the human being, who satisfies, through the results of production, his personal or production needs. It should not be forgotten that the needs of the participants in production go beyond the satisfaction of personal non-production needs. The system of needs organically includes the need for the development and improvement of production and cannot be defined in narrowly consumerist terms.

The significance of the interdependence of production and social needs also cannot be considered merely in terms of the quantitative reflection, by needs, of the state of social production at a given moment. This interdependence ensures the substantiation of tendencies in the development of science and technology, of the regularities of the development of technology and of the system of production relations. Otherwise, society will lose control over qualitative, structural shifts in social production that reflect the prospects of its development, which may lead to a decline in the efficiency of production. It is especially important to uncover the indicated regularities of development under conditions in which the intensive character of socialist production predominates, presupposing greater dynamism of social needs, both productive and non-productive. The strengthening of feedback in the process of development of the socialization of production and the elevation of social needs realizes

the advantages of socialist production, makes it possible to realize with the greatest completeness the potential possibilities inherent in the modern scientific and technological revolution. At the same time, it is necessary to take into account the extent to which rising needs not only rest upon and objectively reflect the achieved level of development of society’s production base, but also influence the character of the development of society’s productive forces. That is, whether the question is one of a more complete satisfaction of the existing system of needs, based mainly on an extensive path of production development, or whether society encounters the development of new needs or ways of satisfying traditional needs which, with the greatest national-economic effect, can be satisfied along the path of intensive development of production. The very character of expanded socialist reproduction under conditions of its intensive development changes, to a certain degree, the interconnection between production and needs. Of course, this interconnection takes shape differently in the various spheres of the reproduction process and manifests itself in various specific economic forms. Being decisive in the entire reproduction process, it cannot be regarded in the subsequent phases of distribution, exchange, and consumption as fading away, since the entire process of reproduction, studied in the unity of all its phases, makes it possible to reveal all the diversity of the system of economic stimuli through which needs exert a concrete influence on the development of the productive forces. One of the concentrated expressions of the interconnection between needs and production is found in the process of the all-round development of the participants in socialist production, toward which all phases of the reproduction process are directed and which “is the only material manifestation of social needs that is subject to accounting and economic analysis.”²

The expansion of the range of needs of the participants in socialist production constitutes the most general basis that brings about the growth of the entire aggregate social product. This expansion of needs is connected with the intensification of production and with the growing demands that it imposes on the professional and general educational training of working people, and it cannot be derived from the growth of the possibilities for a fuller satisfaction of needs as the volume of socialist production increases.

In analyzing the problem of economic needs, while distinguishing between production and nonproduction needs, it is necessary to clarify the interconnection between them, which by no means takes place automatically, but in a complex and mediated way, and takes shape differently under conditions in which the extensive or intensive type of development of socialist reproduction predominates.

The extensive path of development is characterized by an ever-increasing diversion of material resources and labor power to the needs of production accumulation, by a certain increase in the norm of production accumulation.

Because subdivision I works to a significant degree for itself, and because, given the existing volume of national income, an ever larger part of it cannot be consumed nonproductively, since under conditions of predominantly extensive development the possibilities for creating objective prerequisites for increasing the share of net output going toward the purposes of personal, nonproduction

consumption. At the same time, the gap between the satisfaction of needs and the population’s effective demand may grow. K. Marx revealed the threefold dependence of needs on production.³ It consists in the fact that production: first, by creating the product of labor, thereby creates the material and determines the mode of satisfying needs; second, by creating new products of labor, expands the range of needs; third, by itself constituting the consumption of means of production and labor power, determines the constant reproduction of needs. With respect to the predominantly extensive stage of development, it may be assumed that the first and third dependencies receive fuller expression.

Under conditions in which intensive forms of the development of production predominate, the entire set of objective directions of the scientific and technological revolution, the comparison of labor expenditures and the achieved national-economic effect, the increase in the efficiency of social production, and the particular features of the operation of the law of the predominant growth of the production of means of production not only create the prerequisites for bringing together the rates of development of Departments I and II, but also provide the necessary material conditions for this process. The intensive development of expanded reproduction, with an unchanged measure of productive accumulation, ensures the satisfaction of productive needs with relatively smaller expenditures of social labor—above all, living labor—in Department I, a reduction in the number of workers in the productive sphere, and consequently releases resources for accelerating the rates of development of Department II and of the nonproductive sphere. All these changes are connected with the fact that, in the final analysis, the means of production appear only as material costs required by socialist society for the production of articles of consumption. As production efficiency rises and labor productivity grows, society approaches a state in which an increase becomes not only possible but also economically expedient—not only in the rates, but also in the relative magnitude of the consumption fund in national income.

However, the intensive development of production under the conditions of the scientific and technological revolution does not remove the contradiction between developing needs and production, despite certain shifts in favor of the development of Department II. On the contrary, it is precisely the intensive development of production, as never before, that promotes the rapid development of productive and nonproductive needs, while at the same time shortening the interval between their emergence and their relatively full satisfaction. Depending on the degree of intensity of development, needs may acquire greater or lesser relative independence. One of the contradictions in the development of production is a certain unevenness in the development of technical progress in various branches and functions of production, connected both with the different initial levels of their development and with the relative non-simultaneity and depth of qualitative changes in the branches of production. This unevenness of development, being objectively conditioned, may, depending on the degree of its intensity, affect in different ways the degree to which new productive and nonproductive needs are satisfied. Society is compelled by the objective course of development to give preference to the satisfaction of certain needs, since it is first necessary to resolve contradictions within production itself, and only then will an ever-increasing volume of satisfaction of newly arisen nonproductive needs become possible—

…needs, which, as production develops, have turned into universal needs. The scientific and technological revolution also exerts a great influence on such a characteristic of needs as their elasticity, enabling society to maneuver more flexibly with the resources at its disposal; moreover, the elasticity of needs, in turn, promotes technical progress—in particular, specialization and, consequently, the socialization of production.

Under extensive and intensive development, the relationship among the absolute, actual, and actually satisfied needs identified by Marx takes shape differently. Each of them forms a definite system, interacting with the others, since they are all determined by the same general economic conditions and laws, but they do not fully coincide. Under conditions of predominantly intensive development, the role of the system of absolute needs increases; it determines the limits within which the system of actual needs takes shape. It determines the main tendency in the development of actual needs over the historical perspective of socialist society, which is especially important in determining the directions of profound structural changes in the socialist economy. Likewise, the relationship between solvent needs and the system of actually satisfied needs—the significance of the convergence and coincidence of their structures—brings to the fore the problem of comparing the diverse consumer values that, with varying degrees of immediacy, satisfy one and the same social need.

Thus, the modern scientific and technological revolution, leading to profound qualitative shifts in the structure of production and in the character of social labor, and in the worker’s position in the production process, provides the material basis for resolving cardinal socio-economic problems connected with the final overcoming of the heterogeneity of labor. Its ultimate result is the elimination of class and social differences.

Serving as the deepest foundation of national-economic proportions, economic needs, in a certain sense, ensure the development of socialist production, which, as K. Marx noted, is carried out “through the direct, conscious control of society over its working time.”⁴

1. V. V. Radaev, Need as an Economic Category of Socialism. Moscow, “Mysl,” 1970, p. 122. ↩

2. Scientific Notes of the Departments of Social Sciences of the Higher Educational Institutions of Leningrad. Political Economy, issue XI, L., 1970, p. 80. ↩

3. K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 23, p. 520. ↩

4. K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 32, p. 9. ↩