THE INFLUENCE OF SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS ON THE GROWTH OF WORKERS’ INCOMES

N. I. IVATE

Scientific and technological progress and the automation of production are increasingly leading to the fact that a person, from being a direct participant in the production process (a performer), is becoming a controller and organizer managing this process. Such a tendency, on the one hand, sharply reduces the share and intensity of physical labor, and, on the other, increases the share and intensity of mental labor.

Thus, “...the research workers of the Kuznetsk Scientific Research Coal Institute have established that in the mechanized mines of Kuzbass, among workers in the leading occupations, the proportion of mental labor in the working-time budget continuously increases as the mechanization of the coal-mining process grows.”¹

Under the influence of scientific and technological progress, the differences between mental and physical labor are being erased; a process is observed in which one type of labor merges with and penetrates into the other—occupations of low-skilled and unskilled workers are eliminated or significantly reduced. “Within the group of skilled workers, differentiation is taking place, as a result of which the proportion of highly skilled workers, chiefly those engaged in mechanized labor, is increasing.”²

The process of erasing the differences between mental and physical labor has affected broad strata of society, and one can observe instances when certified technicians and engineers work at shop-floor jobs.

At the present time the Soviet economy has attained a qualitatively new state—it has become a developed socialist economy both in its general level and in its structure. This achievement coincided with changes in a number of important objective circumstances on the scale of the world economy. Above all, a scientific and technological revolution has unfolded in the world, and the process of economic integration of the socialist countries is developing. The economic and scientific-technical competition of the two world systems has entered a decisive phase.

The creation of the material and technical base of the new society necessarily requires broad assimilation of the results of the scientific and technological revolution, an increase in labor productivity, and a more intensive use—

...use of the production apparatus. All this is done by people in accordance with their real abilities and interest in labor. The development of abilities and interest in labor presupposes the growth of well-being.

The use of the comprehensively developed abilities of all members of society will bring about a grandiose rise in the social productive forces, which, in turn, guarantees the production of such a mass of material and spiritual goods as will ensure the full satisfaction of the constantly growing needs of all members of society.

The movement or development of the economy always has as its source internal forces, that is, the internal dialectical contradiction inherent in the given mode of production. The basic dialectical contradiction inherent in the economy of communism (socialism) consists in the contradiction between the new needs of society, constantly generated by social production itself, and the level of this production, constantly stimulated by the needs that have been generated and newly arisen.

The socialist economy develops along the path of ever fuller satisfaction of the needs of working people in the direction of creating conditions for the all-round development of the individual. But needs themselves do not remain unchanged. K. Marx rightly wrote that “man is distinguished... by the boundlessness of his needs and by their capacity for expansion.”³

The capacity of needs to expand, their growth, changes in the structure of needs, and the bringing to the forefront of the most elevated needs of the development of the individual—all this appears under socialism and communism as a powerful stimulus for the development and improvement of social production.

The key to revealing the laws governing the development of the socialist economy lies precisely in the interaction of production and popular consumption. Our Party and state encountered this real dialectic of life from the very first years of socialist construction. Already at the introduction of the New Economic Policy in 1921, V. I. Lenin emphasized that the essence of this policy was “the maximum rise of the productive forces and the improvement of the position of the workers and peasants.”⁴

Socialist production develops in the interests of systematically raising the people’s well-being. Under these conditions a direct dependence is established between production and consumption, their unity on the scale of the whole of society.

The Twenty-Fourth Congress of the CPSU determined the strategic course of the Party’s economic policy both for the coming five-year period and for the more distant future. One of the fundamental questions of economic policy, of its strategic course, is the question of the goals toward whose achievement the Party orients the development of the Soviet economy. The highest goal of economic policy, as the Congress indicates, is the growth of the people’s well-being.

The decisions of the Congress in the field of economic construction proceed from the fact that the country has created the prerequisites for the fullest possible satisfaction of the material and cultural needs of the members of society. A substantial rise in the people’s well-being is the leading direction which “will determine,” L. I. Brezhnev emphasized in the Report to the Twenty-Fourth Congress of the CPSU, “our activity not only for the coming five years, but also the general orientation of the country’s economic development for the long term.”⁵ In working out the main task

³ Archives of K. Marx and F. Engels. II(VII), p. 235.
⁴ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 43, p. 398.
⁵ Materials of the Twenty-Fourth Congress of the CPSU, Moscow, 1971, p. 41.

it was taken into account that the high rates of increase in the people’s standard of living are dictated by the objective needs of economic development and are one of the most important prerequisites for the growth of all social production.

However, the problem of well-being cannot be reduced to the achievement of universal satiety. It would be just as wrong to negate the humanistic principle of socialist production, to preach asceticism, to regard the growth of the people’s well-being as a “bourgeois degeneration” of society. “Our ideal, bequeathed by Lenin, is not asceticism and not the bourgeois pursuit of gain. Our ideal is a life filled with creativity, free labor, revealing all the possibilities and abilities of the individual, spiritually rich and materially secure.”³

The Twenty-Fourth Congress of the CPSU revealed a number of new aspects in the interaction of production and consumption characteristic of the present stage of the country’s economic development. The point is that “raising the well-being of the working people is becoming an increasingly urgent need of our economic development itself, one of the most important economic prerequisites for the rapid growth of production.”⁴

Indeed, the contemporary scientific and technological revolution places high and constantly growing requirements not only on machines and instruments, but above all on the workers themselves, on those who create these machines and operate them.

At the stage of developed socialism, specialized knowledge, high professional training, and the general culture of the worker are an indispensable condition for highly productive labor and for making use of the possibilities and achievements of scientific and technological progress. And on what do specialized knowledge, professional skill, and the level of culture depend? To a decisive degree they depend on the people’s standard of living, on the fullness with which their material and spiritual needs are satisfied.

As is known, the people’s standard of living is determined by a rigorous system of indicators, each of which characterizes one aspect of the growth of popular well-being. Among the most important indicators are the real incomes of the population.

However, the material position of particular groups of working families depends not only on the total size of the consumption fund, but also on the methods by which it is distributed. “The method of distributing material and spiritual goods actively affects the standard of living of the working people not only through production, but also directly.”⁵

At the same time, distribution, in its turn, exerts an enormous influence on production, accelerating or hindering its growth, and in this capacity is used under socialism as a “method, instrument, means for increasing production.”⁶

The Directives of the Twenty-Fourth Congress of the CPSU on the five-year plan for the development of the national economy of the USSR for 1971–1975 outline a grand program for the further improvement of the standard of living of the population of our country. “The chief task of the five-year plan consists,” the Congress Directives state, “in ensuring a substantial rise in the material and cultural standard of living of the people on the basis of high rates

of socialist production, increasing its efficiency, scientific and technical progress, and accelerating the growth of labor productivity.”

The chief source of the growth of social wealth and popular well-being is the country’s national income. In the Ninth Five-Year Plan, the country’s national income will increase by 37–40%. At the same time, 80–85% of its increase will be obtained through higher labor productivity; the increase in the fund of real incomes will amount to 72 billion rubles.

Planning real incomes by social groups of the population will make it possible to solve a major social task—the convergence of the incomes and consumption levels of all categories of the population. Therefore, one of the key problems in raising the people’s standard of living is to establish economically justified volumes and rates of growth of the population’s real incomes.

Real incomes per capita will increase by approximately 30%. They will grow mainly as a result of increases in the wages of workers and employees and in the remuneration of collective farmers, as well as thanks to the further development of social consumption funds.

Studies show that the volume of social consumption funds, like the wage fund, cannot be arbitrary. The volume and share of each of these funds are determined by objective conditions, by the objective requirements of economic development in the given period. The point is that a large part of social consumption funds—cash payments—is closely connected with the level of remuneration for labor. An increase in wages at the same time means an increase in the average size of pensions, as well as of benefits for temporary disability, pregnancy, and childbirth. Therefore, the growth of remuneration for labor inevitably makes it necessary to increase the volume of this part of the social consumption funds.

Nor can the volume of another part of the social funds—free material benefits—be set arbitrarily for the planning period. The expansion of the network of preschool institutions, the increase in the coverage of students by secondary education, and so forth are directly or indirectly connected with the development of other branches of the national economy, with socioeconomic tasks that cannot be solved by increasing remuneration for labor.

Among the social problems in the development of social consumption funds, one of the foremost places is occupied by the problem of eliminating the low-income status of individual families.

One of the basic tasks advanced in the Directives of the XXIV Congress of the CPSU for the five-year plan for the development of the national economy of the USSR in 1971–1975 consists in improving the forms and systems of remuneration for labor and of material and moral incentives for workers, in developing the most effective forms of using objective economic laws in the practice of planned management of the national economy, and in solving the problems of accelerating scientific and technical progress and comprehensively raising economic efficiency and intensifying social production. The successful realization of this complex task presupposes further study of the mechanism by which the economic laws of socialism operate, and of the theoretical foundations of socialist distribution.

The timely testing and selection of the most effective forms of distribution, in accordance with the character, the level attained, and the needs of the further development of production, is necessary-

my prerequisites for accelerating technical progress and for the effective practical use of scientific and technical achievements.

In the course of implementing the economic reform, the complex problem of increasing the material interest of socialist production collectives and of each worker in improving production on the basis of the latest technology, and in raising its economic efficiency, is being solved in practice.

As a result, an effective system of economic stimulation of production is being worked out.

The problem of the economic stimulation of production has, as it were, two aspects: first, the stimulation of production collectives as a whole, which presupposes the use of commodity-money relations, the improvement of cost accounting, and the formation of cost-accounting funds; and, second, the stimulation of individual workers through the payment of bonuses from the material-incentive fund according to the results of their labor.

If remuneration for labor is carried out on the basis of tariff rates, salaries, and piece-work rates, then it is indeed difficult to give all workers a material interest in improving the qualitative indicators of the work of enterprises, in the effective use of the means of production, in saving embodied labor, and in improving equipment, technology, and the organization of production.

In improving the qualitative indicators of the work of enterprises, a major role is assigned to the bonus, which makes it possible to enhance the stimulating role of time-based and piece-work wages and to give workers a deep interest both in every possible increase in the quantity and quality of labor and in the improvement and effective use of the means of production, i.e., in saving both living and embodied labor.

When planning an improvement in the living standard of the working people, it is necessary to find the optimal ratio between the growth of public consumption funds and the wage fund. The solution of this question is an important economic problem, since in different periods the proportions between the growth of public funds and remuneration according to labor may vary depending on the specific tasks facing the country’s economy.

Determining the optimal ratio of the various ways of raising the population’s standard of living is acquiring particular urgency at the present time in solving the main task indicated in the Directives of the Twenty-Fourth Congress of the CPSU for the five-year plan for the development of the national economy of the USSR in 1971–1975.

1. TA KuzNIUI. Report No. 130. Changes in the occupational composition of the coal mines of Kuzbass and in the content of their labor under the influence of technical progress. ↩

2. Labor Resources of Kuzbass. Kemerovo, 1971, pp. 41–42. ↩

3. K. F. Katushev, The Policy of the CPSU—Leninism in Action. Report at the ceremonial meeting in Moscow devoted to the 101st anniversary of the birth of V. I. Lenin. Moscow, Politizdat, 1971, p. 12. ↩

4. Materials of the Twenty-Fourth Congress of the CPSU. Moscow, 1971, p. 41. ↩

5. E. I. Kapustin, The Quality of Labor and Wages. Moscow, Mysl Publishers, 1964, p. 16. ↩

6. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 43, p. 459. ↩