THE ECONOMIC ROLE OF EDUCATION IN THE CONDITIONS OF THE SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION

L. I. KURILENKO

The Twenty-Fourth Congress of the CPSU set the task of increasing the efficiency of social production. Its fulfillment is connected above all with the realization of the achievements of the scientific and technological revolution, which fundamentally changes the material conditions of production and thereby contributes to the growth of its efficiency. But its influence on production is not limited to this. The scientific and technological revolution, by presenting ever new requirements to the subjective factor of production—the labor force—leads to an increase in the importance of education for the development of production. Therefore, an analysis of the questions concerning the economic role of education, its influence on the principal productive force of society and, through it, on the efficiency of production, is important and timely.

The growth of the economic significance of education is a relatively new phenomenon, characteristic chiefly of the twentieth century. It is connected with the increasing role of mental and, above all, engineering labor in social production, which in turn is objectively determined by the development of the productive forces. The emergence of engineering labor occurred at the stage of machine production and meant, on the one hand, the separation of the intellectual forces of the production process from physical labor, and on the other, the drawing of science closer to production. But since the technical base of production and of science were poorly developed, the role of engineering labor was not as great as it is at present. Thus, in tsarist Russia in 1913 there were only 25 thousand specialists with higher technical education. Education, for this reason, was primarily of a general cultural character and was a privilege of the ruling classes.

Yet the classics of political economy already in their time noted the great role of education in economic development. Thus, A. Smith wrote: “When any expensive machine is erected, the extraordinary work to be performed by it before it is worn out, it is expected, will replace the capital laid out upon it, with at least the ordinary profits. A man educated at the expense of much labor and time to any of those employments which require extraordinary dexterity and skill may be compared to one of those expensive machines.”¹ K. Marx noted the particularly important role of education in preparing a person for labor: “In order to transform

... universal human nature in such a way that it receives training and skills in a particular branch of labor; becomes a developed and specific labor force, a certain education or upbringing is required, which, in turn, costs a greater or lesser sum of commodity equivalents.^2

The idea that one of the foundations of the progress of production is the developed productive power of man was also emphasized by F. Engels: “It is not enough,” he wrote, “to have only mechanical and chemical auxiliary means. It is also necessary correspondingly to develop the abilities of the people who set these means in motion.”^3

But education affects the productive forces not only through the development of the subjective factor of production—man. By acting upon man, education also indirectly affects the objective factor of production, since it is precisely education that makes possible the technological application in production of the latest achievements of science and technology. K. Marx, emphasizing this function of education, wrote that nature does not build machines, locomotives, lathes, railways, etc. “All these are products of human labor, natural material transformed into organs of the human will ruling over nature, or of human activity in nature. They are organs of the human brain created by the human hand, the materialized power of knowledge.”^4

Great attention was paid to the development of education in our country literally from the first days of Soviet power. And enormous credit for this belongs to V. I. Lenin. In his works connected with the solution of concrete economic tasks of building socialism, V. I. Lenin constantly stressed the idea that “only by radically transforming the matter of teaching, the organization and education of youth shall we be able to ensure that the result of the efforts of the younger generation will be the creation of a society unlike the old one, i.e., a communist society.”^5 Moreover, V. I. Lenin attached great importance not only to vocational education but also to general education. He foresaw future tendencies in the development of production that would require not only the worker’s vocational training, but also theoretical and polytechnical training: “We need carpenters and fitters at once, certainly. Everyone must become carpenters, fitters, and so forth, but with such-and-such an addition of a general-education and polytechnical minimum.”^6

Nevertheless, never has the economic role of education been as high as it is at the present time. This is due to objective causes and, above all, to the scientific and technological revolution now taking place. However, the questions of the impact of the scientific and technological revolution on the personal factor of production, that is, on the labor force; the questions of the development and efficiency of the complex system that trains qualified personnel; the questions of the role of education in economic development and of the economic efficiency of education have only recently begun to attract the attention of economists and therefore have been studied far from sufficiently.

As is known, the aggregate labor force, along with the means of labor, is the most important factor in the creation of material goods. But the aggregate labor force also acts as the main subject of production relations. It is therefore important to trace how, under the influence of changes in the material and physical structure of production, changes occur in the aggregate labor force, and how this determines the change in the role of education in production.

^2 K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 23, pp. 182–183.
^3 K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 4, p. 335.
^4 K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 46, part II, p. 215.
^5 V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 41, p. 301.
^6 V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 42, p. 420.

The increasing scale and growing complexity of production have led to a numerical increase in the total labor force. According to the data of the 1970 All-Union Population Census, of the 130.5 million people of working age, those employed in the national economy, as well as students, amounted to 120.6 million people, or 92.4% of this population, as against 82% in 1959. But the main point is that the qualitative characteristic of both the individual and the aggregate labor force is changing. The characteristic of labor power is usually reduced to defining it as the capacity for labor of the people participating in production, possessing certain experience and skills. Although such a definition is correct, it does not give a sufficiently complete characterization of labor power.

Such a definition does not correspond to the contemporary level of development of production and of the scientific and technological revolution. K. Marx wrote: “Just as in nature the head and hands belong to one and the same organism, so in the labor process mental and physical labor are united.”² But the whole point is that the relationship between mental and physical activity is dynamic; it is constantly changing as a result of changes in the material and physical structure of production. Since, in connection with the scientific and technological revolution, changes in production proceed in the direction of its increasing complexity, the share of mental labor in total labor expenditures is growing. In real life, mental labor is usually accompanied by physical activity, and it is practically impossible to determine the share of each. However, the functions of predominantly mental labor include those actions of the worker that are associated with an increased expenditure of mental energy; and an indirect indicator of these functions is the dependence of their performance on the worker’s possession of profound knowledge, and not only experience, dexterity, and skills. That is, the qualitative characteristic of labor power at the present time must necessarily include not only experience and skills, but also knowledge—general and scientific-technical. This has led to recognition of the necessity for a person to obtain secondary education as the foundation for acquiring a specialty. Thus, according to the calculations of V. A. Zhamin, as the level of general education rises, the wage-rate coefficient increases from 1.23 to 1.56, i.e., by 26.9%. Moreover, the growth of qualification proceeds unevenly: grades 5–7 provide an increase in qualification of 0.02 on average for one year of schooling; grades 8–9 ensure a much larger annual increase—0.065; the largest increase is given by the tenth year of schooling—0.14. Furthermore, the increase in qualification due to education is the greatest—it exceeds by four times the increase caused by age and professional experience.³ The traditional notion of education as having purely cultural significance no longer corresponds to reality. General education is becoming an increasingly economically necessary element in the reproduction of labor power, an inseparable component part of workers’ vocational training. In developed capitalist society this new significance of education receives a corresponding class refraction. Education, even under capitalism, has to some extent begun to function as a social institution for the selection and distribution of members of society among various branches of activity, but this is caused only by the changed conditions of production. F. Engels’s statement that “if the bourgeoisie cares for the existence of the workers only insofar as this is necessary for it, then it should not be surprising if it gives them education only to the extent that this

meets its interests,^9 remains valid for the present time as well. Only under socialism do the level and character of education serve as the chief criterion for determining a person’s place in society.

Some economists believe that at present the general educational level of industrial workers in our country is ahead of the requirements of modern production, and that in the near future this situation will persist. And general secondary education, not reinforced by serious vocational training, leads to many negative consequences.^10 Of course, in connection with the transition to universal secondary education, many new and highly complex problems arise in the training, distribution, and utilization of the labor force (for example, a shortage of unskilled labor). But, obviously, these problems must be solved by methods corresponding to the modern level of development of science and technology, and not by slowing the development of education.

K. Marx wrote: “...the very cooperative character of the labor process inevitably broadens the concept of productive labor and of its bearer, the productive worker. Now, in order to labor productively, it is no longer necessary to apply one’s own hands directly; it is enough to be an organ of the collective worker, to perform one of its subfunctions.”^11 That is, the collective worker includes not only those who directly act upon the object of labor, but also engineers and technicians, employees of scientific, design, and project organizations, and employees of the administrative apparatus. The scientific and technological revolution has changed the structure and character of the labor of the collective worker. The share of mental labor in the labor expenditures of each worker has increased. This fact is connected with the growing economic significance of general education. In the course of the scientific and technological revolution, the economic significance of higher education increases especially.

In the process of the development of the scientific and technological revolution, a special place belongs to the process by which science is transformed into a direct productive force. This process consists not only in the cognition and discovery of the laws governing the development of the world around us, but also in the use and application of these laws in practice, in production. This required the development of a network of scientific-research institutions, research institutes, problem laboratories, and so forth. Therefore, for a long time the rates of growth in the number of scientific workers considerably exceeded the rates of growth of all other categories of workers in social production, including the rates of graduation of specialists. Such a tendency is entirely regular. The education of people—in this case, scientific workers—is based on knowledge of scientific achievements. But, on the other hand, the development of science and the use of its achievements are impossible without the training of scholars who have a good knowledge of the principles of the development of modern science. If earlier we spoke of the development of the cycle “science—technology—production,” then now education too must be included here as a component element. It is precisely the activity of the sphere of education that creates the objective conditions for transforming the development of science into the process of the scientific and technological revolution.

The increased economic role of education is connected not only with the fact that science is being set apart as an independent branch, but also with the fact that, in the course of scientific and technological progress, the role of the labor of specialists—and above all of engineering and technical workers—is increasing. A manifestation of this regularity is the circumstance that, in recent years, the rates of growth in the number of engineering and technical personnel have constantly outstripped the rates of growth in the number—

^9 K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. II, p. 343.
^10 See: V. A. Krenevich, The Influence of Scientific and Technological Progress on Changes in the Structure of the Working Class of the USSR. Moscow, “Nauka,” 1971.
^11 K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 23, pp. 516–517.

...of workers and employees, and this was accompanied by an increased saturation of production with specialists. If engineering and technical personnel constituted 3% of the total number of industrial-production personnel in 1928, then this share had increased by 1960 to 9%, by 1966 to 11%, and at present it amounts to 12.1%.^12

As statistical data show, the number of specialists both in the national economy as a whole and in industry is growing almost in direct proportion to the growth of fixed production assets. Thus, if all production fixed assets of the national economy from 1960 to 1970 increased 2.2 times, then the number of specialists increased 1.9 times; the fixed assets of industry increased 2.5 times, and the number of engineering and technical personnel in industry increased 2.3 times.^13

The influence of the technical equipment of production on the growth of demand for specialists is determined by many circumstances. Above all, this is due to the fact that at enterprises, in connection with the introduction of new machinery and technology, the importance of design and engineering bureaus, experimental shops, and technical and technological services increases; that is, the relative weight of highly qualified specialists engaged in improving production increases. In many branches, about 30–40% of engineering and technical personnel are designers, technologists, and researchers.

Moreover, the level of saturation of production with specialists is higher precisely in those branches where the level of mechanization and technical equipment of production is higher. And at present the training of specialists for highly mechanized branches of production is being carried out on a broader scale. Thus, if in 1950–1970 the number of specialists graduating in the entire national economy increased 3.5 times, then the number of specialists in power engineering increased 4.3 times, in machine building and instrument making 7.5 times, and in radio engineering and communications 14 times.^14

At the Twenty-Fourth Congress of the CPSU, prospects were outlined for the development of social production precisely on the basis of technical improvement and renewal. It follows from this that the country’s national economy will in the future place increased demand on specialists, and this, in turn, conditions an even greater increase in the economic significance of higher education.

It should also be borne in mind that at present the organization and management of the production process are becoming more complex. In connection with this, the importance of highly qualified labor is also increasing in this sphere of activity, which likewise promotes the growth of the economic significance of higher education.

The changes in the machinery and technology of production that preceded the modern period, as a rule, did not impose high demands on human intellect and depended little on the creative intellectual abilities of the labor force. Now the situation is changing radically. V. I. Lenin emphasized that “neither training and education without productive labor, nor productive labor without parallel training and education, could be placed at the level required by the modern state of technology and the state of scientific knowledge.”

The scale and rates of development of the scientific and technological revolution at present require the use of highly qualified labor. In this connection, education becomes an indispensable element of the economy, which determines both its development and the growth of its economic significance.

^12 The National Economy of the USSR in 1970. Statistical Yearbook, Moscow, “Statistika,” 1971, p. 158.
^13 Ibid., pp. 60, 150, 522, 525.
^14 Ibid., p. 646.

1. A. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Moscow, Sotsekgiz, 1935, p. 92. ↩

2. K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 23, p. 516. ↩

3. V. A. Zhamin, G. A. Egiazaryan, The Effectiveness of Skilled Labor. Moscow, “Ekonomika,” 1968, pp. 171, 173. ↩