Chapter 17. The Limits of the "Realm of Necessity" and of Capitalism: An Inquiry into the Prerequisites and Seeds of Post-Capitalist Relations Is Possible and Necessary

In assessing the nature of the qualitative changes characterizing the transition from capitalism to the next stage of historical development, one important circumstance deserves attention. Capitalism represents a mode of production that is historically the last in the development of the entire economic social formation. Therefore, with the departure of capitalism from the historical stage, the entire economic social formation also passes into the past.

In a certain sense, this is not only a watershed between two major historical formations of human society (the economic and the post-economic — communist), but also a leap marking the end of the entire preceding epoch of human development, as its prehistory ("the prehistory of human society comes to an end"1), and the transition to genuine history ("from this moment on, people will begin quite consciously to make their own history themselves"* 1 2).

What, then, does this transition from prehistory to the possibility of consciously making one's own history consist of?

Turning to the primary sources: Friedrich Engels on the leap from the "realm of necessity" into the "realm of freedom":
It is worth citing here a long quotation from Friedrich Engels's work "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific":
"From the moment when society takes possession of the means of production, commodity production is abolished, and with it the domination of the product over the producer. Anarchy within social production is replaced by conscious organization on a planned basis. The struggle for individual existence disappears. Then, for the first time, man, in a certain sense, is finally separated from the animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal conditions of existence into really human ones. The whole sphere of the conditions of life which surround man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of man, who for the first time becomes the real, conscious master of nature, because he has now become master of his own social organization. The laws of his own social action, hitherto standing face to face with man as laws of nature foreign to, and dominating him, will then be used with full understanding, and so mastered by him. Man's own social organization, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. The objective, external forces that have hitherto governed history pass under the control of man himself"3.
In the end, Engels sums it up: "This is the leap of humanity from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom"4.

So we see a transition from prehistory to history, from animal conditions of existence to human conditions, from the "realm of necessity" to the "realm of freedom." The conditions and prerequisites of this transition will be discussed below; for now we are interested in its content. The content of this qualitative leap consists in people gaining mastery over their social relations, in freeing themselves from confronting those relations as alien, dominating forces, and in acquiring the ability to establish social relations among themselves as their own free undertaking. Thus, once social relations cease to be an alien external force standing over and against man, the alienation of man from man and of man from society is also overcome.
But why does classical Marxism hold that going beyond the bounds of capitalist society will yield precisely these, quite alluring, results?
The answer is simple: the contradictions of the past themselves carry within them the possibilities of their own resolution.
An examination of the contradictions of the capitalist mode of production shows us that these contradictions lead to a development of capitalist production that gives rise, even within the bounds of capitalism, to a whole series of phenomena which are not, in the full sense of the word, capitalist in nature, and which are even in conflict with the fundamental production relations of capitalism. Nevertheless, these relations exist as a component part of the capitalist economic system, for without them capitalist production could no longer exist and develop.
Thus capitalism opens the way for new tendencies in the development of the productive forces, tendencies that are an inevitable consequence of the evolution of the capitalist system itself. Together with these new productive forces, new, transitional production relations are also born, relations which already contain a new quality going beyond the qualitative boundaries of capitalism. It is precisely on the study of these tendencies and phenomena — and not simply on dreams of an ideal just society — that Marxism's forecast of a revolutionary transition to a new mode of production is based.
Although capitalism is capable, for quite a long time, of incorporating and subordinating to itself these new elements of the productive forces and production relations, which are alien to its nature, its capacities are not unlimited. When the further evolutionary accumulation of non-capitalist elements within the bounds of capitalism begins to threaten the leading role of the fundamental foundations of the capitalist mode of production, capitalist production relations begin to act as a brake on development. Beyond this line, the interests of the capitalist class, generated by the system of production relations of the capitalist mode of production, compel capitalists to obstruct the growth of new, progressive tendencies that negate capitalism, both in the productive forces and in the production relations.
It therefore becomes necessary to overcome the bounds of capitalism as a whole system, in order to give free rein to the development of these new tendencies, to allow them to acquire an integral character, and to coalesce into a new mode of production. Under this mode of production, labor, instead of being a means of enslaving wage workers and a source of prosperity for the non-laboring classes, becomes a means of human liberation — inasmuch as it forms the basis for the free and all-round development of human capacities. But how can labor transform its character in this way?
Karl Marx emphasized that "the realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production"1.

Man becomes freer in material production too, within the "realm of necessity" — for the necessity of reproducing the conditions of material life remains. "Freedom in this field can only consist in socialized man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature. But it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human power, which is its own end, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can only flourish upon that realm of necessity as its basis"1.
This assertion of Marx's from "Capital" is consistent with his own conception that the productive forces of human labor achieve their fullest flowering in the development of scientific knowledge and in the technological application of science, as well as in other similar processes of creative activity. Accordingly, time for the development of free creative activity, for the development and unfolding of human capacities, acquires paramount importance. That is why free time — as opposed to working time, in which production is dictated by "necessity and mundane considerations" — must become the true measure of wealth.
As was shown above, this forecast finds confirmation in the present-day tendencies of development of the capitalist mode of production — but within its bounds, this tendency cannot become universal property even in potential. Moreover, contemporary capital is characterized by a tendency to establish absolute control over the conditions for the free development of man: over his free time, over his creative activity and its results, over the objects of nature, and, in general, over the whole world of cultural values.1
1 Marx, K. Capital, Vol. III..., p. 387.

Capital seeks to subordinate all these spheres of human life to its own interests — the interests of the production of surplus value. In doing so, capital sets limits on the possibilities for human development in capitalist society, and this tendency of capital's serves as evidence of the approaching crisis of capitalism.
Does this state of affairs — in which the social relations of people "become their own conscious undertaking" and are "brought under their mastery" — not mean that the relationship between social being and social consciousness is inverted? Does the consciousness of social man become dominant over his social relations, meaning that his production relations are no longer the objective social relations, independent of man, as Marx himself defined them? And how, then, does the concept of the mode of production, as an interdependent unity of productive forces and production relations, change?

The transformation of human development "beyond material production" into an end in itself, and of free time into the measure of wealth, means, at the very least, that the sphere of free human activity acquires a dominant position relative to the sphere of material production. But what answer would the classics of Marxism have given to the paradoxes that follow from their own theses about the leap from the "realm of necessity" into the "realm of freedom" (paradoxes formulated in the preceding paragraph)? Let us leave this question open for now.
An extremely widespread accusation against Marx is that his historical conception is closed and finite, and that communism, according to Marx, represents "the end of history." These accusations latch onto the words about the transition from humanity's prehistory to its genuine history, which, supposedly, according to Marx, is itself the completed ideal of human society, with everything that came before merely its prehistory.

17.2. The Limits of the Capitalist Mode of Production and the Material Prerequisites of Socialism

formation as a whole. These theoretical criteria, worked out at a still quite immature stage of capitalism, found brilliant confirmation by the end of the twentieth century in the real trends of development of contemporary capitalist society. New productive forces have appeared that give hope for the practical solution of the tasks set by Karl Marx in the mid-nineteenth century.
What, then, must the new productive forces ensure? They must create the conditions under which man leaves the sphere of direct participation in the production of material goods, when "that kind of labor will cease, in which man himself does what he can make things do for him, for man," when labor appears "in the form of an activity that regulates all the forces of nature," and turns into "an experimental science, materially creative and objectively embodied science," when the development of man occurs "as the ceaseless removal of a limit to this development," and is "the absolute unfolding of man's creative talents"1.

Moreover, the new technical basis of production must ensure the cessation of the struggle for individual existence2. Under present-day conditions this means not only a sufficiency of the means of subsistence, but at the same time an acceptable state of the environment. Of course, such a transition is impossible as long as the goal of production remains the accumulation of material wealth, and, moreover, the artificial inflation of the drive to consume in the pursuit of expanding markets. Accordingly, what is implied is such a change in the character of human activity that leads to the transformation not of material wealth but of activity itself into a primary vital need (and, along with this, free time as a space for the development of human abilities becomes the measure of wealth3).
It may be noted that the tendency to replace the drive to accumulate material wealth with goals arising from the transformation of labor into creative self-activity (self-realization of the individual in labor, the unfolding of his creative abilities, the securing of unalienated social ties with other people, and other non-material goals4) is, for now, a reality only for a rather narrow segment of workers in the most developed countries, and even there only in forms considerably distorted by the dominant capitalist system of relations.

The problem remains unresolved of how it is possible to raise the whole of human society to such a level of development. If one is guided by the consumption standards of contemporary bourgeois civilization, then it is simply not possible, for the Earth's resources are physically insufficient for this. Therefore, the prerequisites for the transition cannot arise simultaneously in all, or even in most, countries of the world, but only in a small, most developed part of them, and even there they will never become complete within the bounds of capitalism. The transition to socialism runs up against the problem of transferring these prerequisites to less developed countries, and doing so in such a way as to avoid the trap of the colossal growth of excess consumption characteristic of late capitalism.

It is obvious that in any case a significant growth in the productivity of social labor is required. But at the same time it becomes clear that not just any growth in labor productivity is acceptable for the movement toward socialism, but only that which relies on a resource-saving path of development of production and consumption. In other words, the growing production of social wealth must be achieved with the same, or even a diminishing, level of consumption of natural resources.

Another requirement formulated by the classics is the liberation of man from the function of the partial worker (at least for most of the time) and, in general, his liberation from subordination to the social division of labor1. This presupposes, at the very least, a sharp reduction in the time spent on routine reproductive labor, achieved both through the growth of man's productive power and through the growth of his consumptive power (the rationalization of consumption — not so much by narrowing needs as by shifting to less wasteful ways of satisfying them, including through a reduction in prestige-driven and irrational consumption).
It remains far less clear, so far, to what extent the liberation of man from the crippling subordination to the division of labor will occur through the universalization of his functions, or through a widespread change of occupation1 2. To what extent, and above all on what basis, will it become possible to dispense with the development of narrow human specialization? After all, even in so-called creative professions, the necessity of such specialization for achieving high results still remains a reality. It probably cannot be eliminated entirely — what will instead be created is the possibility, limited only by a person's own abilities, of moving into any type of activity. The one thing that must necessarily be taken outside the bounds of narrow specialization is occupations that do not involve a significant share of creative functions (heavy, unskilled labor).
The creation of material conditions for the development of man's creative abilities under the present-day conditions of the "knowledge economy" confirms Marx's forecast about the development of universal labor1, based on the universality (both in space and in time) of the cooperation of activity and the exchange of knowledge in the course of creative processes. Thus the development of the process of the socialization of production takes on a new form. It is not reduced to the concentration and specialization of production, but greatly reinforces the tendency, already established back in the industrial era, toward the "socialization of man" — that is, toward his universal social mobility, his capacity for forming various kinds of associations and unions, now based on universal labor — the universal cooperation of knowledge and creative activity. This aspect of the socialization of production finds an adequate technical basis in contemporary means of information technology and telecommunications.
However, present-day trends in the development of the productive forces will, for the foreseeable future, preserve a significant segment of production based on old semi-industrial or even pre-industrial technologies. This is a considerable part of the service sector, where occupations such as waiter, hotel maid, hairdresser, dishwasher, cleaner, salesperson, and so on, have for the most part not yet emerged from the sphere of pre-industrial labor. Will manual labor in these branches be replaced by machine labor? Or will the transformation of the content of labor occur on the basis of some new, non-mechanical technologies? Or will these branches remain ones based on inter-personal interaction, where the direct servicing of one person by another will persist?
We do not yet have a clear answer to these questions.
With all these reservations, it is becoming increasingly evident that the trends noted above cannot be fully realized on the basis of industrial (machine) production. This does not at all mean that going beyond the bounds of machine production is an indispensable condition for the transition to socialism. However, the formation, already under capitalism, of at least a significant sector of "post-machine" production is a necessary prerequisite that allows the above-mentioned trends to unfold.
Another side of the question of the material-technical prerequisites of socialism is their negative definition. There is a well-known statement by Marx to the effect that no social order perishes before it has exhausted all the possibilities for the progressive development of the productive forces. Signs of such an exhaustion of the possibilities of present-day capitalism are undoubtedly in evidence, and the left-wing literature abounds with references to wars, ecological crisis, over-consumption, cultural degradation, and so on, as companions of contemporary capitalism. But at the same time this very same capitalism has managed to master such undoubtedly progressive shifts, at their core, as the information revolution, the creation of the prerequisites for a post-industrial society, and economic globalization.
However, even these progressive aspects of the development of capitalism in the sphere of the productive forces inevitably lead (precisely by virtue of their progressive character!) to an ever-greater accumulation, within the structure of its relations of production, of elements that do not follow from the qualitative nature of capitalism, nor indeed from commodity production in general1. In particular, Marx's forecast about the erosion of the value basis of capitalist relations is being borne out.
Following the question of the technical basis of the new society, we may pose the problem of the new type of worker forming within the depths of capitalism.
The new character of activity, the new content of labor, also give rise to a new type of worker. This is, first and foremost, a free worker — free in the sense that his activity becomes the basis for the free formation and reproduction of his social relations1 2 (the principle of the free association of laborers). The prerequisite for such free labor is initially constituted by the creative content of human activity.
The point is not that creative labor, as opposed to routine reproductive labor, is free in and of itself, on the principle that "inspiration is not for sale..." — that is, that it supposedly cannot be carried out within the framework of any form of social compulsion whatsoever. Contemporary capitalism shows that it certainly can! The point is that it is precisely in creative activity that, for the first time, already under capitalism, a tendency toward the free formation of social relations appears. This tendency is quite limited; it manifests itself only directly within the bounds of the creative process itself, where capital can no longer dictate to the worker how to solve the creative task set before him. Accordingly, the creative worker himself determines the network and character of those social ties, that cooperation of knowledge, which he establishes in the course of his labor. But beyond the bounds of this process, capital rigidly sets the external parameters of activity, and above all subordinates this creative activity to the task of producing surplus value, to the pursuit of profit (which leaves a certain imprint on the content of the creative process as well).
It is clear that, for the foreseeable future, even such limited freedom will develop within quite narrow bounds. After all, labor with predominantly creative functions will never, under capitalism, become the lot of the majority of workers, even in the most developed countries. I would note that, even with the overcoming of capitalism, the creative content of activity will not, for a long historical epoch, become the lot of everyone. As V. M. Mezhuev aptly remarked, socialism does not liberate man by turning everyone into a creative genius.
How, then, can free creative activity constitute a prerequisite for going beyond the bounds of capitalism, if the new type of worker based on it forms only within a relatively narrow social stratum? This problem is overcome if we take into account that, with the removal of the shell of capitalist relations of production, it becomes possible to extend the principle of free creative self-activity — at least in one respect — to everyone. There arises the freedom of social creativity — that is, precisely the very freedom of people to create their own social relations themselves. And it is on the basis of this freedom that the material prerequisites can be won for the gradual extension of the possibilities of creative activity to every person.
Thus a new question arises before us: how do the trends in the development of new means of production and in the formation of a new type of worker relate to the determination of the economic prerequisites of socialism?
Orthodox "Marxism-Leninism" denied outright the formation of economic prerequisites of socialism within the framework of the capitalist mode of production, asserting that only material-technical prerequisites* could be present. Proponents of this view put forward the quite logical argument that the most important economic relations of socialism can form only on a national-economy-wide scale, and therefore cannot arise before the socialist revolution. However, in any case, serious shifts in the productive forces of society, and the changes in the character of labor conditioned by them, cannot but entail such changes in the relations of production as lead to the formation of transitional economic forms (which, of course, are not a complete negation of capitalist relations), and it is precisely these that act as the economic prerequisites of socialism.
What, then, are these relations that represent a partial negation of capitalism within its own bounds?
These are the relations that form under the influence of the development of the social character of production, the tendency toward the growth of the socialization of production — that is, the deepening of the social division of labor, which links various private tasks of labor to one another in such a way that their independent character becomes illusory. At the same time, the sphere of non-market coordination of activity within capitalist enterprises is growing; the scale of these enterprises grows with the growth of specialization and concentration of production, eventually acquiring a transnational scale.
These processes lead to the undermining of the commodity character (and, along with it, the value basis) of capitalist production. Private, isolated, independent production is increasingly being replaced by production that is coordinated, regulated, and even directly managed on a social scale. Trends of this kind do not destroy the capitalist basis of production, but they lead to the emergence, within its structure, of such relations of production as express a growing level of socialization, the development of close ties encompassing all links of the social division of labor.
Karl Marx, in Capital, regarded as such relations, first, the credit system and the banks, which encompass the whole of social production under the control over the movement of money, and act as a prototype of a system of social bookkeeping1 2.
Second, there is joint-stock capital, developing on the basis of the credit system, which goes beyond the bounds of "classical" private property and transforms it into group property, dispersing it not infrequently among tens of thousands of owners, while at the same time sharply increasing the concentration of production and capital and control over them on the part of the capitalist oligarchy1.
Third, there are cooperative enterprises, which remove (only, of course, within the bounds of the enterprise itself) the contradiction between labor and capital, and which act, in Marx's own words, as "the positive abolition of private property"1 2 *.
The theoreticians of the period of the Second International (R. Hilferding, V. I. Lenin, and a number of others) supplemented these notions on at least two points.
First, the analysis of the monopoly stage of capitalism showed the expansion of the planned organization of production from within the capitalist factory to the scale of gigantic monopolistic combines, frequently extending beyond national borders. Moreover, the increased concentration and specialization of production and capital, and the formation of finance capital, meant a step forward in the degree of maturity of the prerequisites created by the joint-stock system and the banks. On this basis the necessity for state intervention in the regulation of capitalist production expanded.
Second, a conception took shape according to which scattered, isolated worker cooperative factories could play their role as prerequisites of a socialist system of relations of production if they were united into a nationwide system under the control of a nationwide consumer cooperative movement. A particular component of this conception was the development of an idea sketched by Marx only in a single stroke — that of using cooperative organizations as a means of ensuring the transition from small-peasant agricultural production to large-scale social production.
Further research has added not very much to this analysis, being reduced merely to the refinement, concretization, and enrichment with fresh facts of already established conceptions. Our knowledge of the possibility of organizing production without capitalists has expanded and deepened considerably. Such production is no longer reduced to worker cooperative factories, but represents an entire sector of the "solidarity economy" (or "participatory economy"), ranging from employee stock ownership to various forms of voluntary unpaid labor4. However, the role of this sector, both as a component part of the late capitalist economy and as a prerequisite for the transition to socialism, has not yet undergone fresh theoretical examination.

It is easy to notice that we currently have research pointing to the formation of the socio-economic prerequisites of socialism on the basis of the development of the creative content of labor, the release of man from direct involvement in the process of material production, and so on, but we do not have research that would give a theoretical assessment of the place and role of these prerequisites within their overall system. In bourgeois economic theory these processes have already received one or another economic interpretation (for example, in the form of the "economic theory of information" or the concept of "human capital"). Marxists, meanwhile, while grounding their critical stance toward such an interpretation, have not yet offered their own developed positive vision of these tendencies as socio-economic prerequisites of socialism, contenting themselves with general phrases about the increasing role of man in production and about the development of universal labor. The one point that can, to some degree, be credited to us is the indication of the tendency toward the formation of universal ownership of knowledge and information as a real alternative to private intellectual property and commercial secrecy.

An even more complex and unclarified question remains that of how the economic prerequisites of socialism can constitute a foundation for the formation of the relations of production of communist society, which are already no longer economic in character.

The survey carried out above of the formation of the material-technical, activity-related (labor), and economic prerequisites of socialism testifies quite clearly to the development of a process of disintegration of the capitalist mode of production. It follows, then, that one may also conclude that a process of disintegration of the main classes of capitalist society — the class of capitalists and the class of wage workers — must also be taking place (this process has already been analyzed above).

The facts bear out this conclusion. Indeed, the classical figure of the private entrepreneur is irresistibly dissolving into space, becoming lost somewhere among the large, medium, and mass of small shareholders, directors, senior managers and other executives, bankers, financial speculators, dealers and brokers, leading specialists of corporate research departments, pension-fund investors, and so on. At the same time the numbers of the factory proletariat in the countries of developed capitalism are inexorably shrinking, splitting, on the one hand, into a stratum of skilled specialists and professionals who directly serve the interests of capital and have corresponding incomes, and, on the other hand, into a mass of low-skilled and semi-skilled service-sector workers, scattered, not welded into large collectives, often employed temporarily or part-time, and whose earnings frequently fall short of a subsistence minimum.
And these "unpleasant" facts have made a good many left-wing theoreticians quite nervous, for they cast doubt on their understanding of the classical Marxist conception of the "historical mission of the proletariat" as the gravedigger of capitalism. Some of them decided to write off the historical mission of the proletariat as scrap and to find someone else to take its place (the intelligentsia, say, or the "cognitariat"). Others got out of the difficulty by extending the concept of proletariat to all persons engaged in wage labor (regardless of their actual role in the economic system). Still others declared that, despite all the changes, the proletariat remains the proletariat — full stop.

In fact, what was required, above all, was to pay attention to the fact that, in the change of mode of production, its moving social force has never been solely the conflict between the main classes of the "old" mode of production. Moreover, the most active (leading) role in social revolution (in other words, hegemony) has always belonged to new social strata that were products of the disintegration of the main classes of the previous society and the raw material for the formation of the main classes of the new mode of production1.
Of course, these new strata for a long time appeared in the old socio-legal guise. For example, the bourgeoisie, both petty and large, as well as the pre-proletariat, wore the common garb of the "third estate" up to the start of the bourgeois revolution in France. A significant part of the bourgeoisie in nineteenth-century Russia was officially registered as peasants or as townspeople (i.e., urban commoners) according to the documents. Part of the factory workforce, too, was registered as peasants.

In contemporary capitalist society, the term "wage worker" can be applied to a half-destitute day laborer scraping by on odd jobs, a factory worker, a university professor, and the CEO of a large corporation. But even if, from this motley crowd, we single out only those who are exploited by capital (rather than being agents of capital exploiting labor), and for whom the systematic sale of labor power is the basic means of existence, this still does not solve the problem.

The fact is that a significant (though clearly minority) stratum of wage workers, engaged predominantly, or to a substantial degree, in creative functions, differs in its socio-economic position from the "classical" factory proletariat. The transition from machine technologies to post-machine ones has also created a new type of wage worker — not the partial factory worker, subordinated both to the dictates of capital and to the power of the factory system, but a creative worker who realizes a significant degree of freedom in his activity, and, in this respect, lays claim to independence from capital.

As already noted above, this independence is quite relative, but potentially unlimited, and it is therefore the basis of a conflict of interest between creative workers and capital. This conflict has as its basis the same alienation of labor that oppresses any wage worker. But the new type of creative worker differs from the classical factory proletarian in that, within the very process of his labor, he is potentially (and in part actually) free from the dictates of capital.

It is precisely this distinction that also creates a difference in the character of what, following Karl Marx, one might call the "historical mission" of these social groups within the class of wage workers.
The objective economic interests of the bulk of the factory proletariat can be reduced to a high wage for itself, and to narrowing the capitalist's income down to the level of the salary of a highly-paid manager. Nor should one forget the traits of petty-bourgeois character inherent in the proletariat (the proletarian is, after all, simultaneously both a worker and a trader — a seller of his own labor power). Yes, the workers' struggle for decent conditions of labor and pay revolutionizes capitalist society, pushes it toward changes, including changes that go beyond properly capitalist relations. Yes, the worker suffers under the yoke of capital and would not be averse to getting rid of its power altogether...

But what then? Even the overthrow of capital does not free the factory worker from his factory servitude, even though wage-slavery as such has already been abolished. And with the persistence of the former, which gives rise to the conflict of interest between managers and managed, between mental and physical labor, the deficiency of the partial worker, and so on, the latter, too, is quite likely to return (the sad experience of the USSR bears unambiguous witness to this). Moreover, the factory proletariat is a class that is doomed to perish together with the perishing of capitalism and the establishment of a classless socialist society.

Which social stratum, then, by the nature of its activity, by its place in social production, is not only interested in overcoming any and all class barriers, any and all social oppression, but also has the practical experience of such an overcoming, practical knowledge of the paths and methods by which this task is solved? Precisely that part of wage workers that is engaged in the performance of creative functions.
Up to now, capital has coped quite successfully with the contradictions bound up with the position of the creative worker within the system of capitalist relations. In the early stages of industrial capitalism the number of such workers was small, and a significant part of them occupied the special position of "members of the liberal professions," which brought them close in status to the petty bourgeoisie, making them sellers of the products of their own private "intellectual garden plot." Then, with the development of technical progress, this stratum grows quantitatively and the majority of its representatives are transformed into wage workers. Creative activity in the development and technological application of scientific knowledge is transformed from a field of individual (private) initiative into a large, capitalistically organized branch of production resting on the use of wage labor.

However, even now capital is still capable of creating relatively privileged conditions for a significant part of such workers — both in terms of level of income and in terms of working conditions. That is why creative workers (scientists, engineers, teachers, doctors, journalists, and so on), for the most part, though weary of the power of capital, seek liberation from it precisely as a privileged caste, striving to win such liberation only for themselves. Moreover, many see the path to their own liberation from the power of capital in becoming capitalists themselves — just as the seventeenth-century French bourgeois dreamed of buying a patent of nobility or marrying into the nobility. Indeed, a significant part of creative workers — managers, agents of the financial market, agents of political and ideological manipulation, and the like — are, by their position within the system of capitalist production, tied to the direct servicing of the self-expansion of capital.

And yet the possibilities open to capital for the social bribery of this entire stratum are not unlimited. Many creative workers, regardless of their privileged position, recognize the community of their interests with other contingents of wage workers in opposing the power of capital. Moreover, as the number of jobs requiring the performance of creative functions grows, the possibilities for bribery on the part of capital narrow. It becomes impossible to buy everyone off. And a part of the creative workers is increasingly drawn into the struggle against the power of capital — initially, for the most part, under its own specific "guild" slogans.

These "guild" slogans — free access to knowledge and information, control over the use of scientific results for the benefit of people rather than against it (that is, rather than for the profit of capitalists), and so on — increasingly coincide, however, with the interests of all wage workers. Does not the factory proletarian or the low-skilled service-sector worker need free access to higher professional education, if not for himself, then for his children? Is not any wage worker interested in stripping capital of its "sacred right" to poison people with the wastes of production or to threaten their health with untested chemical compounds (whether in foodstuffs, in medicines, or in toys...)?
Finally, with the overthrow of the power of capital, the "guild" slogans of creative workers may turn into universal goals of the whole of society: "education for all," a shorter working day, access to cultural goods in one's free time, the achievement of equilibrium with the natural environment... These slogans can become the basis of such a transformation of the material conditions of production (the development of the productive forces) as will create a real possibility for the free development of man.

Therefore, in our view, it is precisely the union of the traditional wage worker (the factory proletarian) and the wage workers of the service sector with the new type of wage worker — the creative worker — that can become the "gravedigger of capitalism." Neither social group, on its own, can solve this task. Factory workers and service-sector workers cannot, because the conditions of their labor and their position within the social system of production limit their capacities as regards transforming society along socialist lines. Creative workers cannot, because socialist relations can be formed only in the process of social creativity engaging the majority of the population. And for this it is necessary to overcome one's own narrow guild outlook, to come to fight for the interests of the majority, and to win the practical support of that majority.

In concluding this subsection, let us formulate one of the most difficult questions — that of assessing the degree of readiness of the prerequisites of socialism.
It must be said at once — no theory (and Marxism is no exception here) can possess some kind of "tension gauge" capable of measuring with pharmacist-like precision the degree of tension in the contradictions between the productive forces and the relations of production, and, accordingly, of indicating the exact percentage of capitalism's readiness to go beyond its own bounds. We are, however, in a position to identify certain necessary qualitative parameters (which we have attempted to present above), on the basis of which more or less approximate quantitative assessments can also be made.
It is extremely important to draw attention to the fact that, under conditions of globalization, it has already become entirely necessary to pose the question of overcoming capitalism in the course of a social revolution on the scale of the world capitalist economy. Since a nationally isolated social revolution has definitively become impossible, the problem arises of assessing the conditions for the international spread of this revolution. Consequently, without resolving the question of the character and prospects of the conflict between the developed core of capitalism and the less developed, semi-capitalist periphery, one cannot correctly determine the prospects for movement toward socialism.

To what extent, for example, might a socialist revolution encompassing the semi-periphery and periphery of world capitalism, and thereby undermining the privileged position of the countries at the core of the capitalist system, become a necessary condition for the sharpening of contradictions within the capitalist core, and for the creation there of prerequisites for a socialist revolution? The historical example of the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia, which had a colossal effect on the evolution of world capitalism, shows that the impact of revolution on the periphery and semi-periphery of the capitalist economy on the revolutionizing of development in the capitalist core can be quite substantial, if not decisive.

Moreover, a social revolution that leads to the overcoming of the capitalist mode of production and to going beyond the world of alienation is not merely a product of the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production. Its ripening is influenced by the peculiarities of the historical evolution of classes and social groups, by the development of the peculiarities of their social psychology, by the place of a given country within the established international division of labor, and by a host of other circumstances determining the concrete balance of socio-political forces in the national and international political struggle. The course of this struggle, in turn, depends on the presence and character of organizations representing the interests of various classes and social groups, on their maturity and cohesion, on the resolution of theoretical and ideological questions, on the personal and political qualities of leaders, and so forth.

And, generally speaking, history never gives us anything in a pure form, corresponding to abstract theoretical schemes.
Taking all these diverse circumstances into account depends no longer solely on science, but also on the art of political struggle, and practical socio-political activity itself (including here also theoretical and ideological struggle) acts as a not-unimportant factor influencing the prospects for social revolution.
Victory can be achieved only in struggle — no historical act will be accomplished by someone or something in our place and without our participation.
Nevertheless, even taking into account all the circumstances noted above, Marxists cannot ignore a rather complex theoretical question that was posed to them by the course of the historical events of the twentieth century. This question is as follows: what are the prospects for a socialist revolution if it begins under conditions in which the objective prerequisites for the transition to socialism are clearly insufficient? The answer to this question can obviously no longer be of an abstract-theoretical character, and can therefore be given only after an analysis of the corresponding historical practice (to which one of the following subsections will be devoted).