Politico-Economic Problems of Scientific and Technical Progress: Soviet Experience and Present Day

The article analyses and systematizes the basis of the scientific and technological progress theory in the Marxist paradigm. The research is based on the scientific works of the founders of Marxism (K. Marx, F. Engels, V. Lenin), Soviet academic economists, materials of academic discussions and other works relating to the Soviet discourse. The result of the study is the identification of the basic provisions of the Marxist theory of scientific and technical progress: science is a direct productive force, objective laws ofdevelopment and subjective factor equally infl uence the overall development of science and technology, the driving force of scientific and technical progress is the contradiction between the current level of development of the technical base of production and the growing needs of society, an important property of the production process within the framework of scientific and technical progress is its desire for continuity, and one of the main directions of scientific and technical progress is the desire for the full automatization of labor. The intermediate result of the study is the conclusion that there is no unified approach to the development of the problem of the scientific and technical progress in Marxism. Moreover, during the Soviet period, the theory was politicized and distorted due to the erroneous linking of the stages of scientific and technical progress to the change of socio-economic formations. The development of the theory of scientific and technical progress in the USSR formed the prerequisites for the formation of an interdisciplinary Marxist concept of scientific and technical progress. The paper considers the works of Marxist philosopher B.M. Kedrov and cybernetics scientist, academician V.M. Glushkov. Along with the review of theoretical and historical problems of scientific and technical progress, the authors considered the issues of management of scientific and technical progress and its correlation with the nature of direct social labor. It is revealed that Soviet scientists within the Marxist paradigm managed to identify the main characteristics of the development of management systems of scientific and technical progress. At the present stage, domestic political economists study the problem of creative labor in the economy, which is one of the most important when considering scientific and technical progress as the scientist's labor is directly creative. The result of the work is the formation of basic provisions of the Marxist theory of scientific and technical progress on an interdisciplinary basis.