In recent decades progress [STP] in capitalist countries with a developed market economy has been characterized by an unprecedented rate of acceleration (which has also occasioned the use of the term scientific-technical revolution in reference to this period). It is possible to single out a number of directions of STP that increasingly determine the development of the productive forces, particularly in the near future. First place is undoubtedly occupied by the rapidly forming information-processing industry as well as automation based on improving computers, the mass diffusion of microelectronics, and the increasing use of robots. This line of development, which is frequently called the electronic revolution, is leading to a fundamental change in the entire production base of capitalist entrepreneurship starting with material-technical supply and including the management process in addition to various production functions. All this is manifested in the rapid...