ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the problem of leadership in contemporary society as an integrated part of a broader problem concerning the changing character of human life and of social development as a whole. It focuses on the substance of the scientific and technological revolution from an investigation made in Czechoslovakia by an interdisciplinary team. The development of the industrial countries is marked by an interlocking of tendencies that offset one another, by discrepancies between scientific and technological trends and the social structure. At a certain stage in the development of the productive forces, as the economy goes over to intensive growth, rising consumption is not only compatible with growth of production, but it is as much a prerequisite of this growth as was the restricted consumption during the earlier industrialization. The new ratios of economic growth naturally presuppose adjustments in the overall system of economic proportions established in the process of industrialization.
