The main goal and factor of production, its development and improvement is a person. As a participant in the production, he performs in three persons. On the one hand, man is a producer directly involved in the creation of goods and services. On the other hand, he is a consumer using everything that is obtained in the production process. In addition, a person coordinates, coordinates the actions of producers and consumers, performing the function of a manager. It should be emphasized that a person can live, act and develop only by being included in a social connection with other people, the basis of which is formed by their joint labor activity. The role of a person, his essence is predetermined by the fact that he is both a factor of productive forces and a subject of production and all other social relations.
The interaction of the material and personal factors of the productive forces is an example of dialectical unity, which includes contradiction. It is man who creates and revives the means of production and thereby turns them into elements of productive forces. That is why the labor force is not just a factor, but the main productive force of society. To the extent of its development, a person creates the means of production he needs and determines the ways of their use. This is the general orientation of the relationship between personal and material factors in the system of productive forces of society. At the same time, the characteristics that the labor force should possess in any given period are dictated by the state of the means of production used and the technologies mastered. Through this internally contradictory combination, the essence of the correspondence of factors of production, which has a general economic content, is revealed.
At the same time, the role of man at different stages of production development is different. Thus, handicraft production is characterized by the performance by the artisan of all operations, starting from the primary processing of the raw material and ending with the production of the final product. Each producer acted here as a single worker. But, starting with simple cooperation, production could no longer develop on the basis of a single worker. He turned into a partial worker assigned to the function, which was accompanied by an increase in labor productivity. The further development of the division of labor and the specialization of production strengthened the interdependence of workers and predetermined the emergence of the aggregate worker. The emergence of large-scale machine production dictated the need for joint labor of workers within the industry, and then society.
The aggregate worker, which is understood as all those employed in social production, is transformed under the influence of scientific and technological progress. In turn, the NTP affects the structure of the total employee: the qualification composition of workers changes, the proportion of economists, engineers and persons with higher education increases.
Today, the boundaries of the total worker have also changed. This now includes not only workers, but also employees, engineers, figures of science and information, workers in the service sector and spiritual production, engaged in the management of social production, who are directly involved in the creation of material and spiritual goods and services.
It should be emphasized that the requirements for labor on the part of the means of production and the technologies mastered include the level of labor consumption and, at the same time, the magnitude and nature of the costs of its reproduction. This very significant dependence, always realized in certain socio-economic conditions, also has a general economic content, characterizing the need to reimburse labor costs. Thus, the objective boundary of the necessary product is predetermined.
An integral element of all joint work is discipline. The importance of labor discipline steadily increases as the dependence between the various parts of social labor increases, as well as the scale of the resources driven by each worker increases. At the same time, the problem of a conscientious attitude to work and responsibility for the work performed is also exacerbated.
All these concepts (discipline, conscientiousness, responsibility), it would seem, from another field: not economic, but moral. That’s not entirely true. First, as it develops, the economy must become more and more moral, and it is not only possible, but also necessary to apply appropriate criteria to it. This is one of the facets that characterize the socio-economic progress of society. Secondly, and this is the most important thing, all these categories have their own basic, economic content. Morality itself as a category of superstructure is ultimately determined by the basis, that is, economic relations. No matter how much injustice suppresses the need for work, it deeply exists as the first need, the main one for the development and realization of the individual. This explains the facts when a person feels pride in what he created with his work.
In society, everything comes from a person. He cannot treat work creatively if he remains only the executor of decisions coming from outside. He cannot be proactive in the direct process of production, if in other spheres of public life his initiative is not only not required, but limited, or even suppressed. That is why overcoming the technocratic view of man is an indispensable condition for accelerating both scientific and technological and social progress as a whole.
Man is the embodiment of the whole system, the whole spectrum of social relations: economic and political, national and family, ideological and moral. Outside of this living fabric of diverse social relations, man cannot be understood.
But the opposite is equally true: none of the aspects of social relations can be fully and fully studied without an analysis of the subjects, their carriers. Thus, ignoring in political and economic studies the subjects of production relations with their specific interests, needs and motives in labor led to a purely abstract, far from life theorizing and scholasticism.
From the standpoint of production as such, man is not only his subject, but also his ultimate goal. The social product, having passed through distribution and exchange, completes its journey in consumption. Without consumption, any production is meaningless. And this means: the satisfaction of human needs, its development are the natural ultimate purpose of social production.