Signal Markers of Socialism's Genesis in the Late Capitalist Era

The current era of late capitalism reproduces a multitude of objective contradictions, the cornerstone of which is the misalignment between productive forces and production relations. In the 21st century, nano-, bio-, and cognitive technologies (NBIC), along with new energy systems within the sixth technological wave, have outgrown the late-capitalist mode of production, giving rise to a contradiction between post-capitalist productive forces and social relations. In historical logic, this contradiction must be resolved dialectically, enabling a transition to a new system of social organization—socialism.

We should note immediately that the conceptualization of socialism represents an incomplete formation, one that appeals to the historical retrospective of building a social project in a specific country—the USSR. The Soviet experience is interpreted here as a historically interrupted transition attempt that failed due to skipping over the capitalist stage and the unpreparedness of the nomenklatura. In the USSR, the construction of the socialist project was based on the idea of permanent development of productive forces—the first division of the social production system and the formation of a material-technical base: automation of production, development of manufacturing industry, and so forth. 

It's clear that in today's reality, we can no longer speak of "building" socialism. Rather, the transition to socialism appears to be an objectively evolutionary process developing immanently within capitalism, manifesting through a series of concrete socio-economic trends (the subordinate role of private property, growth of the public sector, "soft collectivism," transformation of class structure).

Evolution of productive forces in the context of social transformations

At present, there is a pressing need to rethink classical notions of the transition from late capitalism to socialism in the context of the new—fourth—industrial revolution. Recall that within the three previous industrial revolutions, production costs declined while transaction costs grew. By the end of the 20th century, nearly half of all costs in the economy were attributable to transactions.