Power, Democracy, Professionalism

Abstract

When we speak of power, we deal with a phenomenon with which every individual is in constant contact, and the essence of which would appear to be completely clear. However, social and technological progress inevitably results in the complication and further specialization of administration, and influences the mechanism and techniques of exercising power. A lively discussion of this phenomenon is under way in the bourgeois literature, where the dominant view is that the institutions of democracy have become outdated and are not applicable to the new conditions. Socialism provides a different answer to this question. In the Theses of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Fifty Years of the Great October Socialist Revolution, emphasis is placed upon the fact that the road to self-administration by the public lies through a further development of the socialist state and democracy. The improvement of democracy will make it possible to accelerate economic and social development and to resolve, more rapidly and effectively, the tasks involved in the building of communism. Among the problems that have arisen in this regard, we are interested above all in change in the forms of participation of the masses in carrying out the functions of power, and also the relationship between this and the professional administrative category of working people. The present article is devoted to an effort to provide an answer to these questions.