One must realise that every change in the developmental line...

One must realise that every change in the developmental line, enforced in the present revolutionary situation by objective circumstances, represents the exacting task of abandoning deeply rooted structures, mechanisms and methods of the so-called extensive stage of industrial development. In this connection, it may concisely be formulated the “sum” total of the necessity of overcoming of industrialism, its motile logic, and the mechanism of its application in Slovak society.

In case of Slovakia’s adherence to this logic, it is threatened with the same “fateful” lagging behind that had been characteristic of non-industrialised countries at the time of the first industrial revolution. At the same time, there is no doubt that this lagging, being newly formed, cannot be overcome in the same manner as had been the case with industrialisation (although this overcoming, in terms of its significance, is equivalent to industrialisation as regards the entire society).

This mode of overcoming has one unpleasant trait at the present time, viz. that it conserves and deepens backwardness and logging behind.

New methods for resolving social problems, new modes and means of satisfying social needs will in their entirety create a new quality of the social reproduction process; with a certain measure simplification, this quality may be characterised as informatisation, intellectualisation and individualisation of that process under conditions of a growing internalisation (this last aspect will be dealt with presently).

In the future, all major global problems of the present and future world will incontestably find their reflection also in our national environment and will demand and initiative response outwards (e.g. in issues of war and peace, but also in the struggle with famine and other problems of the third world), and inwards.

When speaking of global problems, mention in made - as being their fountainhead - of a crisis of culture and ethics, of a sensible weakening of the regulatory strength of universal values and norms, but also of an indispensable renewal of a “rule” of cultural, humane, ethical values - if we care that our world as such is to survive.

It must be stressed that the only way internal problems, particularly scientific-technical, economic, but also cultural ones, Slovakia can be resolved in future, is through a greater opening to the outside world.