Abstract

Karl Marx scientifically predicted the appearance of some extraordinary tendencies of social development that in the second half of the XX century were given a common name of post-industrial or informational society and interpreted as post-bourgeois, post-capitalist, post-business society and late capitalism. Autonomist Marxism and Perm philosophy school had separately come to a conclusion that all the phenomena noticed by the post-industrial theory could be adequately explained if we consider the historically new form of material labor, appeared now. Marx, who predicted this new form, named it automated, scientific, or universal labor. With the appearance of the universal labor the wealth of the society depends on the universal human powers that help to involve the extensive powers of nature into the production process. Universal labor cannot be averaged or measured by the labor time as the abstract labor; it implies high complexity and creativity. Involving increasingly powerful forces of nature and human society, it appears to be the labor of another essence and by its essence it doesn’t create value.