Cutting Edge: Technology, Information, Capitalism, and Social Revolution

Edited by Jim Davis et al. (304 pages, Verso Press, 1997)

"When John Henry was a little baby,
Sitting on his mama's knee,
He reached down, picked up a hammer and he said, "Ma,
This hammer's gonna be the death of me, Lord.
This hammer's gonna be the death of me."

Times change, and the tools of production change. Welcome to the dawn of the new millennium! Those of us fortunate enough to still have a job share our worksites with computers or some other high-tech gizmo. There are occasions when I would love to pick up a hammer and use it on my electronic cubemate but, realistically, it looks like high-technology is here to stay. Proliferating, in fact.

What does "high-tech" mean to us as citizens and workers in a corporate-dominated society? Cutting Edge explores not only the new workplace, but the new world that is being created. We have already passed the threshold into a future of dizzying opportunities and potentially horrendous pitfalls. This anthology brings together 16 different writers, professors of economics and sociology, computer programmers, software engineers, and social activists.

This book does not present an anti-technology viewpoint. The message of this book is that modern technology has tremendous potential and, if used wisely, could help lay the foundations for a higher, better civilization. For the first time in history, the dream of ending material scarcity is within reach.

But first, the bad news.

What is a robot? Forget about C-3PO, R2D2, and other science fiction for now. A robot is any mechanical device built to perform a variety of tasks under automatic control, programmable by software. The "robot revolution" is not only driving workers from the assembly line, intellectual work is also becoming "de-skilled." New software programs are taking much of the art out of architecture. Microsurgeries requiring incredible precision can now be performed by robots.

This is not just part of another business cycle. This is a radical transformation which will be as farreaching as the Industrial Revolution. In 1970, there were less than a thousand robots in operation around the world. By 1982, there were more than 30,000. According to the U.N. Economic Commission, the world robot population by the end of 1997 was 747,100. Coinciding with this logarithmic growth, increasing numbers of workers - including professionals - are either being transformed into over-worked appendages of machines, or released from employment altogether.

The phrase "Dark Factories" - where the lights are rarely turned on, because no humans work the production lines - describes the emerging industrial site.

If large-scale replacement of labor by robots continues - and all indications are that it will continue - then where will the new jobs for the displaced come from? In her Cutting Edge essay "How Will North America Work in the 21st Century?", Sally Lerner asks:

"A typical response to unemployment is retraining for those made redundant by layoffs and closings. The contemporary puzzle is "retraining for what?".

Young people are among those most impacted by these changes. The fastest-growing sectors of the economy offer "McJobs" at the bottom of the pay scale. At the end of 1999, the four fastest growing job categories are cashiers, janitors, sales clerks, waiters, and waitresses. This is the meaning of technology under (and "under" is the correct preposition!) capitalism. As this continues, American cities will increasingly take on a Calcutta-like appearance. Sally Lerner writes:

"Downward mobility, together with long-term unemployment for increasing numbers of individuals and families, will be reflected in decreased purchasing power and material standards of living, as well as in eroded self-esteem, family breakdown, rising crime rates, and all of the other well-documented consequences of unemployment and underemployment. On this path lies the resort to some form of authoritarianism."

What is referred to in the book as a "new class" is coming into existence - the low-wage, part-time, or unemployed, the homeless, the destitute and malnourished. This includes the structurally" or permanently unemployed - the "throwaway" workers whose labor is no longer needed by capital. These people have slim or no hope of ever again finding jobs with good pay and benefits. (I would not refer to this group as a "new class" - it is an integral part of the working class. You and I will quite likely be joining it.) This caste is being born out of the "downsizing" caused by application of electronics to production under capitalism.

At the other end of this growing polarization is a class of immensely rich global investors who dominate the world economy and dictate terms to national governments. To increase their profits, this group lobbies to channel public funds into the hands of private investors, pressuring to privatize social security, for example, Speculators are in a head-to-head confrontation with the growing "new class" of the poor.

While corporate welfare bums feed at the public trough more greedily thari ever, the "welfare state" is being whittled away for low-income Americans. What's behind the destruction of the "social safety net"? Nelson Peery, in his essay on "The Birth of a Modem Proletariat" explains:

"The major task of government is to create the structural programs and policies that allow the economy to function... When industry needed literate workers, the public school system was expanded. When the army needed healthy young men to fight the wars brought on by industrial expansion, nutrition programs were initiated, including a school lunch program ... Government became 'big government' in order to serve the needs of industry as it became 'big industry'. [Electronics and robotics] changed the game. Not only were larger sections of the working class superfluous to production, but the new mode of high-tech production no longer needed a reserve army of the unemployed ... As industry gave way to the new electronic means of production, it downsized. The government necessarily had to follow suit."

No capitalist is going to support labor he will probably never need. If high-tech is left in the hands of the corporate ruling class, a situation comparable to Hitler's Germany could develop. Were already reading and hearing talk about "excess population". Will you be seen as part of this group? There is potential for unprecedented surveillance, loss of privacy, and social control. The new bio-technology - including genetic screening and enhancement - offers the prospect of a eugenic agenda once thought to have been discredited with the fall of fascism. Will capitalist ethics give rise to a genetically engineered class system?

Factories where thousands of workers are concentrated are nearly a thing of the past. If the trend continues, there will soon be few, if any, remaining in America. The World Trade Organization, backed by free trade agreements, is speeding up the export of manufacturing jobs to countries with oppressive regimes maintained by Western governments on behalf of transnational corporations. Capital-intensive agriculture is forcing third-world peasantry off the land and into burgeoning cities, where labor is cheaper than replacing it with machines. Workers from all countries are being drawn into the same shrinking market for labor power, placing strong downward pressure on wages and working conditions, in a global race to the bottom. The splitting of the workforce, and the rapid mobility of capital, has diminished labor's capability, based on workplace organizing, to stand up to the dictates of capital. This means that we need to adopt new strategies for organizing workers, especially workers in places like Mexico and Guatemala.

What happens to workers displaced by automation? Either they join the ranks of the chronically un- or under-employed, or they find another job with lower pay and benefits and longer hours. Either way, their buying power is significantly lowered. Robots do not earn a wage -- they can build cars, but cannot buy them. You don't need to be a Nobel laureate in economics to see that, sooner or later, this is bound to pose major dilemmas to corporate decision-makers. To make a profit, its not enough to produce a commodity, you must also sell it. The mass markets that keep capitalism going will shrink as fewer people are able to buy those products.

Historically, the forces of production (tools, skills, organizational abilities, etc.) develop faster than the systemic social relationships (ownership, control, etc.). Eventually, the productive forces outrun the relations in which they developed and come into conflict with them. They no longer make sense within the existing social-economic structure. We appear to be entering one of these transition periods. Technology replacing labor spells the end of capitalism as we know it. The problem of our times is not production, but distribution. If there are no wages, there will be no money to buy necessities. How will wageless production be distributed?

A society that denies a large portion of the citizenry secure access to basic goods, services, and human dignity harbors a time bomb, ticking away. As more people join the ranks of the jobless, they will increasingly come to see that distribution according to need makes more sense than distribution according to the ability to pay. Electronics makes such a system possible, but it can never materialize within capitalism.

With these threats looming, it seems like we ought to be witnessing mass popular resistance. Why aren't we? One reason is the sorry state of the mass media - corporate-influenced "public" radio and TV as well as commercial broadcasting. Progressive voices are rarely heard. The entire spectrum of opinion is presented - from conservative all the way to the far right! The resulting distorted picture routinely misleads millions. Corporate media has become an "opiate," working to keep us asleep at the wheel.

Another retarding factor is the Left's pre-occupation with identity and cultural politics to the exclusion of class-conscious politics. This plays right into the elite's divide-and-conquer strategy. So far, it looks like the Left is blowing it badly.

Despite all this (here's where the good news starts!), perceptions are changing. The Gallup poll asks the question: "Is there a class struggle in this society?". In 1961 56% of those polled said yes, and in 1996 81% said yes. Students, feminists, trade unionists, environmentalists have their own goals. But increasingly, they are seeing that they are up against a common enemy.

The Los Angeles rebellion of 1992 was a glimpse of coming struggles. Portrayed by the "mainstream" (corporation-owned) media as a simple race riot, it was actually something far more significant. Nick Witheford, in the essay "Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High-Technology Capitalism", writes:

"...the uprising was in fact a multicultural anti-poverty revolt involving Latinos, blacks, and whites in a community whose sources of industrial employment had been gutted through automation and global relocation. The 'rioters' were drawn from the ranks of the un- and under-employed... They thus represent precisely the fate with which capital menaces all its laborers in the era of the workerless factory."

"Historically, capital has legitimated itself as the source of wealth and societal organization, as the power that 'keeps things going', while workers' strength has lain in the ability to stop production, to 'bring things to a halt'. Now this pattern reverses itself. High-tech capital stands as the agent of austerity and dismantling, and ... labor, appearing in the form of new alliances, emerges as the constructive force sustaining the community against disintegration."

As corporations replace labor with machinery, workers will increasingly be compelled to take over the machinery and carry on production outside of the corporate system.

Released from its capitalist shackles, technology can be used to address needs instead of creating profit for a few. This will mean a vast reduction of boring and hazardous work and in the number of hours people would be required to work to have good income and benefits. Andre Gorz writes:

"This is unlikely to exceed twenty thousand hours in a lifetime... much less in an egalitarian society opting for a less competitive, more relaxed way of life. This represents 10 year's full-time work, or 20 year's part-time work, or - a more likely choice - 40 years of intermittent work, part-time alternating with periods for holidays, or for unpaid autonomous activity, community work, etc.".

Remember how that contest on, the railroad between John Henry the steel-driving man, and the manpower-replacing steel-driving machine turned out? John Henry won, but the strain brought on a fatal heart attack. Our relationship with high technology is similar. Under existing power structures, high-tech will exacerbate the poverty and misery under which most people live. The same technology could provide a decent life to everyone. The problem is that it is now in the wrong hands. It could help end poverty and hunger - if the working class controlled it.

Techno-phobia is an understandable reaction to the daunting changes we are facing. But yielding to it will only further weaken us.

How will the Left deal with all this? The new situation clearly calls for dramatic innovation in organizing and building solidarity between potential allies. We must put sectarianism aside. Since much of the struggle is shiffing away from the economic front to the political, we need to go straight for capitalism's jugular. A popular, inclusive, class-based party is crucial at this stage. That means building a mass Labor Party.

The stakes are high. Radical change is coming. In whose interests will it be? The choice between tyranny and democracy has never been more clear. Will we stand by and allow the oligarchy to further enrich and empower themselves by corrupting the environment and our quality of life? If we do allow it, then we deserve every lethal consequence of our inaction. We need to set our sights on taking control of the technology and using it to transform society in the interests of humanity and for the health of the biosphere, not the corporations. Capitalism - not technology - is our enemy.

This brief review can only scratch the surface of this book. Cutting Edge, shows how seemingly unconnected developments are related, helps de-mystify "future shock", and points the way forward to a better future.

I'll close with another quote from Nelson Peery:

"Humanity has never failed to make reality from the possibilities created by each great advance in the means of production. We stand at the end of prehistory. There is no alternative to stepping across that nodal line and seizing tomorrow."

- David Zink