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In a message dated 12/11/2009 10:57:50 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, [email protected] writes: 1) does automation involve a "qualitative change" to the "motive power" of production? Answer: Yes, without question but we means something very different by the word automation. Automation is utterly revolutionary in comparison with non automated systems. In relationship to heavy or late stage manufacture a different motive force is involved. Automation on the basis of the electro-mechanical process is not the same as modern electronic production. Engels presents the issue in its historical setting. “In both cases, the factory constitutes a big automaton (moreover, perfected to that shape only recently) and this is its adequate form. And its most perfect form is the machine-building automaton, which abolished the handicraft and manufacture foundation of large-scale industry, and thus first provided the consummate form of machinery.” Automation speaks of automatic machines built and operating on the basis of the electro-mechanical principle. The system of Fordism perfected and expanded automation. Advanced robotics and the newer production system is not automation. Electronic production - a clumsy expression, is founded on a new technology and begins the qualitative reconfiguration of automated systems. The two articles forwarded to the list are really outdated. The article from 1955 was probably fine when it was written but 55 years have passed. ************ Answer to question 2.: NO. My standpoint is not automation or automatic machines and automatic integrated machines systems. I have written about advanced electronic founded on a new technology expressed in the semi-conductor; the scientific revolution and advanced robotics. This new technology brings society to antagonism rather than conflict, which is born of the bourgeois-proletariat property form. Society as history moves in class antagonism rather than simply conflict between means and relations. The unity and struggle of opposites internal to a process, drives the process through all its quantitative boundaries of development. Class society evolves and develops different. Within the conflict between means and relations of production there exists a germ of antagonism that originates in private property rather than productive forces. Society is not destined to forever move in class antagonism. Antagonism disappears with the destruction of private property, conflict between means and relations remains as the collective pursuit to implements new advances in science. Marx writes this as “It is only in the order of things in which here will be no more classes and class antagonism that social evolutions will cease to be political revolutions.” (Poverty of Philosophy) The incremental addition of a qualitatively new technology or new configuration of productive forces disrupts the quantitative expansion of the system on the old basis. This new thing - “new quality,” is added to production because it is a more efferent form of energy or deployment of labor. As clusters of the new technology come together redefining the system of production new forms of classes arise. These new forms of classes do not evolve in conflict with the old classes and dominant social system, but rather evolve in antagonism with the old class and social system. This is so because the new classes express a new form of property or ownership right and wealth creation. The old ruling class, for one reason of another connected to its wealth possession and ideological systems backed by the state, cannot peacefully surrender its control of society based on a polite request. In order for a new class birthed by new productive forces to gyrate in unity and conflict with the old classes, new and old classes would have to be constituted together as the unity defining the mode of production. The bourgeoisie and modern proletariat are birthed under an existing mode of production and as a new unity of a production process are not “connected” to the nobility and serf, or rather does not constitute the fundamental unity of the landed property relations or the technology basis upon which feudal society was built. Bourgeoisie and proletariat are birthed in antagonism with the society of landed property relations and their growth and evolution as mature classes is predicated upon the destruction and sublating of everything that makes feudalism, well feudalism. Conflict is important as a concept because it describes how and why society is driven from one quantitative boundary to the next. The struggle between the fundamental classes of a society, defining the reality of means and relations of production drives the society forward as this struggle over the society products and against oppression intensifies. Slave society broke drown and was ultimately overthrown by new classes created by developing means of production. When the slave revolts combined and intersected with the impulses of new classes society enters an epoch of social revolution. However the slave of the slave society could never have over thrown slavery as a system precisely because his struggle is a conflict with his master rather than that of new class evolving in antagonism. ******** 3) Does anything in IT, in microprocessor technology, in digital control, in modern logistical and cost tracking mean, indicate, denote, imply that socialist revolution was impossible prior to the existence of such technology? Reply No. Socialist, or rather communist political insurrections were possible and took place during the past century, at the back of the curve of industrial development. The dynamic is that it is possible to skip a political period - stage, of a distinct form of private property. For instance, Russia leaped from political feudalism to the political dictatorship of the proletariat and then had to carry out the industrial revolution, in a country of 150,000,000 peasants. In America communist insurrection was not possible, given our boundary of industrial development. Once a society begin to develop and operate on the basis of a new mode of production, society must complete its boundaries of development, owing to the entrenchment of property. In countries like Russia and China society was caught in the evolutionary leap. In the context of the evolutionary leap from the landed property relation to industrial society the communists won the political contest or the insurrectionary movement. There was no socialist revolution in Russia October 1917. There was a victorious communist insurrection. Cuba was able to enter the orbit of Soviet power and this actually saved the Cuban revolution. In America, we were not passing through the evolutionary leap but rather, passing from one boundary of development of the industrial system to the next. Enormous class struggles take place during the passing from one boundary to another, but this conflict is hardly proof of a revolutionary transition in the material power or the desire of any segment of the working class to overthrow the property form. WL. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
