philipuso
01-07-2008, 01:18 AM
Quote of "Understanding Power" by Noam Chomsky
Well, let's just take one last case of this, an extremely important and re*vealing one: let's look at automation. I mean, it's standardly claimed these days that the reason why the population is suffering, why people have been losing jobs at a mad rate, real wages have been going down for the last twenty-five years and so on, is due to, as Ricardo said, "laws like the principle of gravitation" -inexorable market forces are making it that way, like automation, or the efficiency of international trade. That's the standard ar*gument: these things are inevitable because the market is just imposing them on us.50 It's all total bullshit. I mentioned one reason why the "effi*ciency of trade" argument is mostly a fraud, now let's look at automation.
Well, it's true that automation is "efficient"-like, by market principles, automation saves businessmen money and drives workers out of jobs. But it didn't get that way because of the market, not at all: it only got that way through intensive and prolonged funding and development through the state sector-that's market distortion. I mean, for thirty years automation was developed through the military system in the United States, and the reason why it took so long and cost so much is that automation was so in*efficient to begin with that it couldn't possibly have survived in the mar*ket-so therefore automation was developed the same way we develop most high technology: through the public sector.
See, in the Air Force and the Navy (where most of this took place), no*body cares about costs-because the taxpayer's paying, so the development can be as expensive and inefficient as you like. And in that way, they were able to develop automation to the point where it could then be used to drive people out of work and make profits for corporations. For instance, take the history of automated numerical control of metal-cutting machines [i.e. translation of part specifications into mathematical information that can be fed into machines without the need for skilled machinists]. That was devel*oped through the Air Force, it went on for decades, and finally it got effi*cient enough so that it could be handed over to the corporations and they could then throw out their workers. But it didn't happen through market forces, not at all-it was the result of massive state intervention.
Furthermore, if you look at the kind of automation that was developed, you see precisely what workers in the early labor movement were com*plaining about: being turned into mindless tools of production. I mean, au*tomation could have been designed in such a way as to use the skills of skilled machinists and to eliminate management-there's nothing inherent in automation that says it can't be used that way. But it wasn't, believe me; it was used in exactly the opposite way. Automation was designed through the state system to demean and degrade people-to de-skill workers and in*crease managerial control. And again, that had nothing to do with the mar*ket, and it had nothing to do with the nature of the technology: it had to do with straight power interests. So the kind of automation that was devel*oped in places like the M.I.T. Engineering Department was very carefully designed so that it would create interchangeable workers and enhance managerial control-and that was not for economic reasons.51 I mean, study after study, including by management firms like Arthur D. Little and so on, show that managers have selected automation even when it cuts back on profits-just because it gives them more control over their workforce.52
If you're interested, there's been some very interesting work done on this; the guy who's done the best work is David Noble-for his sins he was denied tenure at M.I.T., and now he's teaching in Canada. He wrote a book called Forces of Production, which is a pretty specialized technical analysis mainly of the development of numerical control of machinery, but he's also got a good popular book out, called Progress Without People: In Defense of Luddism. Unfortunately, this is the kind of book that's published like in Katmandu or something-it's published by a very small anarchist press in Chicago. But it's very interesting, didn't make him too popular in the Fac*ulty Club and so on.53
One of the things he discusses there is Luddism [a movement of English workers who wrecked industrial machines, which began in 1811]. See, the Luddites are always accused of having wanted to destroy machinery, but it's been known in scholarship for a long time that that's not true*what they really wanted to do was to prevent themselves from being de-skilled, and Noble talks about this in his book. The Luddites had noth*ing against machinery itself, they just didn't want it to destroy them, they wanted it to be developed in such a way that it would enhance their skills and their power, and not degrade and destroy them-which of course makes perfect sense. And that sentiment runs right throughout the work*ing-class movements of the nineteenth century, actually-and you can even see it today.
Well, if economics were like a real field, these are the kinds of things they would be studying. None of it is very complicated-like, everybody knows why cotton was cheap, for instance: everybody who went to elementary school knows why cotton was cheap, and if it hadn't been for cheap cotton, there wouldn't have been an industrial revolution. It's not hard. But I'd be very surprised if anybody teaches this stuff in economics courses in the United States.
I mean, sure, there are some market forces operating-but the reality is, they're pretty much off around the edges. And when people talk about the progress of automation and free-market "trade forces" inevitably kicking all these people out of work and driving the whole world towards kind of a Third World-type polarization of wealth-I mean, that's true if you take a narrow enough perspective on it. But if you look into the factors that made things the way they are, it doesn't even come close to being true, it's not even remotely in touch with reality. But when you're studying economics in the ideological institutions, that's all just irrelevant and you're not sup*posed to ask questions like these: you have all the information right in front of you, but these are simply not matters that it is proper to spend time talk*ing about.
Well, let's just take one last case of this, an extremely important and re*vealing one: let's look at automation. I mean, it's standardly claimed these days that the reason why the population is suffering, why people have been losing jobs at a mad rate, real wages have been going down for the last twenty-five years and so on, is due to, as Ricardo said, "laws like the principle of gravitation" -inexorable market forces are making it that way, like automation, or the efficiency of international trade. That's the standard ar*gument: these things are inevitable because the market is just imposing them on us.50 It's all total bullshit. I mentioned one reason why the "effi*ciency of trade" argument is mostly a fraud, now let's look at automation.
Well, it's true that automation is "efficient"-like, by market principles, automation saves businessmen money and drives workers out of jobs. But it didn't get that way because of the market, not at all: it only got that way through intensive and prolonged funding and development through the state sector-that's market distortion. I mean, for thirty years automation was developed through the military system in the United States, and the reason why it took so long and cost so much is that automation was so in*efficient to begin with that it couldn't possibly have survived in the mar*ket-so therefore automation was developed the same way we develop most high technology: through the public sector.
See, in the Air Force and the Navy (where most of this took place), no*body cares about costs-because the taxpayer's paying, so the development can be as expensive and inefficient as you like. And in that way, they were able to develop automation to the point where it could then be used to drive people out of work and make profits for corporations. For instance, take the history of automated numerical control of metal-cutting machines [i.e. translation of part specifications into mathematical information that can be fed into machines without the need for skilled machinists]. That was devel*oped through the Air Force, it went on for decades, and finally it got effi*cient enough so that it could be handed over to the corporations and they could then throw out their workers. But it didn't happen through market forces, not at all-it was the result of massive state intervention.
Furthermore, if you look at the kind of automation that was developed, you see precisely what workers in the early labor movement were com*plaining about: being turned into mindless tools of production. I mean, au*tomation could have been designed in such a way as to use the skills of skilled machinists and to eliminate management-there's nothing inherent in automation that says it can't be used that way. But it wasn't, believe me; it was used in exactly the opposite way. Automation was designed through the state system to demean and degrade people-to de-skill workers and in*crease managerial control. And again, that had nothing to do with the mar*ket, and it had nothing to do with the nature of the technology: it had to do with straight power interests. So the kind of automation that was devel*oped in places like the M.I.T. Engineering Department was very carefully designed so that it would create interchangeable workers and enhance managerial control-and that was not for economic reasons.51 I mean, study after study, including by management firms like Arthur D. Little and so on, show that managers have selected automation even when it cuts back on profits-just because it gives them more control over their workforce.52
If you're interested, there's been some very interesting work done on this; the guy who's done the best work is David Noble-for his sins he was denied tenure at M.I.T., and now he's teaching in Canada. He wrote a book called Forces of Production, which is a pretty specialized technical analysis mainly of the development of numerical control of machinery, but he's also got a good popular book out, called Progress Without People: In Defense of Luddism. Unfortunately, this is the kind of book that's published like in Katmandu or something-it's published by a very small anarchist press in Chicago. But it's very interesting, didn't make him too popular in the Fac*ulty Club and so on.53
One of the things he discusses there is Luddism [a movement of English workers who wrecked industrial machines, which began in 1811]. See, the Luddites are always accused of having wanted to destroy machinery, but it's been known in scholarship for a long time that that's not true*what they really wanted to do was to prevent themselves from being de-skilled, and Noble talks about this in his book. The Luddites had noth*ing against machinery itself, they just didn't want it to destroy them, they wanted it to be developed in such a way that it would enhance their skills and their power, and not degrade and destroy them-which of course makes perfect sense. And that sentiment runs right throughout the work*ing-class movements of the nineteenth century, actually-and you can even see it today.
Well, if economics were like a real field, these are the kinds of things they would be studying. None of it is very complicated-like, everybody knows why cotton was cheap, for instance: everybody who went to elementary school knows why cotton was cheap, and if it hadn't been for cheap cotton, there wouldn't have been an industrial revolution. It's not hard. But I'd be very surprised if anybody teaches this stuff in economics courses in the United States.
I mean, sure, there are some market forces operating-but the reality is, they're pretty much off around the edges. And when people talk about the progress of automation and free-market "trade forces" inevitably kicking all these people out of work and driving the whole world towards kind of a Third World-type polarization of wealth-I mean, that's true if you take a narrow enough perspective on it. But if you look into the factors that made things the way they are, it doesn't even come close to being true, it's not even remotely in touch with reality. But when you're studying economics in the ideological institutions, that's all just irrelevant and you're not sup*posed to ask questions like these: you have all the information right in front of you, but these are simply not matters that it is proper to spend time talk*ing about.