Is technology to blame?
"Hydrogen buses-not part of an
idealistic "Green" crusade
but an attempt to re-energise capitalism"
On Friday 9 January, after 150 years, the last mail
train carried its
consignment of envelopes, parcels and sorting staff the length of the
country. The following morning, around 500 of those staff were made
redundant. All told, the Royal Mail plans to phase out all 49 overnight
mail trains, in favour of road freight. Paid propagandists of the Royal
Mail appeared on television, looking suitably apologetic, to explain
that automatic sorting offices were quicker, more efficient, cheaper;
and the rails too unreliable. So out went the workers, some of them
unlikely to ever find work again, because a blessed nationalised
industry put the bottom line first.
To be sure, the mail has suffered a squeeze in recent years, its labour
intensive methods ill-equipped to cope with the hi-tech of instant
e-mail communication and mobile phone texting. What has been a
communications boon for many of us, was for Royal Mail managers and the
workers dependent upon their decisions, a bane. The reason for this is
that capitalism, rather than looking at the outcome of events as a
whole to judge events, demands that its actors look solely at money
value, the bottom line, price and profit. If some behaviour becomes too
expensive, it has to fall by the wayside.
Humans are a stupendously successful species precisely because of our
technology. Where animals rely on the slow, random mutation of bodily
organs for their adaptation to circumstance, humans have adopted
artificial organs, tools and technology, which can be changed or
discarded by thought to enable us to survive. Our technology increases
our numbers, our life-spans, the quality of our lives. Yet for all its
blessings, technology is still distrusted by a great many people.
The general reason for this is that most people are not in control of
the technology, it is in control of them; as with the fate of the
postal workers, changes in technology may well come along and destroy
their lives and their dreams. Capitalism means that new technology must
always respond to the one-dimensional signal of market price, and act
against the interests of those dependent upon old technology.
Different technologies produce different modes of production, conjuring
up the necessary skills and roles required to use them. Many people’s
jobs, and thus by extension their existence as members of society, are
conditional upon the existence of these roles. If the technology
changes, their jobs disappear, like the postal workers’, like the
weavers’ about whom Marx wrote in Capital. Capitalism constantly
revolutionises itself through the re-invention of productive
technology, and most people experience this as a wrenching effect
outside their own lives.
Some capitalists, and their servants, are aware of some of these
problems, and try, through the medium of the state - the executive
committee of their class - to overcome the information limitations of
responding purely to market forces. The state is called in to act on
statistics, information it has garnered, and direct and promote social
development so as to avoid the worst excess of anarchy and chaos that
would ensue from widespread unemployment or reallocation of labour.
A clear example of this is the announcement of the presence of
hydrogen-fuelled buses on London’s streets, on 14 January this year.
Using hydrogen derived from natural gas, these buses run on electricity
with only water as their sole emission. Introduced on only couple of
routes, they are part of a trial in electric hydrogen power transport,
being run through the auspices of London and various local governments
in the European Union. That is, state agencies have stepped in to help
implement a test run that would have been unprofitable for the private
sector to engage in.
Hydrogen is a fuel of the future that promises much, specifically as
oil supplies will begin to dwindle. It can store energy from renewable
resources, provide clean electricity, locating any sources of carbon
emissions at centralised sites where they can be managed, etc. As the
Chief Executive of Gas and Power, Richard Flury, of BP (the company
partnering the project), pointed out in a speech on 1 May 2000,
however, “it will take many years - probably decades - to build the
infrastructure and capacity to replace the very large base that
supplies the worlds energy”.
In other words, price, far from reflecting some general desirability of
an outcome, only relates to the degree to which a product corresponds
to the general social effort of production. A society geared towards
using oil and oil products, will find it relatively more difficult, and
thus more expensive, to change over to other sources of energy,
especially as many technical difficulties (storage and transmission of
hydrogen, for example) are yet to be resolved.
This is in line with the Labour Theory of Value. The economic value of
a product is determined by the average socially necessary labour that
must be consumed in its production. The more equipment (representing
previous labour, or “dead labour”), is used and the more efficiently
such equipment is used, the less “living labour” is required, and so a
product of a heavily mechanised industry can become very cheap.
New-comers to the market will find themselves requiring to make massive
outlays in terms of capital and equipment, before they can even know if
there is sufficient demand to justify such outlay. The one dimensional
market information thus inhibits the use of new technology, even in the
face of incontrovertible evidence from observation of consequences.
Hence the need for the state to step in and help, though not in any
manner so as to threaten property nor profits. Flury, in his speech,
repeatedly pointed to deregulation (i.e. opportunities for his
company's profits) as an engine for promoting new technology. The state
must work within the framework of existing property relations.
Obviously, this oversight committee may well come into conflict with
specific sections of the capitalist class, trying to impose a general
interest that will harm or ruin the interest of specific capitalists.
After all, the tools of state involve directly appropriating the
property of capitalists, usually via taxation, and using them to
intervene in the market to distort the signals to produce different
social ends. As a consequence, the capitalist class seek to maintain
tight control of the machinery of state, lest it turn against them like
a Frankensteinian creation.
Hence, another reason for people’s distrust of technology. The state,
as one of the forces for introducing this technology, must remain
firmly within the control of a tiny elite. That this elite is not
responsible to the vast majority alienates people from the debate over
technology. That same elite can and will use technology to secure their
own position.
A clear example of this distrust is perhaps the fear aroused by genetic
modification debates, and the extent to which it was driven by the
British government. Perhaps more clearly, so has been the general
reaction to US president Bush’s announcement of his aspiration to send
a human being to Mars. Many commentators began to speculate whether he
was grubby for votes with a spectacular project. Others noted that the
Chinese have recently advanced dramatically in their capacity to reach
into space, and how Bush’s announcement may be an attempt to go into
competition for the military advantage of space flight. After all, if
the Chinese government can launch a human into space, the same
technology could be used to launch a nuclear missile at Washington.
In a world of strife and competition, where hierarchy, power and
property prevail, technology will be seen as a threat in the hands of
another. In a society of co-operation and common ownership, technology
would be deployed under the democratic control of the whole community,
to the betterment of everyone’s lot. We would be able to take account
of all the information, not just market indicators, without needing to
pussy-foot around the vested interests of a handful of capitalists.
That is not to say, though, that the case for socialism rests on
developing technology. Neither a hydrogen economy, nor nanotechnology
nor genetic modification are required for socialism. Socialism will
take, adapt and use technology as it finds it. What socialism must do,
however, is change our relationship with our tools, so that we can take
control of our own destinies.
PIK SMEET
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