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Title: Technology, Capitalism and Anarchism
Author: Anarcho
Language: en
Topics: anarcho-communist, economics, technology
Source: Retrieved on December 22, 2009 from http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/anarchism/writers/anarcho/tech.html

Anarcho

Technology, Capitalism and Anarchism

Technology has an obvious effect on individual freedom, in some ways

increasing it, in others restricting it. However, since capitalism is a

social system based on inequalities of power, it is a truism that

technology will reflect those inequalities, as it does not develop in a

social vacuum.

No technology evolves and spreads unless there are people who benefit

from it and have sufficient means to disseminate it. In a capitalist

society, technologies useful to the rich and powerful are generally the

ones that spread. This can be seen from capitalist industry, where

technology has been implemented specifically to deskill the worker, so

replacing the skilled, valued craftperson with the easily trained (and

eliminated!) “mass worker.” By making trying to make any individual

worker dispensable, the capitalist hopes to deprive workers of a means

of controlling the relation between their effort on the job and the pay

they receive. In Proudhon’s words, the “machine, or the workshop, after

having degraded the labourer by giving him a master, completes his

degeneracy by reducing him from the rank of artisan to that of common

workman.” [System of Economical Contradictions, p. 202]

So, unsurprisingly, technology within a hierarchical society will tend

to re-enforce hierarchy and domination. Managers/capitalists will select

technology that will protect and extend their power (and profits), not

weaken it. Thus, while it is often claimed that technology is “neutral”

this is not (and can never be) the case. Simply put, “progress” within a

hierarchical system will reflect the power structures of that system

(“technology is political,” to use David Noble’s expression, it does not

evolve in isolation from human beings and the social relationships and

power structures between them).

As George Reitzer notes, technological innovation under a hierarchical

system soon results in “increased control and the replacement of human

with non-human technology. In fact, the replacement of human with

non-human technology is very often motivated by a desire for greater

control, which of course is motivated by the need for

profit-maximisation. The great sources of uncertainty and

unpredictability in any rationalising system are people...

McDonaldisation involves the search for the means to exert increasing

control over both employees and customers” [George Reitzer, The

McDonaldisation of Society, p. 100]. For Reitzer, capitalism is marked

by the “irrationality of rationality,” in which this process of control

results in a system based on crushing the individuality and humanity of

those who live within it.

In this process of controlling employees for the purpose of maximising

profit, deskilling comes about because skilled labour is more expensive

than unskilled or semi-skilled and skilled workers have more power over

their working conditions and work due to the difficulty in replacing

them. In addition it is easier to “rationalise” the production process

with methods like Taylorism, a system of strict production schedules and

activities based on the amount of time (as determined by management)

that workers “need” to perform various operations in the workplace, thus

requiring simple, easily analysed and timed movements. And as companies

are in competition, each has to copy the most “efficient” (i.e. profit

maximising) production techniques introduced by the others in order to

remain profitable, no matter how dehumanising this may be for workers.

Thus the evil effects of the division of labour and deskilling becoming

widespread. Instead of managing their own work, workers are turned into

human machines in a labour process they do not control, instead being

controlled by those who own the machines they use (see also Harry

Braverman, Labour and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the

Twentieth Century, Monthly Review Press, 1974).

As Max Stirner noted (echoing Adam Smith), this process of deskilling

and controlling work means that “When everyone is to cultivate himself

into man, condemning a man to machine-like labour amounts to the same

thing as slavery... Every labour is to have the intent that the man be

satisfied. Therefore he must become a master in it too, be able to

perform it as a totality. He who in a pin-factory only puts on heads,

only draws the wire, works, as it were mechanically, like a machine; he

remains half-trained, does not become a master: his labour cannot

satisfy him, it can only fatigue him. His labour is nothing by itself,

has no object in itself, is nothing complete in itself; he labours only

into another’s hands, and is used. (exploited) by this other” [The Ego

and Its Own, p. 121] Kropotkin makes a similar argument against the

division of labour (“machine-like labour”) in The Conquest of Bread (see

chapter XV — “The Division of Labour”) as did Proudhon (see chapters III

and IV of System of Economical Contradictions).

Modern industry is set up to ensure that workers do not become “masters”

of their work but instead follow the orders of management. The evolution

of technology lies in the relations of power within a society. This is

because “the viability of a design is not simply a technical or even

economic evaluation but rather a political one. A technology is deemed

viable if it conforms to the existing relations of power.” [David Noble,

Progress without People, p. 63]

This process of controlling, restricting, and de-individualising labour

is a key feature of capitalism. Work that is skilled and controlled by

workers in empowering to them in two ways. Firstly it gives them pride

in their work and themselves. Secondly, it makes it harder to replace

them or suck profits out of them. Therefore, in order to remove the

“subjective” factor (i.e. individuality and worker control) from the

work process, capital needs methods of controlling the workforce to

prevent workers from asserting their individuality, thus preventing them

from arranging their own lives and work and resisting the authority of

the bosses.

This need to control workers can be seen from the type of machinery

introduced during the Industrial Revolution. According to Andrew Ure, a

consultant for the factory owners, ”[i]n the factories for spinning

coarse yarn...the mule-spinners [skilled workers] have abused their

powers beyond endurance, domineering in the most arrogant manner... over

their masters. High wages... have, in too many cases, cherished pride

and supplied funds for supporting refractory spirits in strikes...

During a disastrous turmoil of [this] kind... several capitalists... had

recourse to the celebrated machinists... of Manchester... [to construct]

a self-acting mule... This invention confirms the great doctrine already

propounded, that when capital enlists science in her service, the

refractory hand of labour will always be taught docility” [Andrew Ure,

Philosophy of Manufactures, pp. 336–368 — quoted by Noble, Op. Cit., p.

125]

Why is it necessary for workers to be “taught docility”? Because ”[b]y

the infirmity of human nature, it happens that the more skilful the

workman, the more self-willed and intractable he is apt to become, and

of course the less fit a component of mechanical system in which... he

may do great damage to the whole.” [Ibid.] Proudhon quotes an English

Manufacturer who argues the same point:

“The insubordination of our workmen has given us the idea of dispensing

with them. We have made and stimulated every imaginable effort to

replace the service of men by tools more docile, and we have achieved

our object. Machinery has delivered capital from the oppression of

labour.” [System of Economical Contradictions, p. 189]

As David Noble summarises, during the Industrial Revolution “Capital

invested in machines that would reinforce the system of domination [in

the workplace], and this decision to invest, which might in the long run

render the chosen technique economical, was not itself an economical

decision but a political one, with cultural sanction.” [Op. Cit., p. 6]

A similar process was at work in the US, where the rise in trade

unionism resulted in “industrial managers bec[oming] even more insistent

that skill and initiative not be left on the shop floor, and that, by

the same token, shop floor workers not have control over the

reproduction of relevant skills through craft-regulated apprenticeship

training. Fearful that skilled shop-floor workers would use their scare

resources to reduce their effort and increase their pay, management

deemed that knowledge of the shop-floor process must reside with the

managerial structure.” [William Lazonick, Organisation and Technology in

Capitalist Development, p. 273]

American managers happily embraced Taylorism (aka “scientific

management”), according to which the task of the manager was to gather

into his possession all available knowledge about the work he oversaw

and reorganise it. Taylor himself considered the task for workers was

“to do what they are told to do promptly and without asking questions or

making suggestions.” [quoted by David Noble, American By Design, p. 268]

Taylor also relied exclusively upon incentive-pay schemes which

mechanically linked pay to productivity and had no appreciation of the

subtleties of psychology or sociology (which would have told him that

enjoyment of work and creativity is more important for people than just

higher pay). Unsurprisingly, workers responded to his schemes by

insubordination, sabotage and strikes and it was “discovered ... that

the ‘time and motion’ experts frequently knew very little about the

proper work activities under their supervision, that often they simply

guessed at the optimum rates for given operations ... it meant that the

arbitrary authority of management has simply been reintroduced in a less

apparent form.” [David Noble, Op. Cit., p. 272] Although, now, the power

of management could hide begin the “objectivity” of “science.”

Katherine Stone also argues (in her account of “The Origins of Job

Structure in the Steel Industry” in America) that the “transfer of skill

[from the worker to management] was not a response to the necessities of

production, but was, rather, a strategy to rob workers of their power”

by “tak[ing] knowledge and authority from the skilled workers and

creating a management cadre able to direct production.” Stone highlights

that this deskilling process was combined by a “divide and rule” policy

by management by wage incentives and new promotion policies. This

created a reward system in which workers who played by the rules would

receive concrete gains in terms of income and status. Over time, such a

structure would become to be seen as “the natural way to organise work

and one which offered them personal advancement” even though, “when the

system was set up, it was neither obvious nor rational. The job ladders

were created just when the skill requirements for jobs in the industry

were diminishing as a result of the new technology, and jobs were

becoming more and more equal as to the learning time and responsibility

involved.” The modern structure of the capitalist workplace was created

to break workers resistance to capitalist authority and was deliberately

“aimed at altering workers’ ways of thinking and feeling — which they

did by making workers’ individual ‘objective’ self-interests congruent

with that of the employers and in conflict with workers’ collective

self-interest.” It was a means of “labour discipline” and of “motivating

workers to work for the employers’ gain and preventing workers from

uniting to take back control of production.” Stone notes that the

“development of the new labour system in the steel industry was repeated

throughout the economy in different industries. As in the steel

industry, the core of these new labour systems were the creation of

artificial job hierarchies and the transfer pf skills from workers to

the managers.” [Root & Branch (ed.), Root and Branch: The Rise of the

Workers’ Movements, pp. 152–5]

This process was recognised by libertarians at the time, with the

I.W.W., for example, arguing that ”[l]abourers are no longer classified

by difference in trade skill, but the employer assigns them according to

the machine which they are attached. These divisions, far from

representing differences in skill or interests among the labourers, are

imposed by the employers that workers may be pitted against one another

and spurred to greater exertion in the shop, and that all resistance to

capitalist tyranny may be weakened by artificial distinctions.” [quoted

by Katherine Stone, Op. Cit., p. 157] For this reason, anarchists and

syndicalists argued for, and built, industrial unions — one union per

workplace and industry — in order to combat these divisions and

effectively resist capitalist tyranny.

Needless to say, such management schemes never last in the long run nor

totally work in the short run either — which explains why hierarchical

management continues, as does technological deskilling (workers always

find ways of using new technology to increase their power within the

workplace and so undermine management decisions to their own advantage).

This of process deskilling workers was complemented by many factors —

state protected markets (in the form of tariffs and government orders —

the “lead in technological innovation came in armaments where assured

government orders justified high fixed-cost investments”); the use of

“both political and economic power [by American Capitalists] to

eradicate and diffuse workers’ attempts to assert shop-floor control”;

and “repression, instigated and financed both privately and publicly, to

eliminate radical elements [and often not-so-radical elements as well,

we must note] in the American labour movement.” [William Lazonick,

Competitive Advantage on the Shop Floor, p. 218, p. 303]) Thus state

action played a key role in destroying craft control within industry,

along with the large financial resources of capitalists compared to

workers.

Bringing this sorry story up to date, we find “many, if not most,

American managers are reluctant to develop skills [and initiative] on

the shop floor for the fear of losing control of the flow of work.”

[William Lazonick, Organisation and Technology in Capitalist

Development, pp. 279–280] Given that there is a division of knowledge in

society (and, obviously, in the workplace as well) this means that

capitalism has selected to introduce a management and technology mix

which leads to inefficiency and waste of valuable knowledge, experience

and skills.

Thus the capitalist workplace is both produced by and is a weapon in the

class struggle and reflects the shifting power relations between workers

and employers. The creation of artificial job hierarchies, the transfer

of skills away from workers to managers and technological development

are all products of class struggle. Thus technological progress and

workplace organisation within capitalism have little to do with

“efficiency” and far more to do with profits and power.

This means that while self-management has consistently proven to be more

efficient (and empowering) than hierarchical management structures,

capitalism actively selects against it. This is because capitalism is

motivated purely by increasing profits, and the maximisation of profits

is best done by disempowering workers and empowering bosses (i.e. the

maximisation of power) — even though this concentration of power harms

efficiency by distorting and restricting information flow and the

gathering and use of widely distributed knowledge within the firm (as in

any command economy).

Thus the last refuge of the capitalist/technophile (namely that the

productivity gains of technology outweigh the human costs or the means

used to achieve them) is doubly flawed. Firstly, disempowering

technology may maximise profits, but it need not increase efficient

utilisation of resources or workers time, skills or potential

(efficiency and profit maximisation are two different things, with such

deskilling and management control actually reducing efficiency —

compared to workers’ control — but as it allows managers to maximise

profits the capitalist market selects it). Secondly, “when investment

does in fact generate innovation, does such innovation yield greater

productivity?... After conducting a poll of industry executives on

trends in automation, Business Week concluded in 1982 that ‘there is a

heavy backing for capital investment in a variety of labour-saving

technologies that are designed to fatten profits without necessary

adding to productive output.’” David Noble concludes that “whenever

managers are able to use automation to ‘fatten profits’ and enhance

their authority (by eliminating jobs and extorting concessions and

obedience from the workers who remain) without at the same time

increasing social product, they appear more than ready to do.” [David

Noble, Progress Without People, pp. 86–87 and p. 89]

Of course the claim is that higher wages follow increased investment and

technological innovation (“in the long run” — although usually “the long

run” has to be helped to arrive by workers’ struggle and protest!).

Passing aside the question of whether slightly increased consumption

really makes up for dehumanising and uncreative work, we must note that

it is usually the capitalist who really benefits from technological

change in money terms. For example, between 1920 and 1927 (a period when

unemployment caused by technology became commonplace) the automobile

industry (which was at the forefront of technological change) saw wages

rise by 23.7%. Thus, claim supporters of capitalism, technology is in

all our interests. However, capital surpluses rose by 192.9% during the

same period — 8 times faster! Little wonder wages rose! Similarly, over

the last 20 years the USA and many other countries have seen companies

“down-sizing” and “right-sizing” their workforce and introducing new

technologies. The result? While wages have stagnated, profits have been

increasing as productivity rises and rises and the rich have been

getting richer and richer — technology yet again showing whose side it

is on. As David Noble notes (with regards to manufacturing):

“U.S. Manufacturing industry over the last thirty years ... [has seen]

the value of capital stock (machinery) relative to labour double,

reflecting the trend towards mechanisation and automation. As a

consequence ... the absolute output person hour increased 115%, more

than double. But during this same period, real earnings for hourly

workers ... rose only 84%, less than double. Thus, after three decades

of automation-based progress, workers are now earning less relative to

their output than before. That is, they are producing more for less;

working more for their boss and less for themselves.” [Op. Cit., pp.

92–3]

Noble continues:

“For if the impact of automation on workers has not been ambiguous,

neither has the impact on management and those it serves — labour’s loss

has been their gain. During the same first thirty years of our age of

automation, corporate after tax profits have increased 450%, more than

five times the increase in real earnings for workers.” [Op. Cit., p. 95]

But why? Because labour has the ability to produce a flexible amount of

output (use value) for a given wage. Unlike coal or steel, a worker can

be made to work more intensely during a given working period and so

technology can be utilised to maximise that effort as well as increasing

the pool of potential replacements for an employee by deskilling their

work (so reducing workers’ power to get higher wages for their work).

But do not get us wrong, technological progress does not imply that we

are victims. Far from it, much innovation is the direct result of our

resistance to hierarchy and its tools. For example, capitalists turned

to Taylorism and “scientific management” in response to the power of

skilled craft workers to control their work and working environment (the

famous 1892 Homestead strike, for example, was a direct product of the

desire of the company to end the skilled workers’ control and power on

the shop-floor). In response to this, factory and other workers created

a whole new structure of working class power — a new kind of unionism

based on the industrial level. This can be seen in many different

countries. For example, in Spain, the C.N.T. (an anarcho-syndicalist

union) adopted the sindicato unico (one union) in 1918 which united all

workers of the same workplace in the same union (by uniting skilled and

unskilled in a single organisation, the union increased their fighting

power). In the USA, the 1930s saw a massive and militant union

organising drive by the C.I.O. based on industrial unionism and

collective bargaining (inspired, in part, by the example of the I.W.W.

and its broad organisation of unskilled workers). Thus technology and

its (ab)uses is very much a product of the class struggle, of the

struggle for freedom in the workplace.

With a given technology, workers and radicals soon learn to use it in

ways never dreamed off to resist their bosses and the state (which

necessitates a transformation of within technology again to try and give

the bosses an upper hand!). The use of the Internet, for example, to

organise, spread and co-ordinate information, resistance and struggles

is a classic example of this process (see Jason Wehling, “’Netwars’ and

Activists Power on the Internet”, Scottish Anarchist no. 2 for details).

There is always a “guerrilla war” associated with technology, with

workers and radicals developing their own tactics to gain counter

control for themselves. Thus much technological change reflects our

power and activity to change our own lives and working conditions. We

must never forget that.

While some may dismiss our analysis as “Luddite,” to do so is make

“technology” an idol to be worshipped rather than something to be

critically analysed. Moreover, to do so is to misrepresent the ideas of

the Luddites themselves — they never actually opposed all technology or

machinery. Rather, they opposed “all Machinery hurtful to Commonality”

(as a March 1812 letter to a hated Manufacturer put it). Rather than

worship technological progress (or view it uncritically), the Luddites

subjected technology to critical analysis and evaluation. They opposed

those forms of machinery that harmed themselves or society. Unlike those

who smear others as “Luddites,” the labourers who broke machines were

not intimidated by the modern notion of progress. Their sense of right

and wrong was not clouded by the notion that technology was somehow

inevitable or neutral. They did not think that human values (or their

own interests) were irrelevant in evaluating the benefits and drawbacks

of a given technology and its effects on workers and society as a whole.

Nor did they consider their skills and livelihood as less important than

the profits and power of the capitalists. Indeed, it would be temping to

argue that worshippers of technological progress are, in effect, urging

us not to think and to sacrifice ourselves to a new abstraction like the

state or capital. The Luddites were an example of working people

deciding what their interests were and acting to defend them by their

own direct action — in this case opposing technology which benefited the

ruling class by giving them an edge in the class struggle. Anarchists

follow this critical approach to technology, recognising that it is not

neutral nor above criticism.

For capital, the source of problems in industry is people. Unlike

machines, people can think, feel, dream, hope and act. The “evolution”

of technology will, therefore, reflect the class struggle within society

and the struggle for liberty against the forces of authority.

Technology, far from being neutral, reflects the interests of those with

power. Technology will only be truly our friend once we control it

ourselves and modify to reflect human values (this may mean that some

forms of technology will have to be written off and replaces by new

forms in a free society). Until that happens, most technological

processes — regardless of the other advantages they may have — will be

used to exploit and control people. Hence French syndicalist Emile

Pouget’s argument that the worker “will only respect machinery in the

day when it becomes his friend, shortening his work, rather than as

today, his enemy, taking away jobs, killing workers.” [quoted by David

Noble, Op. Cit., p. 15]

While resisting technological “progress” (by means up to and including

machine breaking) is essential in the here and now, the issue of

technology can only be truly solved when those who use a given

technology control its development, introduction and use. Little wonder,

therefore, that anarchists consider workers’ self-management as a key

means of solving the problems created by technology. Proudhon, for

example, argued that the solution to the problems created by the

division of labour and technology could only be solved by “association”

and “by a broad education, by the obligation of apprenticeship, and by

the co-operation of all who take part in the collective work.” This

would ensure that “the division of labour can no longer be a cause of

degradation for the workman [or workwoman].” [The General Idea of the

Revolution, p. 223] Only when workers “obtain ... collective property in

capital” and capital (and so technology) is no longer “concentrated in

the hands of a separate, exploiting class” will they be able “to smash

the tyranny of capital.” [Michael Bakunin, The Basic Bakunin, pp. 90–1]

While as far as technology goes, it may not be enough to get rid of the

boss, this is a necessary first step in creating a technology which

enhances freedom rather than controlling and shaping the worker (or user

in general) and enhancing the power and profits of the capitalist. In

the words of Cornelius Castoriadais, the “conscious transformation of

technology will ... be a central task of a society of free workers.”

[Workers’ Councils and the Economics of a Self-Managed Society, p. 13]