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Title: Against technology Author: Pierleone Porcu Date: 1988 Language: en Topics: technology, insurrectionist, science, Source: Retrieved September 7, 2012 from https://translationcollective.wordpress.com/2012/02/10/against-technology/ Notes: Published 1988 in “Insurrection” #5
A perspective based on the need to completely destroy technology is
confusing to many comrades, and a considerable number of them refuse to
accept it. They find it more reasonable and realistic to consider only
the problem of destroying so-called hard technology (all kinds of
nuclear armaments, asbestos, etc.). They consider soft technology
(electronics, information technology, etc.) socially useful and think
they will be able to make good use of it in the future, as though the
latter could be detached from the logic of domination that produced and
developed it.
In this way comrades are demonstrating an “enlightened” positivist
attitude to science. They claim the instruments produced by
technological and scientific knowledge are neutral, and only critizise
the bad social use that Power puts them to.
We think on the contrary, that the instruments created by Power cannot
fail to obey the logic that created them. They are totally functional to
its aims no matter who uses them and in spite of any apparent advantages
they might bring to society.
We are against those who are alwayys trying to justify things, saying
that there is some good at the base of everything, and it deserves to be
presented. Moreover, we think it is useful to place an element of doubt
into the swamp of certainties and commonplaces that abound.
Those who maintain there is an absolute need for existing technology are
the bosses, governors and their multitude of servants. They all have
good reason for doing so, no doubt. Comrades, on the other hand, should
have just have as good reasons for always being suspicious of such
attitudes. Things become tragic when we see an identity of viewpoint
between those in power and those struggling against it.
All the base technology that is used in every field of social life today
comes from military research. Its civil use obeys this logic far more
than we immediately understand. Until now all we have succeeded in
demonstrating has been the precise, scientific, authoritarian project at
organisational level. It is important to understand the unconscious
mechanisms that operate at mass level, allowing the power structure to
overcome people’s initial rejection and gain their full support. Only a
few people contest cybernetic command. The general tendency is a feeling
of inevitability. It is coming to be considered indispensable, therefore
socially useful. Anyone who points out the need for the total
destruction of the technological apparatus produced by capital is passed
off as an irresponsible madman who wants to take civilisation back to
the Stone Age.
This does not have to be the case, if one thinks about it. Present day
technology is the practical result of a form of knowledge that matured
during capital’s industrial development. It is always motivated by those
who are in power. To want to safeguard some technologies over others is
to put an obstacle in the way of the total destruction of the whole
productive order of dominion. It also means to put a limit on
revolutionary action and maintain an ambigous social relationship with
such structures.
So those who, although they say they are revolutionary, support the need
to safeguard part of capital’s productive technology, do not see that in
doing so they are lending a hand to the declared reformists. The latter,
more coherently, support a continual modification of all the organisms
of power in such a way that the system is always functional and updated
to meet the new needs of domination and social change.
Our radical project to destroy technology must be within the
revolutionary process, and we should put no limits on the course of this
or circumscribe it to within our presently limited knowledge.
The problem of a contemporary social revolution cannot be resolved with
recourse to the knowledge that has been acquired until now and which is
limited by the interests of Power. We are against those who see present
day knowledge as something that has reached its conclusion.
As for how things stand now: the so-called scientists who are studying
artificial intelligence or the application of present-day technology in
other fields, are in fact scientific workers. They are highly
specialized in one sector (the scientific one) but most of them are
unaware of what is happening in other fields of research, not to mention
the rest of society which they often neglect completely in their aseptic
laboratories.
The way those scientific workers think greatly resembles the machines
they project. They apply binary logic and are basically incapable of
thinking beyond this. There is no creative reasoning, they cannot bring
any development of thought into the field of knowledge.
It is only our ignorance that makes us consider them great brains. This
is an important factor that should be gone into further. Scientists are
in fact the new intermediate class produced by the technological
revolution.
The greatest discoveries have always been made when the principle of
authority was absent or vacillating at all levels – as happened at the
beginning of the century – and this also applies to the field of
science. We cannot be revoltionaries concerning only the one social
structure we do not accept, but must be so in all fields, including the
scientific one. The dominating order we want to destroy has roots
everywhere, therefore should be attacked everywhere.
The only attitude to have towards the bosses of science is that of
discerning what they are hiding behind all the things that seem
innocuous and humane to the profane public.
This is very important as we are used to being aware of only the most
noticable and superficial things around us. The bosses and their
servants take great care to show us certain things, just enough to
capture our innate curiosity, pushing us to look at things that in
reality are of no importance. We thus miss out the most important things
that are brought about without our knowledge, to our cost. We should not
underestimate the enemy’s intelligence. The aim of those who dominate is
to use all the scientific instruments that present-day scientific
knowledge has to offer, not to alleviate suffering but to continue it
within a set of relations that are modified from time to time. Capital
and state find themselves obliged to carry out this incessant
modification because of the unrelenting struggle that the proletariat
carry on against them daily. In fact, notwithstanding the great
transferral of wealth that takes place every day in the attack on the
exploited, it would not take much for the latter to thwart the bosses’
projects.
Once they show their intention to destroy things radically,
revolutionaries gain an immeasurable advantage, as the attack on the
state and capital becomes one that knows no limits and intends to
concede nothing to the enemy. This is why it is necessary to destroy the
entire technological apparatus, beyond the use that anyone may think to
make of it in the future. It will prevent the struggle from falling into
the trap laid by the radical reformists who, from the partial
destruction of the structures of domination have made the starting point
for restructuring.
We are therefore against those who support political criticism, even in
the field of science, because such a critque always tries to reduce the
reasons for radical opposition to a simple question of detail concerning
certain operative choices. In this way the supporters of the political
critique are looking for adjustment and compromise with the class enemy
who is intelligently disposed to formally modifying its own position,
with the aim of restructuring a new, more rational consensus around the
threatening institutions.
No fetish should remain in our minds. If we have had the strength to
build ourselves a thousand chains we also have the power to break them.
The decision to push ourselves beyond the barriers of prejudice and
taboo is up to us.