On Wed, 20 May 1998, Louis Proyect wrote:
> >The U.S. Socialist Party was of the same mind. To quote the International
> >Socialist Review of September 1900: "The character of the anti-trust movement
> >is analogous to the anti-machinery movement of a century ago when the hand
> >loom weavers marched throughout England and destroyed the power looms.
> >Hargreaves, Arkright, and Compton were driven from their homes by howling
> mobs
> >for inventing the new method that displaced the old. The cry of `Down with
> >machinery' has been supplanted with `Down with the trusts.'"
> >
> >One and a half cheers for Bill Gates?
> >
> >Dan Lazare
> >
> A better analogy for what Gates is up to is the commercialization of radio,
> which took place in the 1920s. This is the subject of Robert McChesney's
> "Telecommunications, Mass Media and Democracy: The Battle for Control of
> U.S. Broadcasting, 1928-1935."
>
>
Absolutely, the problems with the Arkwright analogy: 1)MS has never been on the technological cutting edge and 2) Neither Arkwright nor Slater nor Lowell ever established a cotton manufacturing monopoly. Entry was just too easy.
Another apt analogy might be GM or US Steel, both of whom discovered relatively early that political pressure paid off far better than technological innovation. Henry Ford never understood this.