"Some of the tools that were developed after capitalism (notice I said "some," not "all") were developed ONLY in order to rationalize production in such a way that workers could have less and less power over (and knowledge of) the work they were doing."
In my mind that is to conflate the two simultaneous processes, production of goods, production of profit. Under capitalism new technologies, being legal property of the capitalist, are presented to the labourer as an alien power. But of course they are his own power, alienated from him in the exchange of work for wage. Under those conditions, the technology itself appears to be the reason that the labourer loses control, the production process presents itself, fantastically, as subject, seeming to reduce the labourer to object. But it is the social relationship, not the technology that does it. Once ownership of the means of production pass from capitalist to labourer, technology becomes what it truly is an enhancement of the power of labour, not a diminution of it. Rationalising production, i.e. reducing the necessary part of the working day, under capitalism creates the basis for profit. Under socialism it creates the basis for free human development.
Forgive me for raking over this familiar ground, because it seems to me that the ability to distinguish between the means of production and the relations of production is the very process of social revolution itself. It is what distinguishes Marx's socialism from those utopian colonies that were established from time to time. Marx did not want to start again from year zero. That, he thought could only reproduce the same conditions of want that would necessitate class society. On the contrary, he wanted to see means of production taken from the capitalists and in the hands of the working class.
On the artisanal loss of quality etc.. I don't believe it. Even under capitalism, consumer goods just are phenomenally better than they ever were under craft production. There's not a person on this list who would willingly spend the rest of their life under the technological conditions of, say, the fifteenth century (let alone the debilitating social conditions that accompanied them).
Joanna:
"Luddites apparently were quite selective in what machines they were to destroy. John Thorton has more on this."
Wasn't that Marx's point, that they learnt to use their collective power to challenge capitalism, as a development form the more primitive point of machine-breaking (Eric Hobsbawm gives a sympathetic reading to the Luddites, making the point that they were often simply threatening the machinery to negotiate better terms).
"Also, suppose workers around the world decided to destroy nuclear weapons. Would that be a bad thing? Are weapons not also an example of technology?"
Well, ok, nuclear weapons might be a special case, but nuclear power... why not? That missile technology might prove very useful in ways we don't yet understand. And until the capitalist class has been dismantled, it might be necessary to follow Shelley's advice in the Song to the Men of England, 'Forge arms, in your defence to bear'. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20050828/e6cae869/attachment.htm>