Carrol Cox wrote:
>An assembly line is a perfect image of the absolute neutrality of
>technology as such. This simplification of labor would be the basis of
>human freedom in a world in which hours of labor were short, and
>conditions of work were under the control of the workers.
>
If I were the worker deciding what tools to use, I would choose to use
the assembly line model as little as possible in order to think through
the creation of a product from start to finish. I would rather sacrifice
some of my "free" time to making a product in some human-sensible way
than to create like a machine ...but then to have extra time to be more
of a human....whatever that all means.
>And the washing machine creates the illusion that laundry is a sensible
>_solitary_ task, instead of a task which should be wholly socialized.
>The misery of laundry by hand was, like that of assembly line work, an
>illusion created by the social conditions under which they occurred. In
>a sensible social order there would be no individual washing machines
>but there would be assembly lines.
>
Well, I didn't say that the washing machine should be an individual
washing machine. Though it seems to me that there's not much economy of
scale in socializing washing.
Joanna
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