> You really think that technological innovation is separate from the
> increases in the division of labor, specialization in work including
> in science and improvements in communication that aid both of those
> processes? You think they are just correlated?
I guess I wasn't aware that any instance of there being a division of labor or the specialization of tasks in any way was necessarily indicative of capitalism. If capitalism is defined as having a division of labor and/or "specializing in science and improvements in communication" then it seems rather circular to argue that sci/tech was therefore a product of capitalism: if sci/tech = capitalism in your mind, there's not much to argue about.
I don't doubt that
> some of the new found improvements that you are alluding to could have
> been implemented in different social structures. You will probably
> need to be more specific though.
I was specific. I said that there were farmers in pre-capitalist England who were using fertilizer, saving the most productive seeds, cross breeding, etc. all of the so-called "innovations" of capitalist agriculture aside from breaking up small parcels of land and enclosing the commons were largely developed by feudal individuals simply trying hard to live on the land. The expropriation of that knowledge and the coercive primitive accumulation of land forcing people into a wage relationship has zero to do with "innovation." All it does is exploit labor at a higher rate and redistribute the gains from "improvement" upwards to the capitalist land owners. In other words, if the issue is about the way capitalism is related to "innovation" then I say it is often, if not always, parasitic on this process, which often happens through other means at a much smaller scale.
Anyway, they weren't and more to the
> point, the improvements that followed also weren't. I have no idea
> how you unravel historical process that build on each other into
> correlations versus causes.
They were: that's my point. There were improvements that were already in existence. The only thing that the STATE in 17th century England did was to help generalize this and create an enormous class of wage laborers from people previously subsisting in the margins of English society. I don't have to unravel the historical processes completely to claim that capitalism--private property and wage labor--didn't necessarily produce the innovations, it just helped to generalize the ones that were most profitable and channel those profits upwards.
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> It is precisely because 'economic' systems and technological change
> "don't exist in isolation or even in any purity" that the two can't be
> parceled out with one into separate causes. You can't seal off
> capitalist pressures and competition from the motives of technological
> change. It is all with in the same social system.
but I can point out that much of the "technological change" (which is increasingly abstract in your diatribe here) came from relationships that were far from capitalist in their purity. On this perhaps we can disagree with the abstraction of the capitalist mode of production as being distinct from the feudal mode of production, but you're citing Wood all over the place so it seems a bit disingenuous to allow a crucial analytical category of her framework when she uses it but to find me amiss when I employ it. In my case, I can point out that, as Neal Wood points out, there were key innovations that were already being used by tenant farmers before the introduction of capitalist social relations of wage labor and private property in a widespread system: it was still a system--or in marx's terms, a social formation--dominated by the feudal mode of production.
Hence why I and
> others use social relations instead of saying things like political
> economic systems.
What is social relations? what is this category? How is it different than political economic systems? None of these seem very robust as concepts. It is perfectly reasonable to talk about the distinction between the role of the state (and the constitution of class power) in the fuedal mode of production as opposed to that of the capitalist mode of production, and I feel pretty confident in speaking about the way social formations can have multiple modes of production at a similar moment, with one predominating. Therefore...
There is not capitalism over there and
> technological change over there. The technological changes that came
> during the capitalist era of social relations happened in capitalist
> social relations.
This is a really flabby set of analyses: what is "the capitalist era of social relations?" When did it start? How can we tell? What is distinctive about capitalism? So far all that I see is that it has a division of labor and it uses science, both of which are really silly as distinctions since we could say the same of Arabic cultures during the European dark ages. If it is about social property relations, which is Brenner's hook, modified some by Wood, then it can't be defined strictly by an "era" but by a specific set of juridical relations that can be traced in time and which has a specific set of requirements about the role of the state in relation to the economy. Following from this, we can look at specific technological innovations and say, well, were these "caused" by capitalism per se or were they developed alongside it and appropriated by actors supporting that system? What you are suggesting is a really unnuanced approach. I can also say that the Green Revolution occurred during the era of the television (which McLuhan and others argue has a sort of social ecology caused by it). It gets me no closer to understanding why innovations happen or why some innovations and imperatives are privileged over others.
Again, I have no idea how you parcel out how much
> capitalism did or didn't influence those changes, other then by mental
> abstraction and a lot of reduction of complex interactions.
Well I just gave it a try but I'm by no means the best person to do this. I think Alan has offered a lot of other helpful people, such as David Harvey. But if you can't be bothered to even think about the possibility that he's got something useful to say (Alan or Harvey) I'm not holding my breath.
> I am not saying that it will always produce what it did. Just that it
> did. Technological change did occur before capitalism, just not at
> the same pace. You can either attribute that speed up to capitalism
> or to some separate entity called technology. I have no idea how one
> would even do the latter.
Well quite a few people have done so--people like Harry Braverman and David Nobel, both of whom have a particular view of how capitalist powers appropriated knowledge and basic science. And as I mentioned before Michael Perelman has done this in several of his books. Marcuse had a lot to say about this as well, though he's a bit more stark than I would allow. Finally, as I said before, even the notion of science an a Baconian vein is not the result of capitalist but fairly entrenched feudal relations.
Do you really think that "some of the more
> important changes have been the result of appropriating knowledge
> produced" by biopiracy? Sure there has been some innovations through
> biopiracy, not many, but how do you separate this piracy from the
> capitalist drive to innovate?
by saying that stealing someone else's idea isn't "innovative;" it's just taking (stealing?) something you found and putting it to use. If that's all that's required, the monkeys who used the first sticks were by this definition innovators of a capitalist variety--or, more accurately, the monkeys who copied the monkeys who picked up the first sticks to use them as tools. If just having a profit motive behind theft is all that's necessary to say that capitalism is innovative, well there's not all that much to say about it as a system--except that, contrary to your description above, it has little to do with the division of labor or specialization in science, muchless the property system or wage relation. BTW, on this subject, I'd agree with Doug that the answer to biopiracy charge isn't to get rid of the corporation that does the pirating, but to socialize that knowledge. There is, if you're paying attention, a crucial difference between these systems.
Again, how does one separate an
> innovation in science or in a means to extract technologies from
> capitalist social relations? You seem to be assuming that there are
> discrete social systems that have not been impacted by other discrete
> societies or by capitalism. That is not the case and has never been,
> read Eric Wolf.
No. I'm saying that there are specific aspects to what is called a capitalist mode of production--aspects that its boosters claim, in their purity, as the sole and determining aspects of that system within any social formation and which, in your claiming it as a causal force for technological change, you, too, either separate out as a pure causal vector OR lump together with every other aspect of the social formation as a whole, with nary a care as to how pure or determining that mode of production is in any given time or place. I am willing to admit that there are ways "the profit motive" has a powerful draw on people in any given moment (which is what I think you're getting at with Wolf), but I also know quite a few nerdy, brilliant scientists who are pretty interested in creating stuff even if they don't get paid--and quite a lot of basic science that is and has been created for something other than the profit motive per se.
> I never said capitalist profit motives only produce
> positive effects. State innovations are not outside capitalism or are
> not non-profit seeking. Here again you are trying to separate
> sections of society out from each other and the impacts of capitalism.
> This only works in your head, in abstractions from reality.
If we aren't able to say what causes these things with any finely grained analysis, instead simply saying, "if there was capitalism within 50 yards (or 50 years) of that innovation, we can reasonably claim it as a capitalist innovation"...well this just seems like boosterism for the system, full stop. If you don't have an analytical way of talking about this--of separating out the capitalist formations from the state capitalist formations from the feudal formations--well then it seems like a waste of time for anyone other than blowhards like Thomas Friedman whose only analytical categories are a Lexus and an Olive Tree.
> No, saying that capitalism has produced innovation is not to defend
> the exploitative relationships! Nor does questioning the capitalist
> definition of innovation mean that it hasn't produced actual good.
> That simply is not true and if it were then Marx, Lenin and many
> others would be guilty of the same.
I addressed this elsewhere. There is a pretty stark difference between the elements of capitalism that have to do with socializing production and the elements of capitalism that have to do with the profit motive. If you think that Marx would have found the profit motive to be the most important innovation of this system--or that Lenin thought this was the thing that produced innovation--well I think we've abandoned all pretense to a leftist interpretation of them. Might as well use von Mises or Hayek.
I would say that you are reducing
> complex systems into a 'everything in capitalism is bad, see how it is
> impacting these pristine areas of society' argument that fails to
> distinguish between the positive attributes of capitalism from its
> exploitative nature and is based on a false pure view of things you
> see as outside capitalism.
I never said any of this. I am just saying that you have a big fat category that does little to explain why or how capitalism creates (or appears to have created) innovation except for a completely ideological recuperation of neoliberal boosterism. It's no accident, therefore, that rational choice theory lined up so closely with Brenner, et. al.
> This leads nowhere but reactionary
> romaticization of the past. Good luck getting people on board that
> type of project, other than the most conservative folks.
again, you're imputing a set of statements to me I've never made. In large part, I don't think it is a problem to support people in conserving their livelihood in the present circumstances since I don't think there is anything self evident about the idea that pure capitalism of the neoliberal variety does anything to produce better outcomes for the majority of the people it impacts. It's sort of like people who've stuck with XP through multiple "innovations" in the windows OS: if switching to a new one would be a disaster, might as well hold on to the one that's working relatively well.
> I have no idea what you are talking about. I said the exact thing you
> are arguing against me with. The point is precisely your last one
> though the point is how to get to this more equitable distribution,
> not returning to the past or denying the actual increase in
> *potential* living standards.
I didn't see it. And I never said we should return to past living standards.
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Which one is it- are capitalism and science discrete social processes
> which would mean that science could advance despite the drives of
> capitalism,
yes.
or are they internally related which produced the drive
> away from what is best for the planet by science because of
> capitalism?
No.
You are trying to have it both ways: capitalism is evil
> and corrupts and influences all and capitalism is not responsible for
> the good things.
No, I'm not. I'm saying capitalism is not, alone, responsible for good things. And to accept the proposition that capitalism, alone, is responsible for "good things" is to deny the basic creativity of the human species.
To accept that capitalism produced good is not to
> validate or apologize for the bad. Likewise, to say capitalism has
> produced social ills does not mean that therefore every aspect of
> capitalism is bad and it cannot be responsible for any sort of good.
> Your moralizing and letting this influence your analysis.
pot, kettle.
> Sean:
>> I can't quite get
> my head around how people in the slums should thank capitalism for
> destroying their livelihood and sending them to the slums, but I guess
> it takes a perverse kind of first world paternalism to see this as an
> unmitigated gain for them.
>
> and:
>>You seem to see this as a benign systemic process
> that we should simply accept as inevitably innovative and cheery. I
> say bullshit.
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Who said they should? Who said it was an unmitigated gain for them?
> Who said it is a benign systemic process that we should simply accept
> as inevitable innovative and cheery? That's just misrepresenting what
> I have said. And I say bullshit.
The argument is whether all the innovation in agricultural production of the past 500 years can be chalked up to the result of "the capitalist era of social relations" whatever that is. I say that it can't; you say that it can. I say that innovation in science and technology happens in a variety of ways, only some of which are related to capitalism and that many of the productive gains of the capitalist system is more the result of its exploitative nature rather than any novel innovation in terms of science or technology. This is hardly a contentious statement, and it also doesn't mean capitalism is "bad;" but it does mean that we have to say what is unique about this system and what it actually produces in terms of innovation rather than relying on its boosters for our understanding of its history.
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