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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ You really like to misconstrue what people write, huh Sean. But yes, an increase in the division of labor and the specialization of work is associated with capitalism and it and the competitive drive for profits is what produces the increased rate of technological innovation under capitalism. Not sure how it works in analysis though. Do you just look back at history and put everything bad in the capitalist category and everything good in the independent science/tech one. How do you insure that your ideological predisposition doesn't color your enquiry? What guarantees that someone that holds the opposite view, like a bourgeois economist couldn't just say every thing bad that happens is not capitalism's fault but everything good is? Isn't your view just an inversion of the neoclassical ideology?
Sean:
>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.
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I am not an expert on the English transition so I don't know about
your specifics. How about we take my example of the development of
the mechanical reaper in the US. Was it a product of capitalist
innovation? Based on that was it good or bad? Surely it reduced the
amount of sweat and child labor involved in the wheat harvest.
However, it also caused indebtedness and led, along with a few other
things, to the transformation of independent family farmers into petty
commodity capitalist producers. This them forced them to innovate or
fail. Some good, some bad. I guess you would have a different
history of this process. I would love to hear it. I would like to
know where the reaper came from, including the innovations in pig iron
need to produce it, the means of transportation to deliver the
reapers....
Sean:
>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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But the generalization of the innovative techniques was surely the
result of communicative innovations and, in fact, a technological
innovation itself. No?
Sean:
>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.
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Oh, I think I am quite in line with what Harvey says, at least in
Limits (which is an excellent example of a dialectical nuanced
analysis of capitalism, non of this everything is bad stuff...). Alan
has said some useful stuff and I see, thanks to his critique that I
don't quite of a good response to the issue of population. So hold
away.
Sean:
>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.
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That's not what I said. You said capitalism appropriates knowledge
and I agree, then you say how wrong you are to say that all capitalism
does is appropriate. And, no shit socialized things are different
than capitalist things. Wow.
Sean:
>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.
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By claiming that it is a force of technological change I am not
dismissing the 'purity of or how determining that mode of production'
are. I just don't know how you do that. And again, that is what
bourgeois economics is all about: denying the bad as precapitalist
remnants and accepting the good as being caused by capitalism. They
and you are wrong, you take the good, you take the bad, you take them
both and there you have the fact of capitalism, the facts of
capitalism.
Sean:
> 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.
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No it isn't boosterism. I am not saying it just causes good. Your
theory leaves open the possibility that it only causes good =
boosterism. You can separate out various roles of different aspects
at different times and under different eras. But that does not mean
that innovation comes from somewhere other than were Marx says it does
under capitalism.
Sean:
>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.
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Yeah, Brenner is wrong in a lot of ways, so is Wood. That doesn't
mean everything the ever wrote is wrong. What exactly is your theory
of technological change under capitalism?
Sean:
>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.
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This explains alot. Do you really think that neoliberalism is pure
capitalism? Do you think that the state is less involved in the
economy under neoliberalism? Do you think capitalism can exist
without the state? I think that you are wrong about whether or not
neoliberal capitalism has improved some peoples lives, it has. That's
not boosterism, that's reality. It has also created huge problems.
Again you want to hang all the problems on capitalism but none of its
positive aspects. This is the mirror image of bourgeois ideologues.
It is romanticizing of the past and not based in reality. The past
was not better than the present, we don't want to go back to
precapitalist social relations, we want socialism.
>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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ No it isn't denying the basic creativity of the human species. Just because capitalism increases innovation does not mean that people where not involved. People in a capitalist society are still people and in fact, they created and reproduce capitalism and its innovations. Yes, you are trying to have it both ways: blame capitalism for global warming and starvation, but not for innovations that have helped people. This is exactly the critique I one could use against bourgeois boosters, only inverted.
Brad