From 23ac9f57b9b4c761cb8edc5bfa0c0de77ec89326 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Silvio Rhatto Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2017 14:06:22 -0300 Subject: Change extension to .md --- books/sociedade/post-scarcity.mdwn | 111 ------------------------------------- 1 file changed, 111 deletions(-) delete mode 100644 books/sociedade/post-scarcity.mdwn (limited to 'books/sociedade/post-scarcity.mdwn') diff --git a/books/sociedade/post-scarcity.mdwn b/books/sociedade/post-scarcity.mdwn deleted file mode 100644 index 4b1a1b0..0000000 --- a/books/sociedade/post-scarcity.mdwn +++ /dev/null @@ -1,111 +0,0 @@ -[[!meta title="Post-Scarcity Anarchism"]] - -* Murray Bookchin. -* Working Classic Series. -* AK Press - 2004. - -## Towards a Liberatory Technology - - The year 1848 stands out as a turning point in the history of modern revolutions. - This was the year when Marxism made its debut as a distinct ideology in the pages - of de Communist Manifesto, and when the proletariat, represented by the Parisian - workers, made its debut as a distinct political force on the barricades of June. - It could also be said that 1948, a year close to the halfway mark of the nineteenth - century, represents the culmination of the traditional steam-powered technology - initiated by the Newcomen engine a century and a half earlier. - - -- 43 - - I have reviewed these technological developments because both their promise and - their limitations excercised a profound influence on nineteenth century revolutionary - thought. The innovations in textile and iron-making technology provided a new sense - of promise, indeed a new stimulus, to socialist and utopian thought. It seemed to the - revolutionary theorist that for the first time in history he could anchor his dream - of a liberatory society in the visible prospect of material abundance and increased - leisure for the mass of humanity. Socialism, the theorists argued, could be based - on self-interest rather than on man's dubious nobility of mind and spirit. Technological - innovation had transmuted the socialist ideal from a vague humanitarian hope into a - practical program. - - The newly acquired practicality compelled many socialist theorists, particularly Marx - and Engels, to grapple with the technological limitations of their time. They were faced - with a strategic issue: in all previous revolutions, technology had not yet developed to - a level where men could be freed from material want, toil and the struggle over the - necessities of life. However glowing and lofty were the revolutionary ideals of the past, - the vas majority of the people, burdened by material want, had to leave the stage - of history after the revolution, return to work, and deliver the management of society - to a new leisured class of exploiters. Indeed, any attempt to equalize the wealth of - society at a low level of technological development would not have eliminated want, but - would have merely made it into a general feature of society as a whole, thereby recreating - all the conditions for a new struggle over the material things of life, for new forms of - property, and eventually for a new system of class domination. - - [...] - - Virtually all the utopias, theories and revolutionary programs of the early nineteenth - century were faced with problems of necessity -- of how to allocate labor and material - goods at a relatively low level of technological development. - - [...] - - The fact that men would have to devote a substantial portion of their time to toil, - for which they would get scant returns, formed a major premise of all socialist ideology - -- authoritarian and liberarian, utopian and scientific, Marxist and anarchist. - Implicit in the Marxist notion of a planned economy was the fact, incontestably clear - in the Marx's day, that socialism would still be burdened by relatively scarce resources. - Men would have to plan -- in effect -- to restrict -- the distribution of goods and would - have to rationalize -- in effect, to intensify -- the use of labor. - - -- 44-45 - - The problem of dealing with want and work -- and age-old problem perpetuated by the early - Industrial Revolution -- produced the great divergence in revolutionary ideas between - socialism and anarchism. Freedom would still be circunscribed by necessity in the event - of a revolution. How was this world of necessity to be "administered"? How could the - allocation of goods and duties be decided? Marx left this decision to a state power, - a transitional "proletarian" state power, to be sure, but nevertheless a coercive body, - established above society. According to Marx, the state "wither away" as technology - developed and enlarged the domain of freedom, granting humanity material plenty and the - leisure to control its affairs directly. This strange calculus, in which necessity - and freedom were mediated by the state, differed very little politically from the common - run of bourgeois democratic radical opinion in the last century. The anarchist hope for - the abolition of the state, on the other hand, rested largely on a belief in the viability - of man's social instincts. Bakunin, for example, thought custom would compel any individuals - with antisocial proclivities to abide by collectivist values and nedds without obliging - society to use coercion. Kropotkin, who exercised more influence among anachists in this - area of speculation, invoked man's propensity for mutual aid -- essentially a social instinct - -- as the guarantor of solidarity in an anarchist community (a concept which he derived from - his study of animal and social evolution). - - The fact remains, however, that in both cases -- the Marxist and anarchist -- the answer - to the problem of want and work was shot through with ambiguity. [...] but given the - limited technological development of the last century, [...] both schools depended on - an act of faith to cope with the problem of want and work. Anarchists could argue against - the Marxists that any transitional state, however revolutionary its rethoric and democratic - its structure, would be self-perpetuating; it would tend to become an end in itself and - to preserve the very material and social conditions it had been created to remove. For - such a state to "wither away" (that is, to promote its own dissolution) would require - its leaders and bureaucracy to be people of superhuman moral qualities. The Marxists, - in turn, could invoke history to show that custom and mutualistic propensities were never - effective barriers to the pressures of material need, or to the onslaught of property, - or to the development of exploitation and class domination. Accordingly, they dismissed - anarchism as an ethical doctrine which revived the mystique of the natural man and his - inborn social virtues. - - -- 46-47 - - That the socialist notions of the last generation now seem to be anachronisms is not - due to any superior insights that prevail today. The last three decades, particularly - the years of the late 1950's, mark a turning point in the techological development, - a technological revolution that negates all the values, political schemes and social - perspectives held by mankind throughout all previous recorded history. [...] As we shall - see, a new technology has developed that could largely replace the realm of necessity - by the realm of freedom. - - -- 48 - - Almost every account of applied automation today must be regarded as - provisional: as soon as one describes a partially automated industry, - technological advances make the description obsolete. - - -- 56 -- cgit v1.2.3