From 1a7f44a138ee60242bb634a2a59c452f0c4c91d6 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Silvio Rhatto Date: Sat, 3 Feb 2018 15:08:50 -0200 Subject: Books: One-dimensional man: chapter two --- books/sociedade/one-dimensional-man.md | 247 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 247 insertions(+) (limited to 'books/sociedade') diff --git a/books/sociedade/one-dimensional-man.md b/books/sociedade/one-dimensional-man.md index fcc5fcd..4fe0ad6 100644 --- a/books/sociedade/one-dimensional-man.md +++ b/books/sociedade/one-dimensional-man.md @@ -286,3 +286,250 @@ domination, creating a truly totalitarian universe in which society and nature, mind and body are kept in a state of permanent mobilization for the defense of this universe. + +### Revolution + + The classical Marxian theory envisages the transition from capitalism to + socialism as a political revolution: the proletariat destroys the political + apparatus of capitalism but retains the technological apparatus, subjecting it + to socialization. There is continuity in the revolution: technological + rationality, freed from irrational restrictions and destructions, sustains and + consummates itself in the new society. It is interesting to read a Soviet + Marxist statement on this continuity, which is of such vital importance for the + notion of socialism as the determinate negation of capitalism + + [...] + + To be sure, Marx held that organization and direction of the productive + apparatus by the “immediate producers” would introduce a qualitative change in + the technical continuity: namely, production toward the satisfaction of freely + developing individual needs. However, to the degree to which the established + technical apparatus engulfs the public and private existence in all spheres of + society—that is, becomes the medium of control and cohesion in a political + universe which incorporates the laboring classes—to that degree would the + qualitative change involve a change in the technological structure itself. And + such change would presuppose that the laboring classes are alienated from this + universe in their very existence, that their consciousness is that of the total + impossibility to continue to exist in this universe, so that the need for + qualitative change is a matter of life and death. Thus, the negation exists + prior to the change itself, the notion that the liberating historical forces + develop within the established society is a cornerstone of Marxian theory.2 + +### Hell + + Those whose life is the hell of the Affluent Society are kept in line by a + brutality which revives medieval and early modern practices. For the other, + less underprivileged people, society takes care of the need for liberation by + satisfying the needs which make servitude palatable and perhaps even + unnoticeable, and it accomplishes this fact in the process of production + itself. + +### Automation + + (1) Mechanization is increasingly reducing the quantity and intensity of physical + energy expended in labor. This evolution is of great bearing on the Marxian + concept of the worker (proletarian). To Marx, the proletarian is primarily the + manual laborer who expends and exhausts his physical energy in the work + process, even if he works with machines. The purchase and use of this physical + energy, under subhuman conditions, for the private appropriation of + surplus-value entailed the revolting inhuman aspects of exploitation; the + Marxian notion denounces the physical pain and misery of labor. This is the + material, tangible element in wage slavery and alienation—the physiological and + biological dimension of classical capitalism. + + “Pendant les siècles passés, une cause importante d’aliénation résidait dans le + fait que l’être humain prêtait son individualité biologique à l’organisation + technique: il était porteur d’outils; les ensembles techniques ne pouvaient se + constituer qu’en incorporant l’homme comme porteur d’outils. Le caractère + déformant de la profession était à la fois psychique et somatique.”3 + + 3. “During the past centuries, one important reason for alienation was that the + human being lent his biological individuality to the technical apparatus: he + was the bearer of tools; technical units could not be established without + incorporating man as bearer of tools into them. The nature of this occupation + was such that it was both psychologically and physiologically deforming in its + effect.” Gilbert Simondon, Du Mode d’existence des objets techniques (Paris: + Aubier, 1958), p. 103, note. + + Now the ever-more-complete mechanization of labor in advanced capitalism, while + sustaining exploitation, modifies the attitude and the status of the exploited. + Within the technological ensemble, mechanized work in which automatic and + semi-automatic reactions fill the larger part (if not the whole) of labor time + remains, as a life-long occupation, exhausting, stupefying, inhuman + slavery—even more exhausting because of increased speed-up, control of the + machine operators (rather than of the product), and isolation of the workers + from each other.4 To be sure, this form of drudgery is expressive of arrested, + partial automation, of the coexistence of automated, semi-automated, and + non-automated sections within the same plant, but even under these conditions, + “for muscular fatigue technology has substituted tension and/or mental + effort.”5 For the more advanced automated plants, the transformation of + physical energy into technical and mental skills is emphasized: + + “… skills of the head rather than of the hand, of the logician rather than the + craftsman; of nerve rather than muscle; of the pilot rather than the manual + worker; of the maintenance man rather than the operator.”6 + + This kind of masterly enslavement is not essentially different from that of the + typist, the bank teller, the high-pressure salesman or saleswoman, and the + television announcer. Standardization and the routine assimilate productive and + non-productive jobs. The proletarian of the previous stages of capitalism was + indeed the beast of burden, by the labor of his body procuring the necessities + and luxuries of life while living in filth and poverty. Thus he was the living + denial of his society.7 In contrast, the organized worker in the advanced areas + of the technological society lives this denial less conspicuously and, like the + other human objects of the social division of labor, he is being incorporated + into the technological community of the administered population. Moreover, in + the most successful areas of automation, some sort of technological community + seems to integrate the human atoms at work. The machine seems to instill some + drugging rhythm in the operators: + + “It is generally agreed that interdependent motions performed by a group of + persons which follow a rhythmic pattern yield satisfaction—quite apart from + what is being accomplished by the motions”;8 and the sociologist-observer + believes this to be a reason for the gradual development of a “general climate” + more “favorable both to production and to certain important kinds of human + satisfaction.” He speaks of the “growth of a strong in-group feeling in each + crew” and quotes one worker as stating: “All in all we are in the swing of + things …”9 + + The phrase admirably expresses the change in mechanized enslavement: + things swing rather than oppress, and they swing the human instrument—not only + its body but also its mind and even its soul. A remark by Sartre elucidates the + depth of the process: + + “Aux premiers temps des machines semi-automatiques, des enquêtes ont montré que + les ouvrières spécialisées se laissaient aller, en travaillant, à une rêverie + d’ordre sexuel, elles se rappellaient la chambre, le lit, la nuit, tout ce qui + ne concerne que la personne dans la solitude du couple fermé sur soi. Mais + c’est la machine en elle qui rêvait de caresses.…”10 The machine process in the + technological universe breaks the innermost privacy of freedom and joins + sexuality and labor in one unconscious, rhythmic automatism—a process which + parallels the assimilation of jobs.10 + + 10. “Shortly after semi-automatic machines were introduced, investigations + showed that female skilled workers would allow themselves to lapse while + working into a sexual kind of daydream; they would recall the bedroom, the bed, + the night and all that concerns only the person within the solitude of the + couple alone with itself. But it was the machine in her which was dreaming of + caresses …” Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique, tome I (Paris: + Gallimard, 1960), p. 290. + + The machine process in the technological universe breaks the innermost privacy + of freedom and joins sexuality and labor in one unconscious, rhythmic + automatism—a process which parallels the assimilation of jobs. + + [...] + + (2) The assimilating trend shows forth in the occupational stratification. In + the key industrial establishments, the “blue-collar” work force declines in + relation to the “white-collar” element; the number of non-production workers + increases.11 This quantitative change refers back to a change in the character + of the basic instruments of production.12 At the advanced stage of + mechanization, as part of the technological reality, the machine is not + + “une unité absolue, mais seulement une réalité technique individualisée, + ouverte selon deux voies: celle de la relation aux éléments, et celle des + relations interindividuelles dans l’ensemble technique.”13 + + 13. “an absolute unity, but only an individualized technical reality open in + two directions, that of the relation to the elements and that of the relation + among the individuals in the technical whole.” Gilbert Simondon, loc. cit., p. + 146. + + [...] + + To the extent to which the machine becomes itself a system of mechanical tools + and relations and thus extends far beyond the individual work process, it + asserts its larger dominion by reducing the “professional autonomy” of the + laborer and integrating him with other professions which suffer and direct the + technical ensemble. To be sure, the former “professional” autonomy of the + laborer was rather his professional enslavement. But this specific mode of + enslavement was at the same time the source of his specific, professional power + of negation—the power to stop a process which threatened him with annihilation + as a human being. Now the laborer is losing the professional autonomy which + made him a member of a class set off from the other occupational groups because + it embodied the refutation of the established society. + + The technological change which tends to do away with the machine as individual + instrument of production, as “absolute unit,” seems to cancel the Marxian + notion of the “organic composition of capital” and with it the theory of the + creation of surplus value. According to Marx, the machine never creates value + but merely transfers its own value to the product, while surplus value remains + the result of the exploitation of living labor. The machine is embodiment of + human labor power, and through it, past labor (dead labor) preserves itself and + determines living labor. Now automation seems to alter qualitatively the + relation between dead and living labor; it tends toward the point where + productivity is determined “by the machines, and not by the individual + output.”14 Moreover, the very measurement of individual output becomes + impossible: + + “Automation in its largest sense means, in effect, the end of measurement of + work.… With automation, you can’t measure output of a single man; you now have + to measure simply equipment utilization. If that is generalized as a kind of + concept … there is no longer, for example, any reason at all to pay a man by + the piece or pay him by the hour,” that is to say, there is no more reason to + keep up the “dual pay system” of salaries and wages.”15 + + Daniel Bell, the author of this report, goes further; he links this + technological change to the historical system of industrialization itself: the + meaning of industrialization did not arise with the introduction of factories, + it “arose out of the measurement of work. It’s when work can be measured, when + you can hitch a man to the job, when you can put a harness on him, and measure + his output in terms of a single piece and pay him by the piece or by the hour, + that you have got modern industrialization.”16 + +### Servitude + + (4) The new technological work-world thus enforces a weakening of the negative + position of the working class: the latter no longer appears to be the living + contradiction to the established society. This trend is strengthened by the + effect of the technological organization of production on the other side of the + fence: on management and direction. Domination is transfigured into + administration.21 The capitalist bosses and owners are losing their identity as + responsible agents; they are assuming the function of bureaucrats in a + corporate machine. Within the vast hierarchy of executive and managerial boards + extending far beyond the individual establishment into the scientific + laboratory and research institute, the national government and national + purpose, the tangible source of exploitation disappears behind the façade of + objective rationality. Hatred and frustration are deprived of their specific + target, and the technological veil conceals the reproduction of inequality and + enslavement.22 With technical progress as its instrument, unfreedom—in the + sense of man’s subjection to his productive apparatus—is perpetuated and + intensified in the form of many liberties and comforts. The novel feature is + the overwhelming rationality in this irrational enterprise, and the depth of + the preconditioning which shapes the instinctual drives and aspirations of the + individuals and obscures the difference between false and true consciousness. + For in reality, neither the utilization of administrative rather than physical + controls (hunger, personal dependence, force), nor the change in the character + of heavy work, nor the assimilation of occupational classes, nor the + equalization in the sphere of consumption compensate for the fact that the + decisions over life and death, over personal and national security are made at + places over which the individuals have no control. The slaves of developed + industrial civilization are sublimated slaves, but they are slaves, for slavery + is determined + + “pas par l’obéissance, ni par la rudesse des labeurs, mais par le statu + d’instrument et la réduction de l’homme à l’état de chose.”23 + + 23. “neither by obedience nor by hardness of labor but by the status of being a + mere instrument, and the reduction of man to the state of a thing.” François + Perroux, La Coexistence pacifique, (Paris, Presses Universitaires, 1958), vol. + III, p. 600. + + This is the pure form of servitude: to exist as an instrument, as a thing. And + this mode of existence is not abrogated if the thing is animated and chooses + its material and intellectual food, if it does not feel its being-a-thing, if + it is a pretty, clean, mobile thing. Conversely, as reification tends to become + totalitarian by virtue of its technological form, the organizers and + administrators themselves become increasingly dependent on the machinery which + they organize and administer. And this mutual dependence is no longer the + dialectical relationship between Master and Servant, which has been broken in + the struggle for mutual recognition, but rather a vicious circle which encloses + both the Master and the Servant. Do the technicians rule, or is their rule that + of the others, who rely on the technicians as their planners and executors? + + [...] + + A vicious circle seems indeed the proper image of a society which is + self-expanding and self-perpetuating in its own preestablished direction—driven + by the growing needs which it generates and, at the same time, contains. -- cgit v1.2.3