In the context of the industrial revolution Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels discovered that social revolution is defined by a series of stages whose fundamental origins are technological revolution in the means ofproduction. As the technological revolution unfolds, the qualitatively new forces of production come into conflict with existing productive relations, and thus begins an epoch of social revolution that ends with new productive relations corresponding to the new technology. This discovery marks the beginning of genuine social science, and is the theoretical foundation for comprehending and facilitating the revolutionary process. The current revolution in the means of production that we are witnessing in the world today is the beginning of just such a process, the beginning stages of a revolution that fully confirms Marx and Engels' scientific discovery.
In vol. 1 of Capital, Marx identifies the technological catalyst for the industrial revolution as the steam engine that revolutionized labor productivity in the existing European handicraft industries, concentrated the working class in urban settlements, and created an integrated world market. Improvements in steam technology by inventors such as James Watt are related to advances in the science of mechanics by thinkers such as Isaac Newton. These improvements transformed a local weaving industry into a global system of textile production and distribution, which led to the reconfiguration of the world economy and to political revolutions that swept feudalism off the map of Europe.
Marx and Engels directly witnessed how the industrial revolution created a new class of proletarians that possessed no property other than their labor power. In the Communist Manifesto in 1848, Marx and Engels projected that this class would overthrow capitalism and create a communist society. We now know that this projection was premature: without the introduction of a new quality into the means of production which could facilitate the overthrow of capitalist relations, the industrial proletariat in Europe, North America and Japan fought fiercely with its capitalist employers for a share in the benefits of industrialization (e.g., higher wages, better working conditions,political rights, and so on).
The advent in the 20th century of a more profound technological revolution — what has been identified as the "electronic revolution" — has initiated a global epoch of social revolution. This revolution is based in technologies fully capable of replacing labor's physical and mental operations, and exercising intelligent control over the means of production. For example, the development of the integrated microprocessor during the 1960s revolutionized computer technology, opening the way for its deployment across a diversity of economic applications. The deployment of these technologies in production does not merely increase the productivity of labor, it drives labor out of production altogether.
The electronic revolution in the means of production is unlike the industrial revolution in that it is less related to the science of mechanics than to modern physics. Modern physics was developed by scientists such as Erwin Schrodinger investigating the fundamental nature of matter. In the book Visions: How Science Will Transform the 21st Century, Michio Kaku says that these investigations yielded concepts such as the quantum theory of matter that served as the theoretical framework for subsequent revolutions in computer technology and bio-molecular technology.
In the hands of the capitalist class these new technologies are irresistible tools for cutting labor costs to maximize profits. This results in net labor displacement that pushes society further down the road toward revolution. This can be observed in Census Bureau statistics for the manufacturing sector in the United States that employed 12.4 million production workers in 1982, but had decreased by 20 percent to 10.3 million in 2002. This reduction of 2.1 million workers translates into 3.1 billion fewer hours of work. Despite this reduction in labor between 1982 and 2002, the total value of manufacturing output increased over this period by 5 percent to $4.4 trillion, according to Census Bureau figures. Thus production expanded as the market for goods represented by wages contracted due to workers not being paid.
Technological elimination of labor in the context of expanding production reduces the rate of profit and accelerates corporate consolidation and financial centralization. It further fuels a scramble for new sources of profitability including financial speculation (stock markets, "hedge funds," currencies, and real estate), military production and war profiteering, and attempts to monopolize strategic commodity groups such as energy. Attempts by capital to maintain profitability in the framework of electronic capitalism intensifies environmental, human, and social destruction.
The new proletariat's class position within electronic capitalism is different from the industrial proletariat's position within industrial capitalism: rather than being positioned in contradiction to the capitalist class, the proletariat is progressively positioned outside of capitalist property relations, and becomes antagonistic to capitalism. Capitalist property relations under electronic capitalism displaces labor, and limits the social distribution of production to the capitalist class and to a diminishing quantity of workers. Thus the workers must choose between seizing political power versus their own physical, moral, and social destruction. We are living in a time when the words of the Communist Manifesto are finally coming to life.
March.2008.Vol18.Ed2
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