The Electronic Revolution and the New Class of the Structurally Unemployed (page 2 of 2)
By Nelson Peery / National Organizing Committee

A more concrete look will show different things. First, that the new productive equipment was polarizing wealth and poverty as never before. Absolute wealth in the form of 120 billionaires and absolute poverty in the form of homelessness are new to our country. The second polarization was the increase in production accompanied by an increase of unemployment and joblessness.

The Underclass' as a New Class

More important, a concrete look will show that the so-called underclass is, in fact, a new class. History shows us that each qualitatively new means of production creates a new class. Previously, each new class has been the owners or operators of the new equipment. This new class, created by robotics, is not simply driven out of industry, it is driven out of bourgeois society. There is a historic parallel.

It might be noted here that Marx made a little historical or perhaps semantic error naming the industrial working class the "proletariat." The Roman proletariat, once a working class, was driven from the workplace by the introduction of slavery. They ended up absolutely destitute and outside of Roman society. They were fed by the state and in exchange produced babies who would grow up to be soldiers. The proletariat did not and could not work because they could not compete with the labor of slaves. The comparison is clear. We are witnessing the creation of a real, if modern, proletariat.

Further, and perhaps more importantly, it should be noted that in history, no system has ever been overthrown by an internal class. The feudal system was overthrown by the classes outside the system, not by the serfs. The concept of class struggle has been convoluted to express the struggle for reform which is the only possible social struggle between two classes internal to society. Class struggle begins when qualitatively new means of production bring about an economic revolution and the economic revolution forces a social revolution. The struggle of the old, reactionary classes inside society against the new class outside society over who is going to create the new social order is the class struggle.

The social system is under attack as the electronic revolution destroys its economic underpinning. This underpinning is value created by the expenditure of human labor. In proportion to the use of robotics, the new system becomes more productive and more unable to distribute that production. The modern proletariat has no choice but to join with the robot in the final assault against the existing social and economic order. We are not facing a recurrence of the Egyptian or ancient Chinese collapse of civilization. On the contrary, we stand at the end of pre-history. Wageless production cannot be distributed with money. The contradiction between the modes of production and exchange has reached its limits. Production without wages inevitably results in distribution without money. This objective economic demand will sweep aside any subjective or political system that cannot conform to it.

Communism moves from this subjective arena of the political and ideological into the realm of the objective.

The Decisive Role of Consciousness

Since there are no concrete economic connections between today and tomorrow, consciousness plays the decisive role in this coming revolution. We must consciously fight for the future. Blind rage against the ongoing destruction of life will not change it. This future will not evolve automatically as did the rosy dawn of capitalism.

How will the movement acquire this decisive consciousness? As with all changes of quality, it must be introduced from the outside. An organization must be built for the specific purpose of bringing this consciousness to this new class and not only to the new class. Since we are entering a social revolution, this message must be taken out to all of society. Filling our future with a content made possible by the marvelous new means of production depends entirely on the leadership of an organization of visionaries capable of arousing and enthusing the masses.

Philosophers of ancient Greece declared that their slave system was necessary in order to allow another class of people leisure time to create the culture and education necessary to uplift society. Economic and social contradictions within their system brought human slavery to an end. Today, in the robot, we have an efficient and willing producer capable of freeing up the totality of humanity so that they may fully commit themselves to the age-old struggle for a cultured, orderly and peaceful life.

Does it take much genius to see that the social and moral ills of our time are the results of controlled scarcity? Does it take genius to understand that abundance, which today is the cause of starvation and misery, will be the foundation for tomorrow's leap into a new and orderly society? Does it take genius to see that privilege and all its hateful ideologies can only be and will be overcome by unfettered abundance?

Visionaries, unlike dreamers, proceed from the real world. Any person who has been forced onto the streets by the private use of robotics cannot help but visualize the possible world wherein robotics is used for the benefit of society rather than by individuals whose only interest is profit. Yesteryear's dreamers were the destitute, the exploited, the downtrodden. The visionaries were the owners of the new mechanical means of production. Today the world stands on its feet. The visionaries are those who have been driven from the factory and from society by those who own the more efficient electronic means of production. They visualize their social liberation, the happy prosperous future if only they could collectively own and direct the instruments of production that are destroying them. The dreamers are those wallowing in increasingly valueless wealth, still believing that wageless production can be circulated with money.

Humanity stands at its historic juncture. Can we, who understand today, visualize tomorrow with enough clarity to accept the historic responsibilities of visionaries and revolutionaries? I think so. Humanity has never failed to make reality from possibilities created by each great advance in the means of production. This time there is no alternative to stepping across that nodal line and seizing tomorrow.

I don't think anybody here can doubt that we are in the midst of an economic revolution, and I don't think any of us an doubt that every economic revolution has compelled a social revolution to take place. We have a different view of the process of history than we had 10 or 15 years ago.

What's going to happen as this society is being torn down? The ills of our society are the results of social destruction. They are not causing social destruction. A new society is going to have to be built that conforms to the new economic realities.

A society is a unity of production and distribution. There is no other reason to have a society. The point that we've got to grapple with, the thing that we've got to come to grips with, is what kind of society is going to be built on the basis of this new technology?

Newt Gingrich is on the loose. He represents a certain outlook. At the end of that outlook is an electronic fascism to control the mass of people. The other side of it is that we have got to do something to take back our country, and the only way we can do it is to create a communal or, if you choose, a communist, society based upon these new means of production which produce without wages and so therefore they cannot distribute with money. The money is going to have to go out of existence.

Lastly, I just want to say this. These people are not playing. They intend to clamp a fascist dictatorship on this country because the poor are beginning to come together, little by little. There is a new ideology arising in America, an ideology that is very primitive, but an ideology nonetheless. It's the ideology of them and us, of rich and poor. And Los Angeles 1992 was only a wake up call in this respect. We have got to get our act together and take care of ourselves and take care of America. I think enough of this country to believe it should be saved and I know it cannot be saved except by revolution.

Nelson Peery has been an active revolutionary since the 1930s and helped to found the League of Revolutionaries for a New America. His most recent book is the memoir Black Fire: The Making of an American Revolutionary (The New Press: New York, 1994).