“Fighting for the Soul of the GOP": Buchanan's 2nd Wave Reactionaries Challenge Gingrich's 3rd Wave Conservatives (page 2 of 2)
By Carl Davidson and Jerry Harris Chicago Third Wave Study Group

Even much of the new investment in manufacturing is based on the application of information technology. At U.S. Steel in Chicago in the 1970s, it took five years to qualify as a machinist's apprentice-- and the worker still had to learn the complexity of blue print reading, metallurgy, and trigonometry. It's a fairly interesting job and it takes considerable concentration to run even one machine well. But information technology came along in the form of numerical control machines. The machinist's knowledge was encoded on chips, those chips were put into the machines, and now the job was reduced to punching codes into a board for a few minutes at the start of your shift. The rest of the day was spent watching the machine work itself. Of course now rather than working one machine, a worker could punch up and watch several, meaning a general layoff for apprentices.

These changes are the competitive edge of the new world order. Both Gingrich and Clinton know it and embrace it; they just disagree on whether the government or the market should be responsible for moving people into the new economy. Buchanan, on the other hand, is against the new world order and the new economy underlying it.

How can the left and progressive movements respond to Buchanan? Unfortunately, when one subtracts the racism, the left sounds a lot like him. Like Buchanan, the left, for the most part, defends a national industrial policy program of the sort that confronts the third wave economy with second wave demands.

One would think with all this mistrust in government and anger against corporations the left should be growing by leaps and bounds. Much of what progressives say is right on target and has a good deal of support, simply as popular ideas. Economic fairness and racial equality are just as important as ever. It's not so much that the left has dropped the ball, it's the fact that we keep carrying the same one without realizing the game has changed. It's not what we're saying, as much as what we aren't.

Economics of Adbundance

In its strategic thinking and proposals, the left needs to break away from an economics of scarcity and embrace an economics of abundance. For the first time in history the creation of wealth is being accomplished with little or no direct connection to wage labor. Intellectual design allows machines to work faster, more accurate, and more efficent than people. As the necessary time of labor falls, digitally driven production replaces wage related jobs.

Here's society's new dilemma: We may face a future of joblessness, yet at the same time we are developing the ability to create material abundance and social security for everyone. We should keep in mind that wage related jobs are a historic product of second wave industrialism. For the first 10,000 years of human civilization the vast majority of people didn't have "jobs" nor a paycheck. Everyone worked, people consumed the product of their labor, and bartered for items they didn't make. The idea that people needed to be employed by a boss for a specific number of hours, for a specific amount of pay is actually new to human history, and only saw widespread development with capitalism. Of course, we are not calling for a return to the medieval manor. Wage labor actually represents a step forward in history. We only want to emphasize that the new productive forces are pushing us to move beyond wage labor as the main means of securing the survival and reproduction of the labor forc redistribution of wealth.

Third wave technology now makes possible the creation of wealth with less jobs and in less time. The political vision and economic program we need is one that grasps this change. We need to recognize all work, paid and unpaid, that adds value to society. Work for the community, the home, and self-improvement. The jobless future doesn't mean the end of work, but the recognition of all work. National wealth should count all forms of productive labor, in and outside of the wage-structured market.

Since society revolves around the creation of wealth and its distribution, we need to ask how will that take place in a third wave economy? First of all, everyone needs to be supplied with a "universal toolbox", in effect the means, opportunities, and education to participate in the new economy. These need to be social guarantees in an economy where income and job insecurity are becoming part of most everyone's life.

One way to begin to achieve this is the redefinition of labor to value work at home, in the community, and the full recognition of women's labor. This may not lead to the wage\money nexus, but perhaps to vouchers for education, childcare, food, health care, and other basic needs. In effect, a social wage. We need to ask what type of work adds value to the national economy, and what type of work is of use. If coaching youth at the local park or environmental clean-ups are of use, then how do we reward and recognize their value?

Within the new job structures what are the different forms of political or social organizations needed to promote the demands of workers? Just as industrial relations created unions in the second wave, what new forms will conform to relations created in the third wave? Already we see strong political trends toward freedom of speech and information, and demands for universal access to the tools of information production. If information technology really leads to less hierarchy and less bureaucracy can these be inroads to socialist forms of labor and greater participation in the control of work? Will entrepreneurial openings for small business' on the internet lay a solid basis for the micro economy of market socialism?

Another idea already being addressed in Europe is the shorter workweek. In the face of technologically driven layoffs everyone should benefit from an increase in productivity. If you can create more wealth in less time, it should be reflected in your wages or hours. Socially controlled technology can create jobs, not destroy them.

The challenge is to develop a program and explanation, which aligns with the changing world. To do so our analysis needs to focus on the central force reshaping the world, the revolution in the means of production, and the resulting fundamental shifts in the relations of production. There is no shortage to the questions, yet the left's response is denial or to only see a developing distopia. Class struggle will still determine the contours of future history. Can the second wave left revolutionize itself, or like Pat Buchanan, lead the fight in the wrong direction defending the barricades of industrialism.