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Cutting Edge: Technology, Information Capitalism and Social Revolution (page 2 of 3)
By Jim Davis, Tom Hirschl & Michael Stack

Capitalists compete with each other to maximize profits, of which one of the main ways is by getting the workers to produce more in the same amount of time, by introducing more powerful and productive technology. At any given moment some capitalists are producing using the newest technology, and some are using old technology. When a commodity goes onto the market, it exchanges not at its individual value, that is, based on the labor used to produce it, but on the modal value of all of the same type of commodities from various producers, its social value. Capitalists who made commodities with the most advanced technology and the least labor in general will sell their commodities at the same (or maybe slightly less) price than then commodities made by the backward producers. Because their costs are lower, the advanced producers will realize extra surplus value, while those using backward technology and more labor will realize less surplus value.

The ratio of constant capital to variable capital is called the organic composition of capital. As more constant capital is employed in production, or less labor is employed, the organic composition of capital rises. Marx argued that this rising organic composition will cause the rate of profit to fall over time.

As more technology is thrown at production, a crisis in profitability emerges, manifesting itself as overproduction and the lack of purchasing power. A product unsold is value unrealized. This lays the basis for the periodic crises in capitalism, punctuated by unemployment, bankruptcies, and the destruction of capital. Once sufficient capital is destroyed, the system begins to expand again, and the cycle begins anew. The capitalist use of new technologies, while raising productivity, as Guglielmo Carchedi notes, also "necessarily implies crises, exploitation, poverty, unemployment, the destruction of the natural environment and more generally all those evils which high tech is supposed to eradicate."

In the first section of essays, the authors follow several lines of exploration into the terrain shaped by the new technologies. The collection starts with Morris-Suzuki's look at some of the "peculiarities" of knowledge as a factor in production. The new technologies are possible because of the accumulation of what is known about Nature. The continuing development of the technologies requires substantial training, research, etc. In this sense they can be described as "knowledge-intensive." The function of "knowledge" in the economy, though, is a problematic one. Once produced, knowledge is cheap to replicate; it's not "consumed" or exhausted after use; and, she notes, it "can only acquire a price when it is protected by a monopoly." Capitalism thrives in the new climate only by bending and subsuming knowledge formation to its needs through aggressive privatization, "harnessing freely available 'social knowledge' to the profit-making activities of the large corporation."

The consequences of the critical act of replacing human beings with machines under capitalism can only be understood by grasping the idea of the central role of the human being -- as the sole source of value -- in production. Caffentzis analyzes the history of this idea, in the context of 19th century discussions of machines, energy and work, and brings the argument up-to-date with an analysis of the "Turing Machine" -- a concept developed by the brilliant English mathematician Alan Turing in the 1930's. Turing showed the possibility of constructing a machine capable of carrying out any computational task that a human being could do (with a few notable exceptions). Caffentzis points out that the Turing machine means that any skill, whether physical or mental, can be replicated mechanically -- "computing, like tailoring and weaving, is just another aspect of human labor-power that can be exploited to create surplus value and, if its value is higher than a rival machine, it can be replaced." The reason that human beings are the sole source of value is therefore not to be found in any unique talents of the worker, as any machine can theoretically provide that; rather, it is to be found in the profound relationship of power and property, at the intersection of the worker and capital.

The concept of the Turing machine raises an immediate question: is electronics, as the basis of contemporary production, a qualitatively different technology, not just "more," but "different." In Capitalism and Automation, Ramin Ramtin argues that the capture of human skills in "software", capable of being repeatedly activated by microprocessors, "is a technology which brings to life the machinery of production, it is thus in itself a radically new form of objectification of labor." In her essay "Robots and Capitalism", Morris-Suzuki considers the implications of the replacement of living labor with "objectified labor" in the form of software. When robots replace living labor in production, surplus value, and hence, profits, cannot be created in the old ways. In her analysis, surplus value can only be created "in the design of new productive information and the initial bringing together of information and machinery." So companies are forced into creating the "perpetual innovation economy." Such an economy accelerates the commodification of particular kinds of information or knowledge useful to production.

Martin Kenney, following on Morris-Suzuki's work, pursues the problem of value creation in the contemporary work site. Knowledge becomes "the critical production factor" in the "innovation economy" where workers are reconceived as sources of "knowledge", and must work within a tighter discipline to ensure uninterrupted production. Kenney notes the central role of "intellectual property" in the "innovation economy", but he suggests that "protecting" copyrights and patents -- essential to maintaining the commodity status of knowledge -- in the digital age is problematic, if not ultimately impossible.

This view of a "knowledge economy" is not without its problems. Dan Schiller points out that "knowledge" is essential to all societies. The location of "social discontinuity" is not to be found in what he calls "information exceptionalism", in seeing some special qualities of information or knowledge. Such a view removes information and knowledge from a long history of "commoditization", ultimately mystifying it. The "knowledge society" is not the end of history, but rather, capitalism, adjusted (and adjusting) to a new technological climate.

"[F]or capitalist production 'a certain number of workmen must be employed in the same field of labor'. Less than a certain number of productive workers and capitalist production becomes impossible. The application of microelectronics technology to production processes will radically reduce that 'minimum' quantity of living labor-power essential for the self-expansion of social capital. At a certain stage, the quantitative displacement of living labor generates a qualitative break in the organization and structure of capital production." (Ramin Ramtin, Capitalism and Automation, Pluto Press, 1991. p. 56)

 

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