CAPITALISM

ND..«
“AUTOMATION
Revolution in Technology
and Capitalist Breakdown

RAMIN RAMTIN

, Ar PLUTO PRESS
Preface
Introduction

Part I: Automation
1. The Development of Technologies of
Automation
2. The Concept of Automation
3. Preparing for Automation: Modification
of Methods of Labour
4. The Process of Automation

Part II: Automation and Capitalism

1. Productive Capital and Automation
2. Automation and the Working Class
3. State, Ideology and Automation
4. Automation and the North-South Divide
5. A Final Note on Capitalist Breakdown

Notes and References

Index

lic Library
Capitalism and Automation
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Capitalism and Automation

Revolution in Technology and

Capitalist Breakdown

Ramin Ramtin

PLUTO Ar PRESS
London e Concord, Mass
eT

Dedicated to
the memory of
Tooti

First published in 1991 by Pluto Press

345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
and 141 Old Bedford Road,
Concord, MA 01742, USA

Copyright © 1991 Ramin Ramtin

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in

part by any means without prior permission of the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Ramtin, Ramin
Capitalism and automation.
1. Society. Role of computer systems
I. Title
303.4834

ISBN 0-7453-0370-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ramtin, Ramin, 1948-
Capitalism and automation : revolution in technology aid
capitalist breakdown / Ramin Ramtin.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7453-0370-6
1. Capitalism. 2. Automation-Economic aspects. 3. Marxian
economics. I. Title.
HBSO1.R23 1991
330. 12'2-dc20 90-21401
CIP

Typeset in 9.25 on 10.5 pt Stone by Stanford DTP, Milton Keynes

Printed and bound in the UK by Billing and Sons Ltd, Worcester
rE) Oe ee
 Contents

Preface vii
Introduction

Part I: Automation

Chapter 1: The Development of Technologies of Automation

~The Advance of Mechanical Control
The Example of Numerical Control
The Concept of Feedback
The Separation of Control Systems
The Development of Microelectronics
Ce The Technology of Software
al
oat
ak
ia The Unity of Software and Hardware: a Qualitative Break

Chapter 2: The Concept of Automation

Chapt er 3: Preparing for Automation: Modification of

Methods of Labour

Chapt er 4: The Process of Automation

1. Automation of the Process of Conception
Ph Automation of the Process of Execution
(i) The Production Process
(ii) The Process of Circulation
Automation of the Process of Co-ordination:
The Enhancement of Managerial Control

Part II: Automation and Capitalism

Chapt er 1: Productive Capital and Automation

Extraction and Appropriation of Surplus Value
Automate or Die: an Inescapable Paradox
Production of Surplus Value and Automation
Automation and ‘Positive Profit’
Software Production and Surplus Value
Perpetual Innovation and Surplus-Value Creation
The Problem of the Realization of the Value of Software
Automation and Production Time
Se
ONS Automation and Circulation Time
Chapter 2: Automation and the Working Class
1. The Changing Composition of the Proletariat
2. The Revolutionary Role of the Proletariat
3. Automation and the Negation of Abstract Labour

pce 3: State, Ideology and Automation

Crisis of Ideological Hegemony
The Changing Role of Nation-States
The Dilemma of the State Welfare
WN
2 State Expenditure, Structural Inefficiency and
Economic Waste
5. State Repression and Social Unrest

Chapter 4: Automation and the ‘North-South Divide’

Chapter S: A Final Note on Capitalist Breakdown

Per Crisis
2. Breakdown
3. Social Transformation

Notes and References

Index
Preface

This book is concerned with the process of automation of social pro-

duction and its socioeconomic implications for capitalism. More speci-
fically, however, it mainly concentrates on the impact of automation
on the sphere of productive capital. Automation, as a system of tech-
nologies, is the key factor around which the argument is presented.
The book focuses on this particular type of technical innovation in
order to explain the inherent contradictions of the existing social
system.
The approach and scope of this book differs from the many contem-
porary studies on the role, function and development of automation
technologies in relation to the capitalist system. It attempts to go
beyond the so-called ‘labour-process’ debate; that is, beyond the admit-
tedly important issue of technological development and change in rela-
tion to capitalist control, work processes, deskilling and so on, which
has dominated much of the recent Marxist studies on the implications
of the automation/information technologies. It is my contention that
the ‘labour-process’ approach does not take an adequate account of the
ramifications of automation for the production of surplus value and
hence the accumulation of social capital.
The book’s approach also differs from the studies produced, for
example, by many writers within the so-called ‘post-industrial society’
school of thought (both from the radical and liberal perspectives),
whose examinations of the significant changes taking place as a result
of the development, application and diffusion of automation/
information technologies, tend to ignore the implications of such
changes for the production, realization and expansion of value.
Moreover, despite their immense contribution to our understanding
of the various aspects of the relationship between the new technologies
of automation, work processes and the existing social system, and pro-
viding a wealth of information on the process of socioeconomic and
technical change taking place, and some interesting ideas on (possible)
future trends, these studies either tend to ignore or at best simply to
skim over what I consider to be central to any critical study of ‘capital-
ism and automation’: namely, to try to examine the contradictions
which fuel the developmental trend of capitalism towards the direction
of its eventual dissolution. By contrast, however, it is this central
purpose which determines the approach and scope of the discussion
presented in this book.

Vii
viii Capitalism and Automation
Thus, although the literature on automation is certainly extensive,
there is a clear gap in that which deals with the issue of automation
from the perspective of a Marxian value theory. It is this gap that I
hope to fill - at least partially. To achieve this goal it would not be suffi-
cient to describe and document the prevailing processes and structures
involved. Nor would it be enough to remain within the confines of
purely empirical or merely historical parameters. Future structural
changes and tendencies need to be anticipated. However, I may be able
to anticipate certain future tendencies only on the basis of the available
knowledge of the dynamics of the existing system itself, its inherent
tendencies and its limitations - which I believe cannot be adequately
grasped except on the basis of, and from within, a Marxian value frame-
work.
In the Introduction, therefore, I provide a brief résumé of the basic
theoretical background explaining the importance of value analysis in
relation to the development of the productive force of automation. The
Introduction also contains some reflections (polemical in style) on the
different approaches to the development of capitalist production and
automation. Since, however, the theoretical points raised here are ela-
borated on in the rest of the text, the Introduction can be by-passed if
some readers find such polemical/theoretical discussions somewhat
arduous.
The text is divided into two parts. The first is concerned with the his-
torical, developmental and conceptual aspects of automation. Though
not technical in the engineering sense, this part deals with certain tech-
nicalities of the developmental process of technologies from the
mechanical to the microelectronic systems. Its main theme is to explain
the qualitative distinction between mechanized and automation tech-
nologies in terms of the different fields of economic activity.
The second part begins with an examination of the economic impli-
cations of such a distinction in the quality of technology for the diffe-
rent aspects of capital (value and surplus value) production, and moves
on to examine the social ramifications of the process of automation as
regards both capital/wage-labour and ‘superstructural’ relations. It
attempts to explain why this current revolution in technology would
lead to a heightening of the inherent contradictions of capitalism
which would drive the system towards its ultimate breakdown. The
final chapter explains, by way of a conclusion, my interpretation of
Marx’s conception of ‘capitalist breakdown’ and attempts to link this to
nS future ‘maturity’ of the productive force of automation on a global
asis.
Needless to say, the subject is necessarily complex and has many dif-
ferent aspects which would be difficult, if not impossible, to cover ade-
quately in this book. The discussion presented here, therefore, is
neither complete nor exhaustive; many important topics have been
omitted altogether, others have been touched on very briefly. There is a
lot missing from the analysis given (both empirical and theoretical)
which needs to be looked at in greater detail. Nevertheless, there is, I
believe, enough in the book to provide some important insights into
 Preface ix
the basic implications of automation for the domain of capital produc-
tion. I hope that these insights will contribute to a better understanding
of capitalism and automation, as well as to the further development of
the Marxist tradition.

To prevent possible misunderstandings a few words are in order here:

The basic arguments of the book are based on Marx’s theory of capital-
ist production and accumulation. I intend to offer an analysis of the
effects of automation on the production of surplus value and the impli-
cations of this for the capitalist social order. I use the concept of ‘capi-
talism’ here to refer to a socioeconomic system which, both in principle
(i.e. according to Marx’s theory) and in practice, encompasses a totality
of various capital units and countries. So when I refer to the ‘capitalist
social order’ or the ‘capitalist system or society’, I mean the existence of
the system on a world scale (including the Eastern bloc countries). I am
therefore not in any way specifically concerned with any particular
social formation (or country) as such.
Moreover, in referring to the ‘effects of automation’, I am not merely
concerned with the technical changes taking place today, but essen-
tially with the ‘long-term’ effects of these technological changes. There
is certainly a more or less considerable ‘time-gap’ between invention,
application, and diffusion of technologies. Even more to the point,
there is a transitional period during which the application and diffusion
of particular (individual) automation technologies takes place before
the technological system of production becomes actually transformed.
The automation of production is, in other words, a process; the change
from mechanization to automation is necessarily - given both the tech-
nical and socioeconomic factors involved — a gradual process. I therefore
emphasize the ‘progressive’ or ‘increasing’ eradication of productive
(i.e. surplus-value producing) wage-labour from the realm of material
production as a result of the ‘advance’ of automation (i.e. of both the
development and diffusion of automation technologies). This does not
mean either that wage-labour in total disappears as a result of the
advance of automation, or that this is asudden phenomenon.
The present phase of the process of automation is a transitional
period during which certain capitals which have introduced new tech-
nologies can benefit from the divergence of individual value from the
social value of the commodity produced and hence gain exceptional
profits. But as the use of these technologies becomes increasingly gene-
ralized on a global basis, through the pressure of competition, the social
value of the commodity is forced down to its individual value. This
process necessarily takes a fairly long time before this law asserts itself:
that surplus value does not arise from the living labour replaced by the
new technologies, but from the labour-power actually employed.
In connection with this, it is important to warn the reader that I do
place a greater emphasis on the process of automation of material pro-
duction (Commodities, ‘goods’) than on services. That there are services
(e.g. transport, communications, storage) which are productive (of
 x Capitalism and Automation
surplus value) is unquestionable, and I deal with these and with the
way the advance of automation technologies will affect their operation
and functioning. I also deal more specifically with those productive ser-
vices involved in the process of conception (design, engineering and
software production in general) which are extremely important for the
self-expansion of capital.
However, even if we wrongly disregard the significant implications of
the process of automation of the service sector itself (e.g. in banking,
commerce) I find it extremely difficult, to put it mildly, to accept that a
‘service economy’, particularly on a global scale, can sustain a sufficient
basis for the accumulation of social capital, with an active ‘manufactur-
ing’ base which is fully, or even ‘near fully’, automated. If this is pos-
sible in a given country or perhaps a given region (e.g. the West), it is
certainly impossible for the system as a whole.
The idea that services which are, for example, ‘intrinsically’ incapable
of being automated, such as pop concerts, theatres, restaurants, football
matches (i.e. leisure and entertainment), can somehow counteract the
effects of automation in the realm of material production, and compen-
sate for the decrease in the production of the mass of surplus value, is, I
would suggest, completely fallacious. If material production is not the
sole province of surplus-value production, it is undoubtedly the most
fundamental realm within which the greater proportion of the mass of
surplus value is produced. And it is for this reason that we need to pay
greater attention to the effects of the process of automation of ‘manu-
facturing’ industry - which, by the way, already includes many produc-
tive services within its overall framework. It is because of this that I
prefer to refer to the automation of the ‘productive sector’ wherever
possible.
Finally, interpretations of Marx’s theories, particularly those of
‘value’ and ‘accumulation’, and conclusions reached differ widely. My
own interpretation of these theories, in conjunction with my under-
standing of the nature of automation, has led me to a highly controver-
sial conclusion, that of ‘capitalist breakdown’ — a conclusion which has
long been the subject of much heated debate within (and outside of)
the Marxist tradition. That Marx was uncompromisingly committed to
illuminating the ‘historical’ nature of the capitalist system — i.e. that
Capitalism is neither a ‘natural’ nor an ‘eternal’ system, but that like all
previous modes of production it must come to an end as it generates
the conditions of its own dissolution — is, I believe, certain and undeni-
able. I have attempted to contribute to the theoretical analysis of this
premise. So I make no apology whatsoever for the fact that this book
has been written with the clear intention of placing the inevitability of
capitalist breakdown, or what is the same, the inevitability of social
rev-
olution, as central to the analysis of automation and capitalism.
Many readers will shriek at the sight of the word ‘inevitable’. It is, I
agree, strong language. Further, the ‘inevitability’ of breakdown
and
social revolution has often been predicted in the past; needless to say
it
has yet to materialize! A ‘balanced’ discussion (or better still,
a ‘liberal
academic’ mind) would try to avoid the dangerous pitfalls which
 Preface xi
accompany the use of such strong language. It may be said that
nothing is ‘inevitable’. There are always, as some will correctly argue,
‘countervailing’ tendencies which must be considered (as Marx himself
allowed) — tendencies which arise from the advance of the process of
accumulation itself. Thus, just as in the past such tendencies have
‘counteracted’ the ‘inevitability’ of breakdown and revolution, so ‘will’
(or ‘may’) these also rescue capitalism from the perils of the ‘automa-
tion revolution’ and its implications for surplus-value production and
accumulation.
However, two points need to be taken into account. First, it is true
that there are always counteracting influences — and I do consider those
which I regard to be highly significant (for example in relation to the
notion of ‘perpetual innovation’) - but the fundamental question is
whether they are determinant. I maintain that not only are they not
determinant, but that in fact they work to heighten the inherent con-
tradictions of capitalism. For it is my view that the determinant, essen-
tial and countervailing tendencies are bound together in one unity; it is
not a question of abstract ‘distinction’ between two sets of tendencies,
but of the conflicting tendencies locked in battle. It is this antagonistic
interaction, this process of struggle itself, which is crucial for the
dynamics of change towards breakdown.
Second, although it is clearly important to take account of these
counteracting influences, is it possible to replace the force of concentra-
tion (and even a measure of exaggeration) by a ‘balanced’ discussion if
one wishes to move beyond a merely academic exercise? I believe not.
Thus, if the book tends to place a forceful emphasis on the recognition
of the inevitability of the process of negation of the existing state of
things, and lets nothing impose upon this, then it is with the sincere
hope that this will stimulate (and indeed provoke) further debate and
criticism — which are surely crucial means of developing our tradition.
Introduction

The capitalist world economy experienced its greatest sustained

expansion after the Second World War. During this period capitalism
had transformed itself so dramatically that, to many observers of the
system, capital appeared to have overcome its inner contradictions.
The structural changes and modifications seemed to have worked to
prevent capital from plunging itself into crisis. However, by the early
1970s, the long post-war boom had come to an end. Compelled by
the pressures of the economic crisis, world capitalism (including the
Eastern bloc state-capitalist countries) has been forced to enter a new
phase of major and far-reaching socioeconomic restructuring. By far
the most important single factor in this new restructuring process is
the introduction of the new technologies of automation.
The drive towards automation has already received full backing
from all governments, particularly from those of the advanced
centre who are betting their economic future on the development
and increased application of automation technologies. The process
of automation is now compulsive; there is no turning back for
capital. The giants of world capitalism, such as Exxon, the world’s
largest corporation, General Motors, the largest manufacturing cor-
poration, General Electric, the world’s largest engineering company,
Citicorp, one of the largest banks, and Schlumberger, the largest
service company, as well as many others, have already invested
heavily in both the application and development of computerized,
microelectronic automation systems.
But can the further development and application of automation,
and the socioeconomic restructuring based on it, resolve the present
and continuing crisis of accumulation? Or will the drive towards
automation result in the heightening of the inherent contradictions
of capital accumulation? Is automation technology merely an exten-
sion of the process of mechanization? Or does it signal a qualitative
break in the development of the material productive forces? What
are the basic features of this new technological force, and what are
their implications for capital? If the development and application of
automation technologies are intended to augment and centralize
the power of capital and arm it with powerful instruments of
control, will they not, at the same time, begin to undermine the
essential foundations of capital’s rule?

1
 2 Capitalism and Automation
The literature on the new technologies of automation is both
extensive and impressive. We are daily bombarded with images,
ideas and visions of the new revolution in technology. The different
aspects of this revolution have been examined by many writers from
a wide variety of perspectives. For the most part, however, the
various studies concerned with computerization, microelectronics,
information technology and other ingredients of the automation
revolution, have paid little or no attention to these questions and to
the problematic of linking the qualitative characteristics of these
new technological developments with the issue of value and surplus
value production. The study presented here is intended as an
attempt to examine this problematic. It is concerned with the impli-
cations of the process of automation for the production and accumu-
lation of capital, and hence the consequences of this revolution in
technology for the dynamics of the capitalist system.
The main thesis of the study is that the technological system of
automation represents the final maturity of the development of the
material productive forces under capitalism. As such, its greater
application and diffusion will inevitably result in the breakdown of
the capitalist mode of production.
The thesis is developed on the basis of combining Marx’s general
theory of social transformation, in which the development of the
material productive forces have a fundamental role, with his theory
of value and accumulation which identifies and explains capital’s
incessant drive to revolutionize the technical conditions of its mode
of production.
In the development of his materialist conception of history, Marx
proposed two basic principles which he regarded as crucial to
the
dynamics of historical change. The first refers to the development
of
the material productive forces and the conflict that ensues between
these and the existing production relations, at a certain stage of
the
former’s maturity. The second refers to the ‘fettering’ of the
produc-
tive forces and the beginning of an epoch of social revolution
as a
result of this ‘fettering’.
Whether or not these two principles are concerned with or
appli-
cable to the general history of humanity is a problematic issue
which
does not concern this study. What I intend to show here is that
they
are decidedly both concerned with and applicable to
capitalism
(which I believe was Marx’s fundamental and primary intenti
on for
proposing them in the first place). Although it would not
be appro-
priate to set out the relevant issues involved in detail
here — since
this is precisely the aim of this study - there are some
preliminary
problems and questions which need to be considered.
 Introduction 3
The Question of Development and Maturity of the Material
Productive Forces

First, Marx is clearly (whether intentionally or not) vague on the

issue of the ‘maturity’ of the productive forces. How does one judge
the maturity of these forces? Marx writes, ‘at a certain stage of their
development’, but what is the criterion for the recognition of that
‘certain stage’? Second, how does one ‘measure’ the level of develop-
ment and advancement of technology? And in what sense and on
what basis can one label a particular technological system as
‘mature’?
Let us take the question of the ‘measure’ of the level of develop-
ment of productive forces first. The ‘development’ of technology is a
process: a process of objectification of human knowledge and labour-
ing activity. The ‘measure’ of the level of development is the growth
of productive power, which is something quantifiable in terms of pro-
ductivity. It is, however, precisely here that one must insist that pro-
ductive power and productivity are socially and historically specific,
and that any reference to them in the abstract renders them at best
merely trivial. ‘Productivity in the capitalist sense’, as Marx pointed
out, ‘is based on relative productivity - that the worker not only
replaces an old value, but creates a new one; that he materializes
more labour-time in his product than is materialized in the product
that keeps him in existence as a worker.’!
The growth of productivity under capitalism refers to a reduction
in the amount of labour-time which is socially necessary to produce
a definite quantity of output.? But it is essential to recognize that it
is not the growth of output as such which is crucial, but that of
surplus value and the self-expansion of capital. And since the pro-
duction of surplus value is solely the result of the exploitation of
living labour, or the input of necessary labour within the production
process — i.e. it is the result of the extraction and appropriation of
unpaid or surplus labour - the growth of productive power or of pro-
ductivity is expressed by the reduction in the input of necessary
labour, or that of necessary labour-time.
For capitalism a technology, or one set of technologies, is deemed
to be more developed or advanced than another not in terms of the
growth of the quantity of output in itself, but in terms of the extent
to which it increases surplus value. The ultimate test of any techno-
logy of production under capitalism is its actual power to increase
surplus labour-time relative to necessary labour-time. However, this
social aspect of the ‘measure’ of the development of technology is
translated into technical features. And in technical terms it becomes
expressed through the character or the qualitative aspect of
technologies.
 4 Capitalism and Automation
The development of the productive forces comes to be expressed
by the qualitative character of technologies - i.e. by the particular
techno-physical structure through which its specific social purpose
(the production of surplus value) is expressed. The character of tech-
nology as capital refers to the fusion of its technical and social func-
tions; i.e. to the fusion of control and domination of labour (a
necessary social function for the extraction of surplus labour) and
the technical function of creating use-values (technology as a means
of production). In other words, under capitalism technology as a
means of production mediates through subsumption.3
The qualitative character is also a definite reflection of the extent
to which human labour-power (mental and physical) has been
taxed, drained and channelled into a particular social direction,
since that is precisely a means of increasing surplus value, by reduc-
ing the quality and value of labour-power (its degradation). Thus the
more advanced a technological system, the more simplified and nar-
rowly specialized will be the existing form of individual labour-
power in use, as well as the lower the quantity of living labour-
powers relative to the overall investment in fixed capital.
We have now two interrelated concrete criteria, on the basis of
which we can ascertain the level of the development of material pro-
ductive forces. On the one hand, the degree of productivity as mea-
sured by the ratio of necessary to surplus labour which signifies the
quantity and quality of living labour-power in use. On the other
hand, by the particular technical structure and hence functional
principles of technologies in use: i.e. by their particular quality. It is
from such a basis, for example, that we can judge the developmental
level of automation technologies relative to the mechanized techno-
logies which preceded them. This, however, tells us no more
than
the degree of the development and advancement of productive
power; it does not tell us, for example, whether or not automati
on
can be judged to be the ‘maturation’ of the material productive
forces, nor therefore what is meant by ‘maturity’ of these forces.
Since the development of technology, its progress from one quali-
tative form to another, appears through an uninterrupted continu
ity
of the quantitative increase of productive power, the differe
nce
between mechanized and automation technologies tends to be
con-
sidered quantitatively, as simply the degree of advancement.
As we
shall see later in the text, this seems to be the attitude of
many
writers on automation. It is often assumed that the technol
ogies of
automation which have come into being are merely the
continua-
tion of mechanization - that is, they have a ‘quality’ which
was
already actually in existence but which was not perceptible
because
of its ‘degree’ of immaturity or smallness, and that what
is signifi-
cant about automation is its Capacity to augment the magnit
ude of
output as such.
It is here that Marx’s theory of value and accumulation has
a vital
significance. Since value is, in essence, a social relation of
subjection
 Introduction 5
and domination because it is an historically specific social form of
exploitation — value being the social phenomenon of the separation
of workers from the material conditions of their labour (a separation
which makes exchange a general condition of production, reproduc-
tion and hence of social life itself) - the process of its self-expansion
or accumulation is essentially the process of reproduction of the
dominant social relations. Whether the material productive forces
(the technological system of production) have reached that ‘certain
stage’ of final maturity can, therefore, only be determined by exa-
mining the consequences these forces have for the creation and self-
expansion of value, i.e. for the production of surplus value. Only as a
result of the latter can the dominant social relations of capitalism be
constantly reproduced.
By examining the technical structure of automation technologies
(e.g. the microprocessor, the computer, in short, the hardware and
software elements), as determinate technologies - that is, as actually
functioning means of production - it can be seen that the merely
quantitative progress has actually become absolutely interrupted.
When automation technologies are looked at in relation to the capi-
talist organization of production and hence the technical relations of
production, then the qualitative distinction can be recognized as a
leap or a break in the continuity (or gradualness) of the development
of productive forces under capitalism.
Thus only if it can be shown that the process of automation,
because of its qualitative character, can disturb, or rather negatively
affect, the mechanism of surplus value as the specific social relation
between the capitalist appropriator and productive wage labourers, is
it possible to assert that the development of the material productive
forces have reached, with automation, their final maturity. With this
we move beyond the comparison of the advance of one set of tech-
nologies relative to another (e.g. automation relative to mechaniza-
tion). The ‘maturity’ of the productive forces as represented by the
process of automation then signifies a qualitative break which radi-
cally transforms the hitherto dominant relationships within the
system of social production.
If automation represents the final maturity of the productive
forces it is not because it signifies a gap between what can be
achieved with its use and what is being achieved as regards general
material production. It is because its greater use and diffusion actu-
ally begins objectively to impede the systematic creation of ‘more
value’ or surplus value. If surplus value cannot be systematically
reproduced, and therefore is not sufficiently produced in relation to
total investment, then and only then is there a real (objective)
incompatibility between the technological system of automation
and value relations (or capital/wage-labour relations) which domi-
nates the entire social system. In that case, value relations, or the
capitalist relations of production, cannot be reinforced in perpetuity
by the process of production itself. Thus insofar as the accumulation
6 Capitalism and Automation
of social capital is concerned, any further increase in productive
power or productivity becomes an irrelevant issue, since with auto-
mation of material production - which by definition means the
elimination of productive wage-labour (mental and manual) — obvi-
ously there can be no further increase in the productivity of labour
or rate of surplus value.
Thus only by examining automation in relation to value produc-
tion can we have a particular and objective criterion of what the
‘maturity’ of productive forces means, and why it necessarily entails
a conflict between the forces and relations of production: i.e. brings
the productive force of automation into conflict with value relations
and turns the latter from forms of development of technologies into
restraints. If, however, value and surplus value creation is not taken
as central both to the development and final maturity of the mate-
tial productive forces under capitalism, then the issue becomes one
of abstract generality as propounded by, for example, G.A. Cohen.
For Cohen, the main issue seems to be that, ‘capitalist relations of
production impede optimally productive use of the high technology’ of
computers and electronics.4 He proposes — in connection with the
‘fettering’ principle - that we should recognize ‘the irrationality of
the existing use of contemporary technological marvels’ which could
‘result’ in ‘socialist social change’. He goes on to assert that: ‘If that
happened, the change would occur not at all because capitalism does
not replace a given generation of computers quickly enough, but
because it does not make good use of any generation of computers.’ 5
The issues of ‘maturity’ of productive forces, ‘fettering’ and social
change for Cohen seem to revolve around the question of ‘irrationa-
lity’ of use, of capital’s inability to make ‘good use’ of automation
technologies, or as he puts it, of ‘what is done and what could be
done’® with these technologies. Cohen’s proposition, though cer-
tainly true, is, however, of no use whatsoever for an understanding
of the dynamics of change under capitalism, given its generality. In
an abstract and general sense, one could easily show that capitalism
has never made ‘good use’ of any of its existing technologies — if by
‘good use’ we mean what could be but is not done; the ‘possible’
rather than the actual, whether this be in terms of human needs or
any other criterion.
The proposition of ‘irrationality’ of use of advanced technologies
is vacuous, since one could claim, for example, that capitalism has
not made ‘good use’ of its system of intensive mechanization, or
Fordism. And yet we have had an unprecedented expansion of capi-
talism, further development of the productive forces (e.g. automa-
tion), no ‘fettering’ and no social revolutionary transformation. If it
is the ‘irrationality’ of use in the general sense which should be rec-
ognized as the important issue for the ‘dynamics of social change’,”
if, according to Cohen’s claim, ‘forms of society rise and fall accord-
ing as they enable or discourage use of the productive capacity’,8
then by all accounts capitalism should have ‘fallen’ a long time ago.
 Introduction 7
The fundamental point, however, is that the notion of ‘good use’
of technologies in terms of capital’s logic refers only to the efficient
exploitation of living labour or the extraction of surplus labour, and
in the actuality of the existence of capital as ‘many capitals’ it refers
to the efficient use of technologies in the battle of competition, or to
the extent to which individual capitals make ‘good use’ of their pro-
ductive capacity (technologies and techniques) to achieve relative
growth.
The significance (and contradiction) of automation is precisely
this: while it tremendously enhances the potential for relative
growth of individual capitals - hence the insatiable drive towards
automation — it nevertheless begins to undermine the very basis of
growth and accumulation of social capital as its ‘good use’ (in terms
of capital’s rationality) means a dramatically substantial displace-
ment of living labour from the production process and thus a funda-
mental change in the technical composition of capital. It is this
contradiction that lies at the root of the irreversible forward march
of capitalism towards its inevitable breakdown; it is this that gene-
rates the objective conditions for the rise in the intensity and expan-
sion of class struggles and not Cohen’s abstract and general notion
of the ‘irrationality’ of use or his idea that change occurs ‘because of
the gap between what could be achieved’? and what is being
achieved.

Automation and ‘Post-Industrial Society’

This brings us directly to an issue raised by Andre Gorz. Since, in

reality, the ‘development of the productive forces is functional
exclusively to the logic and needs of capital’, the development (and
maturity) of these forces ‘will not only fail to establish the material
preconditions of socialism, but are an obstacle to its realization’.19 In
our Case, automation technologies, representing the final maturity of
the productive forces, are therefore, in Gorz’s words, ‘so profoundly
tainted by their origins that they are incapable of accommodation to
a socialist rationality’.1!
This is the very essence of Gorz’s rejection of Marx’s proposition
as set forth, for example, in the Preface to A Contribution to the
Critique of Political Economy (1859), and is central to his rejection of
the revolutionary role of the proletariat. The problem, however, is
not that Gorz’s statement is false in itself, particularly as regards the
character of technology as capital, but that his entire Essay based on
it tends, first, to ignore the contradictory character of technology as
capital (and in particular the contradictions of capitalist automa-
tion). Secondly, although he rightly asserts that the development of
technologies is exclusively functional to the logic and needs of
capital, he fails to take account of the contradictions involved in
value production and accumulation (which are the very essence of
8 Capitalism and Automation
capital’s logic) in relation to the development and maturity of the
productive forces as the essential precondition for social change.
Because of this he cannot understand the fundamental distinction
between the establishment of socialism and the rise of social and
material conditions which result only in the breakdown of capital-
ism and the epoch of social revolution. The latter, as I shall argue in
this study, is the result of the unfolding and deepening of the con-
tradiction between the advance of automation and capitalist rela-
tions; and this precisely because such a development is exclusively
functional to the logic of capital. For it is in fact only because of this
functional exclusivity that there can be a ‘contradiction’. The estab-
lishment of socialism, however, depends entirely on the final
outcome of the unfolding of this contradiction as it necessarily mani-
fests itself in the social forms of intense class struggles —- which in
fact may or may not result in the actual establishment of socialism.
The first point, therefore, is that, with the advance of automation
the inherent contradictions of capitalist production become so
implacably intense as to drive the system towards its breakdown.
The realization of socialism, however, is not thereby guaranteed. It is
not inevitable, but has to be fought for. But given this, while at one
level Gorz argues that the development of the material productive
forces, being functionally exclusive to the logic of capital, are an
obstacle to the realization of socialism or to what he sometimes calls
‘different’ non-positivist ‘rationality’, at another level he directly
refers to the implications of automation and derives the creation of
his ‘non-class’ of ‘post-industrial neo-proletarians’ from the develop-
ment of that very productive force (i.e. automation technologies)
which he has all along stressed cannot provide the material basis for
social change, and indeed is an obstacle to it. He accuses Marx of
something of which he himself is arguably and consistently guilty.
If a crucial element of his argument for the rise of the so-called
‘dual society’, or his ‘post-industrial socialism’, is the emergence of
his ‘neo-proletariat’ who reject work, and that this is precisely
because of the development of automation, then, even on his own
terms (wrong as they are), has it not been the development (and
maturity) of the material productive forces (as represented by auto-
mation, a development exclusive to the logic of capital) which has
created the material and the social base or preconditions for the rise
of his ‘post-industrial socialism’?
But the problem with Gorz’s Essay is, | believe, much more serious
than such contradictions and inconsistencies. He almost constantly
(with the exception of a few positive remarks) attempts to blame his
own misconceptions of this process of social change - which the
automation of capital (value) production entails - on Marx’s (or
rather his misrepresentation of Marx’s) so-called ‘Hegelian philoso-
phy’, or materialist conception of history, and on Marx’s supposed
notion of the ‘messianic mission’ of the proletariat.
The establishment of socialism (or communism) was never
 Introduction 9
claimed by Marx to be an ‘automatic’ result of the development and
maturity of the material productive forces. Nor did Marx rest his case
for the development of the proletariat into a revolutionary class on
Gorz’s misconceived ‘polyvalent skilled worker’ as the character
essential for that class’s revolutionary role - even if some Marxists
may wrongly have done so.
Whether in his later works (as is evident from both the Grundrisse
and Capital) or his early works (particularly The German Ideology and
the Communist Manifesto) Marx consistently refers not to the signifi-
cance of the skilled workers for a future revolutionary transform-
ation — for an essential aspect of his entire work was to show how and
why the advance of capital accumulation destroys skills as it compels
constant revolutions in technology and techniques — but to that of
the increasing pauperization of the majority of the population.
It is important to emphasise once again that Gorz does not merely
‘misinterpret’ Marx, but often misrepresents him. In his ‘criticism’ of
Marx’s analysis of the process of proletarianization (not even men-
tioning the advance of accumulation as essential to it) Gorz writes:
‘In Capital Marx himself described work in manufacture and in so-
called automatic factories as a mutilation of the physical and mental
faculties of workers.’12 Then he continues, referring to The German
Ideology, ‘In short, factories produced the opposite of the ideal prole-
tarian able to master “a totality of productive forces” ... 13
What ‘ideal proletarian’ is Gorz referring to? I doubt that even the
most ardent bourgeois critics of Marx have ever referred to Marx’s
‘ideal’ proletarian! What is an ‘ideal’ proletarian? Apparently Gorz
‘finds’ the answer, surprisingly in the Grundrisse - note that this
work was Marx’s rough draft for the writing of Capital, that same
work mentioned by Gorz as describing the ‘mutilation’ of workers’
faculties! And he writes:

Only some ten years after the publication of The German Ideology,
when faced with the presence of a new stratum of skilled and poly-
valent workers who were to become the protagonists of anarcho-
syndicalism, did Marx, in the Grundrisse, think it possible to discover
the material foundation of the proletarian capacity of self-
emancipation and self-management. He anticipated a process in
which the development of the productive forces would result in the
replacement of the army of unskilled workers and labourers ... by a
class of polytechnic, manually and intellectually skilled workers who
would have a comprehensive understanding of the entire work
process, control complex technical systems and move with ease
from one type of work to another.14

A closer look at the last few sentences just quoted can show how
low Gorz has moved in his attempt to ‘debase’ Marx’s theory: Marx,
both in the Grundrisse and Capital attempts to show, on the basis of
his theory of value, the essential process of the abstraction of labour
in practice, i.e. the replacement not of the ‘unskilled’ by the skilled
10 Capitalism and Automation
‘polytechnic’ workers, but quite the reverse. His anticipation of auto-
mation is, in fact, particularly remarkable! Contrary to Gorz, Marx
not only recognized, but developed a socioeconomic analysis to
explain, the fact that to ‘move with ease from one type of work to
another’ is the result not of the development of ‘a class of polytech-
nic ... workers’ but of the increasing simplification and abstraction
of labour because of the development of ‘machinery’, of technology.
In support of this complete misrepresentation of what Marx says
in the Grundrisse, Gorz then quotes a passage from it which actually
deals not with the development of ‘polytechnic’ workers, but with
going ‘beyond the limits’ of labour’s — i.e. wage-labour’s - ‘natural
paltriness’ and the creation of the material conditions for the ‘deve-
lopment of ... rich individuality ... 15 In this passage, Marx is not
referring to the development of the ‘proletariat’ as ‘manually and
intellectually skilled workers’, not to the development of ‘labour’ at
all, but to the negation of labour: ‘labour ... therefore appears no
longer as labour, but as the full development of activity itself ... 16
Marx here, and elsewhere in the Grundrisse, is referring to that
‘certain stage’ of the sublation of capitalism, which could allow the
development of rich individuality, of self-activity as such. There is
not one single sentence in the Grundrisse which could be interpreted
as saying that the development of the ‘polytechnic’ working class is
a necessary condition for the appropriation of the totality of the
material productive forces. Nor can one find such a reference in The
German Ideology, or, as Gorz wrongly claims,!” in the Critique of the
Gotha Programme.
A passage which may (wrongly) be interpreted as referring to the
development of ‘polytechnic’ workers, appears in Capital (vol. I),
which goes as follows:

... if Modern Industry, by its very nature, therefore necessitates varia-

tion of labour, fluency of function, universal mobility of the
labourer, on the other hand, in its capitalistic form, it reproduces
the old division of labour with its ossified particularizations. We
have seen how this absolute contradiction between the technical
necessities of Modern Industry, and the social character inherent in
its capitalist form, dispels all fixity and security in the situation of
the labourer ... But if, on the one hand, variation of work at present
imposes itself after the manner of an overpowering natural law ...
Modern Industry, on the other hand, through its catastrophes imposes
the necessity of recognizing, as a fundamental law of production,
variation of work, consequently fitness of the labourer for varied
work, consequently the greatest possible development of his varied
aptitude. It becomes a question of life and death for society to adapt
the mode of production to the normal functioning of this law.
Modern Industry, indeed, compels society, under penalty of death,
to replace the detail-worker of today ... by the fully developed indi-
vidual, fit for a variety of labours, ready to face any change
of
production ... 18
 Introduction 11
Even as it stands, and out of context, Marx’s comments on the full
development of the individual cannot be interpreted as a reference
to the ‘polytechnic’ worker as a necessary condition for appropria-
tion and revolutionary transformation. Marx is here referring to the
‘absolute contradiction’ between the social form of technology and
its technical aspect as a means of production - a contradiction
which reaches its explosive limit with the advance of automation. It
is not that the development of Modern Industry brings forth the
development of the ‘polytechnic’ worker: the passage is quite clear
on this. It is that the development of Modern Industry increasingly
deepens that ‘absolute contradiction’ just mentioned, and it is
‘through its catastrophes’ that the necessity for the replacement of
detail-worker by the fully developed individual becomes recognized.
As Braverman has pointed out, what Marx is saying here ‘is that
society itself is threatened with extinction unless it rids itself of the
capitalist system which, the more modern scientific industry makes
it obsolete, the more tenaciously it holds on to and even deepens an
outmoded division of labour’.19
It is true that in the next paragraph Marx mentions ‘the establish-
ment of technical and agricultural schools’ as ‘One step ... sponta-
neously taken towards effecting this revolution ... ’2° But he is in no
way making such schooling a necessary precondition of the eradica-
tion of capitalism; again, it is the contradiction involved to which
he refers. This is made clear within the same paragraph: ‘But the his-
torical development of the antagonism, immanent in a given form of
production, is the only way in which that form of production can be
dissolved and a new form established.’2!
To ‘prove’ his case against Marx (or rather the ghost of ‘Marx’
created by Gorz himself) Gorz, particularly when he refers to the
Grundrisse, deliberately seems to muddle up what Marx states as
regards the ‘stage’ beyond wage-labour (i.e. beyond that of the nega-
tion of abstract labour, beyond that of the pauperization and com-
plete propertylessness of the majority of humanity, beyond that of
the very negation of the proletariat as a class) with Marx’s analysis of
the developmental process towards that ‘stage’. For Marx, the deve-
lopment of rich individuality is both a condition and a manifestation
of communism, but not of the revolutionary process of the appro-
priation of material productive forces as a necessary process towards
the establishment of communism. For Marx, it is precisely that very
revolutionary process — the process of appropriation which is deci-
dedly and necessarily a political move - which is essential to the
development of rich individuality; it is only as a result of and during
this process that self-consciousness can be achieved.
In his Essay Gorz removes that necessary and essential condition
(i.e. the process of social revolution) from Marx’s theory. Thus, by
taking out the very core of Marx’s theory, he attempts his shadow
boxing with the ghost of Marx. He moves from capitalism to com-
munism without the necessary stage of revolution. As he does so, his
 12 Capitalism and Automation
movement is guided by the force of misrepresentation and not by
the analysis of the contradictions of capitalism and automation. And
then he declares: ‘Marx’s postulate has never been practically veri-
fied.’22 He forgets that its practical verification is that very process of
social revolution which he ‘forgets’ to mention!
In place of Marx’s social revolution (which necessarily and inevit-
ably includes political revolutions), derived from the very contradic-
tions which the advance of accumulation intensifies, Gorz gives us a
miserable (in the strict sense) résumé of his so-called ‘Post-Industrial
Revolution’.23 Instead of seeing in the development of automation
the contradictions that can only lead to a social revolution, and
instead of advocating forms of struggles to organize and hasten that
revolution, he advocates the development of ‘convivial tools’, ‘repair
and do-it-yourself workshops in blocks of flats, neighbourhood
centres or rural communities’ which ‘should enable everyone to make
or invent things as they wish’ .24
Even Robert Owen seemed to have had better ideas than ‘do-it-
yourself workshops in blocks of flats’! Everyone inventing things as
they wish? And where do the materials for such invention, for the
production of aesthetically appealing use-values, come from, may
one ask? Who pays for the materials, for the necessary food and
shelter during that process of ‘invention’? Would they need to be
appropriated by Gorz’s ‘neo-proletariat’, or are they ‘freely’ given
away by the dominant class? But when in the history of humanity
has a dominant class ever given away the source and substance of its
social power without a political struggle, a revolution?
Gorz goes even further than this. He wants ‘libraries, places to
make music or movies, “free” radio and television stations, open
Spaces for communication, circulation and exchange, and so on’
which ‘need to be accessible to everyone’.25 And all this without a
revolution? Is it really possible to imagine, even for a moment, that
upon the instructions of Gorz’s ‘non-class’ of ‘neo-proletariat’ (who,
following Gorz, regard politics not to be ‘about the exercise of
power’),26 Messrs Murdoch and Maxwell would open their publish-
ing empires to ‘everyone’? MGM, Warner Bros, CBS, all allowing
‘free’ use of their recording studios or television stations; and paying
for the materials for ‘individuals to do or make anything whose aes-
thetic or use-value is enhanced by doing it oneself’?27 Or is it
possible for music, movie, and other cultural ‘workshops in blocks of
flats’ to gain such a social force as to oust and replace such giant
pillars of capitalist social order without the political act of
appropriation?
If for the ‘eradication of capitalism and its transcendence’28 as
Gorz suggests, it is essential to replace capital’s logic of ‘productiv-
ism’ by ‘a different rationality’, and this necessarily entails the
changing of the ‘means and structure of production in such a Way as
to make them collectively appropriatable’;29 then it is inconceivable
that such a fundamental task can be achieved not by political
 Introduction 13
revolution and the exercise of power, but simply by a ‘social’ move-
ment of ‘autonomous’ ‘neo-proletarians’; that the power of Murdoch
& Co can be made to vanish, not by overthrowing the capitalist
state, but by the ‘autonomous’ magical activities of Gorz’s ‘neo-
proletarians’.
Thus, instead of insisting on militant political struggle, Gorz
declares that: ‘The priority task of a post-industrial left must there-
fore be to extend self-motivated, self-rewarding activity within, and
above all, outside the family, and to limit as much as possible all
waged or market-based activity carried out on behalf of third parties
(even the state).’30 Such an extension of ‘autonomous’ activity is
possible, according to Gorz, without the abolition of the state.3!
Indeed, while ‘domination’ can be and should be abolished, the
State remains, under Gorz’s ‘post-industrial revolution’, as ‘a tool
indispensable for coordination and regulation, for the limitations of
other tools ... 32 And what ‘transforms’ the state from ‘an apparatus
of domination over society’ into a ‘tool’, or ‘an instrument enabling
society to exercise power over itself’, are the ‘social struggles that
open up areas of autonomy keeping both the dominant class and
the power of the state apparatus in check’.33
In other words, simply by the extension of the ‘movement’ of ‘do-
it-yourself workshops in blocks of flats’, Gorz’s ‘neo-proletariat’ by
its use of ‘convivial tools’ keeps in check not only the power of the
‘dominant class’ (i.e. the capitalists) but also that of its state (police
and military) organization. And this is how, according to Gorz, with
the rise of automation and the ‘disappearance’ of ‘Marx’s’ proleta-
riat, a Utopia can be created with a ‘post-industrial revolution’
which is mysteriously ‘social’ but not political.
However, Gorz is only one among many proclaiming the coming
of a ‘new’ form of ‘post-industrial society’ on the heels of the
advance of automation. All of them, without exception, herald the
disappearance of the proletariat, and many discover in the process of
automation not the intensification of the contradictions of capital-
ism, nor therefore the propulsion of class conflicts and revolutionary
upheavals, but the profusion of abundance, prosperity, peace,
democracy and leisure.
For most proponents of the ‘post-industrial’ thesis, automation is
initiating a process of social change: but not of capitalism, rather of
industrialism. The notion of ‘post-industrial’ society is an ideological
construct which takes the problems of the existing social order not
as being rooted in the capitalist relations of production, but as a
result of the ‘ills’ of the existing industrial system. Thus, the advance
of automation and the greater use of information technologies
provide the necessary means of resolving the problems of ‘industrial-
ism’ and thereby strengthening the ‘best’ features of capitalism.
These technologies enable the existing form of society to move
towards a ‘post-industrial’, though not necessarily a ‘post-capitalist’,
utopia.
 14 Capitalism and Automation
At least for the most prominent proponents of the ‘post-industrial’
thesis, those like Bell, Brzezinski, Toffler and even Touraine, the
problems of value production and accumulation do not even arise.
The process of social change towards a ‘new’ society or civilization
simply entails the ‘substitution’ of ‘information’ as the ‘strategic
resource’ for labour and capital. Thus, for Toffler, the ‘old’ civiliza-
tion is dying and a new Third Wave civilization is being born.34 This
civilization is based on the technologies of information - and, in
fact, information is ‘the essential property’ in his Third Wave
society.35 In this new society the proletariat is replaced, according to
Toffler, by a ‘“cognitariat” - a group based on knowing, on the use
of the mind, rather than on muscle.’36
Bell also argues that our industrial society is entering a new age
based on certain dramatic changes in the structure of economic
activities. The old forms of machine technologies are being replaced
with what is called the new ‘intellectual technologies’: that is, by the
new technologies of computers and information systems. The so-
called ‘axial principle’, Bell asserts, is the centrality of ‘theoretical
knowledge’ as the fundamental source of innovation and decision
making. Today’s entrepreneurs and industrialists will be replaced by
the custodians of theoretical knowledge; the dominant institutions
(Bell’s ‘axial structures’) of this new society will no longer be firms
and corporations, but institutions of ‘knowledge’ — universities and
research institutions.37
Alain Touraine, representing a more ‘radical’ tradition of the same
school of thought, puts forward a similar thesis and speaks of the
‘knowledge class’ as the dominant class of his post-industrial society
of the future, with the universities occupying a central position.
Touraine, however, foresees the possibilities of conflict, not as
regards the conflict between the dominant and the subordinate
classes, but arising among the custodians of knowledge themselves;
between those having liberal and humanist values and the techno-
crats who AUP DOT the ideas of economic growth.38
Brzezinski,3? while acknowledging an intellectual debt to Bell,
replaces the latter’s post-industrial terminology with his own neolo-
gism ‘technetronic’ (i.e. technology + electronic) society. In his tech-
netronic society, industrial labour is replaced by automation and
new services. But as a practical politician, he at least recognizes that
the obsolescence of traditional skills, the growing levels of ‘techno-
logical unemployment’, and a growing mass of ‘potentially aimless’
blue-collar workers, will become a major source of concern.
Knowledge, for Brzezinski, is the most important ‘tool’ of power, and
mobilization of ‘talent’ (those with access to knowledge) an essential
means of gaining power.
Thus, according to these writers, the advance of automation will
apparently bring forth both a new ‘productive’ resource (i.e. ‘know-
ledge’) and a new dominant class (i.e. the ‘knowledge class’). These
‘replacements’ for the ‘old’ industrial classes seem, however, to come
 Introduction 15
into being through an ‘evolutionary’ process of social change; indus-
trialists and financiers simply and mysteriously give up their power
to those who possess ‘knowledge’; the proletariat is also made to dis-
appear without a struggle. In all this the subject of history is replaced
by ‘axial principles’ and ‘axial structures’, presumably hidden within
the Trojan horse of automation and computerization. It is an image
of social transformation ‘for the better’, according to Evans, but
‘without the long awaited revolution of the proletariat’.4°
However, since the advance of automation totally transforms the
very structure of capitalist production through the complete dis-
placement of living labour, then even if we (wrongly) assume that
such a dramatic change involves no major contradictions insofar as
the re-organization of production is concerned - even if it is
assumed that such a process involves little or no class conflict and
struggle at the point of production — nevertheless, the very act of the
displacement of living labour can only result not in the transcen-
dence of class conflict, but in its relocation. Neither automation nor
any amount of information or knowledge can in or of themselves
alter the existing conditions of propertylessness, or restore the unity
of human activity with the inorganic conditions of exchange with
nature.
The advance of automation, rather than resolving the ‘problem’ of
class conflict, actually accentuates it by transforming the struggle
Over appropriation from its hitherto restricted and, as it were,
domesticated form of, to a large extent, isolated, localized battles
over wages and conditions of labour, into more immediately and
directly political struggles. The transformation of what is often called
‘economic’ struggles into ‘political’ conflicts is the most significant
aspect of the process of automation. Automation, as with any tech-
nological system, cannot in itself, contrary to our post-industrial
theoreticians, eradicate the social, political and ideological forms of
capitalist domination. But as living labour is removed from the point
of production, the antagonistic relations in production are actually
transferred from the site of production, from within the walls of the
various factories and offices, to the outside.
But in all the major historical struggles it was only when class
struggles actually went beyond the walls of the factories that they
transformed themselves into open class wars. Now, as I shall argue in
the main text, with the advance of automation we have for the first
time in the history of capitalism, capital itself, as a result of the
advance of accumulation, unwittingly generating the objective con-
ditions which can only lead to the transformation of localized and
particularistic struggles into increasingly generalized class warfare.
With automation there appears an objective shift in the location of
class struggle; its advance and diffusion increasingly begin to negate
the appearance of the ‘separation’ of the ‘economic’ from the ‘politi-
cal’: an appearance directly related to the specific capitalistic form of
appropriation of surplus labour as surplus value.
16 Capitalism and Automation
Automation and Capitalist Control

With the shift in the location of class struggle, control and domina-
tion become indistinguishable in actuality. What I shall propose in
this study is that the advance of automation begins to negate the
necessary appearance of the illusion of control as being ‘non-
political’, as merely technical and economic. By negating surplus-
value production, automation generates the need for far greater and
more direct forms of class control. The function and agency of social
control become more directly visible as the politics of class domina-
tion - authoritarian forms of state organization and greater use of
naked force become the principle means in support of ‘fictitious’
property (i.e. property which no longer has social determination
through appropriation).
The capitalist form of appropriation is directly the result of the
social condition of separation of workers from the material condi-
tions of production - i.e. the commodification of labour-power. It is
this condition, which, by locating both the extraction and appropria-
tion of surplus labour within and as a result of the organization of
production itself, generates the appearance of the separation of the
‘economic’ and the ‘political’; not, however, by ousting ‘politics’
from the realm of production but, on the contrary, by transforming
it into a technical and managerial form of control. The function of
control appears as ‘non-political’ precisely because it is through the
mediation of technology, organizational arrangements and _tech-
niques within the production process that the extraction and appro-
priation of surplus is achieved.
The politics of appropriation is manifested in the form of the eco-
nomics of management which presents capitalist domination as a
necessary and ‘natural’ fact of the technicalities of modern industrial
processes. The value form of appropriation conceals the politics of
control simply because the function of control is indispensable to
the system of value production itself. For the very conditions of
value production - derived and based on the commodification of
labour-power — not only makes exchange a necessary and compul-
sory act, but also imposes a certain objective standard or social norm
of monetary constraint on all producers. Each and every producer is
forced to consider, on the one hand, the exchangeability of the
product to be produced (i.e. even before the act of production), and,
on the other, the production of the product in such a way as at least
to recover its monetary costs (i.e. to take account of exchangeability
during production). This is because, as a result of the condition of
the separation of workers from the means of production, the produc-
tion of surplus value is invisible; the quantity of surplus labour-time
performed is not directly observable in the form or quantity of the
output produced as commodities.
Capitalist appropriation, therefore, necessitates the direct control
of the process of production, since while unpaid or surplus labour is
 Introduction 17
potentially secured by the act of exchange between capital and
labour, by the purchase of labour-power, it is not until the output is
actually produced that surplus labour is materialized and appro-
priated. Only later, as and when this output is sold, is there ‘confir-
mation’ of appropriation in the form of profit.
Insofar as the capitalist system of production is concerned,
‘control’ appears to be based on two distinct sets of relations: the
control of the performance of labour at the point of product.un or at
the place of work - the control of the labour process as such; and the
control over the social system of production, exchange and distribu-
tion. Both are, however, merely moments of the same set of rela-
tions; they are different aspects of value relations as the dominant
relations of production. The former refers to the power of the extrac-
tion of surplus labour through the concrete ways and means of
translating the commodity labour-power into labour. The latter
refers to ‘property’ as the exercise of that social power of control: the
power and ability to combine the means of production and labour-
power, and set production in motion. The latter is actually the legal
expression of the former. This distinction between ‘ownership’ and
‘control’ is based on the ‘real appearance’ of the illusion of the
dualism of ‘technical’ and ‘social’ control, and thereby mystifies the
politics of production as that of distribution. The control of the pro-
duction process, of the extraction and appropriation of surplus
labour, appears determined by property relations.
However, this is the phenomenal form based on the actuality of
capitalism; the reality is quite the reverse. The constant social repro-
duction of the social power of control (i.e. of property relations) is
entirely dependent on the controlling power of capital at the point
of production, which signifies the power over the actual use and pro-
ductive consumption of means of production and labour-power as
expressed through the technical conditions and structure of the pro-
duction process. It is through this mode of control that the extrac-
tion of surplus labour is achieved, and workers are forced by the very
technical conditions of the labour process itself actually to reproduce
the very conditions of their own subjection as they produce capital
(surplus value).
The appearance of the separation of control from ownership,
however, can no longer be reproduced and socially substantiated, as
automation radically and qualitatively transforms the structure
of production, objectively eliminating the process of extraction of
surplus labour. With the advance of automation, the process of
externalization of control becomes finally and absolutely complete:
a process which has its historical roots in the transformation of the
labour process instituted by capital, initially with the development
and diffusion of the manufacturing method, followed by the
Industrial Revolution and continued by the advance of the tech-
niques of the ‘scientific management’ of labour and the technologi-
cal system of mechanization. This is the historical process of the
18 Capitalism and Automation
development of capitalist production as ‘the progressive alienation
of the process of production from the worker’, which Harry
Braverman examined in detail in his Labor and Monopoly Capital.‘
The complete externalization of control from the process of pro-
duction, however, is nothing but a self-suspending and vanishing
moment of the process of capitalist breakdown. The progressive
alienation of the process of production from the worker is essentially
a process of struggle between labour and capital, and the competi-
tive struggle among individual capitals, through which capital is
forced for the sake of its own self-preservation constantly to revolu-
tionize the material conditions of production. The dynamic of this
process manifests itself through periodic crises.
For Braverman, the importance of this process of transformation,
and the development of technologies and techniques, was the
manner in which the working class came to be dispossessed of even
its limited degree of control over the labour process. The separation
of conception from execution, the detailed sub-division of labour,
de-skilling and the degradation of labour, are of crucial significance,
however, not simply in the negative sense of being techniques to
reduce the control of workers over the direct operations of the
labour process and to decrease the value of labour-power; but
because such techniques have been fundamental to the process of
the development of material productive forces. The development of
the technologies of automation would not have been possible
without the advance of these techniques.
However, it is only in connection with value production that the
positive aspect of the development and diffusion of automation
technologies can be grasped. If the process of automation is exam-
ined independently of capital production as the self-expansion of
value, then one could envisage such technologies as the computer,
microelectronic-based control devices and robotics, telecommunica-
tion systems, etc., either as powerful instruments of ‘liberation’ from
labour, expanding the realm of material prosperity, of leisure, etc.
(which is the standpoint taken by many proponents of the ‘post-
industrial’ thesis); or as powerful instruments of domination,
extending and intensifying capital’s control over society (which is
the standpoint of many on the Left). But by examining these tech-
nologies in relation to capital (value) production, we can see that
both ‘liberation’ from labour and the extension of domination and
control over society are actually two sides of the same coin. The
extension of domination over society with the greater use of com-
puters, etc., is part and parcel of the process of automation of mat-
erial production which begins to ‘liberate’ capital from its depen-
dence on labour, as labour is increasingly made redundant. The
process necessarily involves the progressive deepening of the inher-
ent contradictions of capital itself as self-expanding value. The posi-
tive aspect is in this heightening of contradictions which comes
increasingly to be expressed in the form of class conflicts.
 Introduction 19
The more successful capital is in shaping its technological system
to increase surplus labour-time, the more the production system
itself comes up against the limited foundation of capital. As capital
pushes forward the development of the technological systems, as the
form of technology as capital advances in correspondence with the
requirements of a greater extraction of surplus labour, at each stage
of this developmental process it becomes more and more difficult for
capital to self-expand. The more the productive power of labour is
increased, the more developed the technological system already is,
the harder must capital push forward the development of technolo-
gies and techniques in order to self-expand, though in an ever
smaller proportion, ‘since the denominator’, or the size of capital
investment, ‘has grown enormously.’42 Capital certainly progres-
sively enhances its control over the production process, but as it
does so the rise in surplus labour-time (which is what capital is really
after) tends progressively to become proportionately smaller in rela-
tion to total investment; and this ‘because’, in Marx’s words, ‘its
barrier always remains the relation between the fractional part of the
day which expresses necessary labour, and the entire working day’.43
The essential significance of this process, therefore, is not the
enhancement of capital’s control over production, not the loss of all-
round craft skills by the worker, but that the dynamics of capitalist
development, powered by the class struggle and the competitive
struggle among individual capitals and expressed through the pro-
gressive advance of the material productive forces, generates the
social and material conditions of the dissolution of the capitalist
mode of production.
It is with automation that capital appears to achieve its absolute
control of every detailed operation of the production process. But
since capital achieves this, not because automation further degrades
labour, but because it removes and displaces wage labour (both
direct and indirect) from the system of material production, this
appearance of capital’s absolute control is merely a self-dissolving
moment of its own dissolution as the dominant relation of produc-
tion. For as ‘capital and wage labour are two sides of one and the
same relation’,44 the progressive elimination of wage labour from
the process of material production as a result of the advance of auto-
mation is a move by capital itself towards its own dissolution.
Therefore, I think it is important to go beyond Braverman’s very
important contribution to our understanding of capitalist control
and the process of the degradation of labour. The significance of his
statement that ‘the progressive elimination of the control functions
of the worker ... and their transfer to a device which is controlled ...
by management from outside the direct [labour-RR] process’,45 can
be more fully appreciated if we relate it to the implications of auto-
mation for value and surplus-value creation. If we merely confine
our understanding of the capitalist development of technologies and
techniques to the limits of Braverman’s critical examination of the
20 Capitalism and Automation
nature and form of work processes and ‘industrial relations’, we lose
sight of the deepening contradictions involved in the progressive
transfer of control to a device. Failure to take account of the contra-
dictions involved in such a process tends to portray the historical
development of capitalist production as an unending process.
Thus, Braverman rightly points to the historical specificity of the
capitalist form of the organization of labour, and in page after page
of analysis he castigates the attitudes and views of those who present
capitalism’s ‘antagonistic relations of production’ as ‘not only inevi-
table, but ... [as] eternal’.4© Nevertheless, because in his critique he
does not even attempt to relate the process of ‘the progressive elimi-
nation of the control function of the worker’ to the problematic of
value and surplus-value creation, and thus fails to take account of
the contradictions involved in the developmental process he
describes,47 Braverman himself seems to present the forward march
of capital as to be itself ‘eternal’, and the capitalist organization of
production as monumentum aere perennius.
However, I would suggest that this process of the transfer of pro-
ductive knowledge and control to ‘a device which is controlled ... by
management from outside’ of the production process — this process
of objectification - is of profound importance because it signifies
capitalism’s memento mori. This is the process of the advance of tech-
nologies and techniques which has brought forth the development
of automation. And it is with this development that we are rapidly
moving into an epoch of ceaseless conflict between the productive
force of automation and production relations based on value.

Automation, Information Technology and Society

It is in relation to this process of completion of the externalization

of control from the process of production that the political signifi-
cance of information technologies becomes increasingly apparent.
The marriage of computers and telecommunication systems is highly
significant, not merely as regards the movement and processing of
financial and commercial information, but as a powerful means
applicable to the realm of social control.
Social control is a very complex issue involving a wide range of
activities and institutions, the coverage of which is far beyond the
scope of this study. I am well aware that social control involves a
whole range of customs and traditions, and more importantly a
conflict and struggle of values and ideas, which I can in no way
adequately deal with: this is not only for reasons of space, or the
obvious limitations of the subject matter under investigation, but,
more to the point, also that of competence. What I am concerned
with here is what I consider to be certain essential relations and
aspects of capitalist control over society, and this only in relation
to the process of automation of capital production and its
 Introduction 21
consequences. It is, therefore, only from this perspective that I shall
be considering the important role of information technologies (and
the related communication systems) in relation to socio-political
and ideological practices, and therefore also their implications for
the exercise of social control.
There is no doubt that the use of information technologies will
have a substantive quantitative and qualitative effect on the func-
tioning and operation of the existing institutions of social control —
from education and leisure to mass politics, state security and the
military. In its simplest sense, the use of such technologies increases
the ability of the various controlling agencies and institutions to
collect and amass enormous quantities of ‘information’ on behavi-
our, attitudes and almost all aspects of social life. It improves the
quality of the processing and transmission of such ‘information’;
and hence on that basis, their use can improve the quality of control
systems being utilized by these public (state) or private institutions.
The basic idea is that because of the qualitative character and ‘effi-
ciency’ of information technologies, their use enhances the capa-
bility of those in control of these technological systems, on the one
hand, to reinforce and improve the indirect forms of class control —
increasing their capacity for influencing or manipulating attitudes
and structuring human behaviour, shaping lifestyles and cultural
patterns. And, on the other, it strengthens the direct means of class
control by improving the efficiency of the organizations of state
security, police surveillance, and so on.
However, the cultural, political, legal and other institutions and
practices of social control and ruling class hegemony are powerfully
effective so long as their economic foundations systematically repro-
duce the essential conditions of their substantiation and legitima-
tion. The essence of the capitalist class’s hegemonic power, and the
legitimation of its form of authority, rest on the social form of
labour as wage-labour. It is the wage form which sustains, reinforces
and perpetuates submission through ‘consent’, and often even the
‘acceptance’ of repression as legitimate (as in ‘populist’ authoritarian
rule). The wage form is the condensed social form of the concentra-
tion of the political, ideological, legal and economic force and power
of capitalist control over society, as it is also, and necessarily, the
essential embodiment of all the contradictions of capitalist rule. And
as long as the system of social production reproduces and reinforces
in perpetuity the wage form, then the political function of social
control, whether based on liberal democratic or authoritarian forms,
appears as socially necessary.
With the advance of automation and the increasing eradication of
wage-labour from the process of social production, however, this
single most important social condition of the systemic reproduction
of capitalist hegemonic power is removed. As a consequence of such
a fundamental transformation, the function of social control no
longer appears as socially necessary, but increasingly as only
22 Capitalism and Automation
politically necessary. This creates an increased need for the legitima-
tion of the practice and exercise of class control, which can no
longer rely on the residue of wage relations as the principal support-
ing relations for the exercise of class control. It is in relation to this
process of transformation, as the age of automation unfolds, that
information technology begins to assume a more directly political
role as a powerful weapon to be used both in an attempt to neutral-
ize social contradictions and hence also social conflicts through cul-
tural implosion - i.e the attempt to continue the constant
reproduction of the ‘silent majority’ — and to increase the efficiency
of repression.
We are often led to believe that the use of information technolo-
gies, particularly in relation to mass communication or mass media,
can be a potent force of manipulation of attitudes and the structur-
ing of behaviour. To justify such a claim, comparison is made
between these and certain technologies of the past. A case which is
often produced as such an example of the control and structuring of
behaviour and attitudes is that of the development and diffusion of
the clock, which enabled the precise measurement of time. It is a
case that goes back to Lewis Mumford’s Technics and Civilization, for
whom the clock, and not the steam-engine, is the ‘key-machine’ of
the industrial age, and its significance was the synchronization of
human actions.48
It is undeniable that consideration of time is fundamental to every
moment of modern life. But the imperative of time measurement
was not the result of the invention of the mechanical clock. It was
only when such an imperative came to assume social (i.e. societal)
significance that the mechanical clock as an invention became trans-
lated into a technology.‘? The clock became a means (a technology)
of discipline and control when the commodification of labour-power
made the precise measurement of labour-time the most essential
condition of social production. It is this social definition of time
which structured human behaviour by means of the translation of
the mechanical clock into a technology of control and discipline.
The question is: Can information technology, or in fact the com-
puter as such, have the same ‘impact’ on social behaviour? As the
clock became the means of standardization of time, can information
technology become a means of standardization of social behaviour
and attitudes? I maintain that if we take into account the socioeco-
nomic implications of the advance of automation for the capitalist
order, the effective use of information technology will not only be
limited, but will in fact be counteracted by the rise of new forces and
new passions.
It is impossible, I would suggest, to transfer the functional power
of control over society to the dead labour of the technologies of
information. Even if we assume the full development of ‘intelligent
machines’, of artificial intelligence, social behaviour and attitudes
cannot be controlled entirely by means of technology. This is not
 Introduction 23
because it would be technically impossible to develop and construct
such ‘totalitarian’ technological systems of control, but that what
needs to be taken into account, as regards their development and
application, are the specific social conditions and circumstances
associated with the advance of automated production within the
capitalist system. The point is that technical possibilities are deter-
mined (limited) by particular social circumstances and conditions; it
is always, as it were, the social which defines the limits of the
technical.
It is certainly true that techniques and methods of social organiza-
tion in the past have been developed and used to generate a highly
regimented social order. One could perhaps, in abstraction from par-
ticular social conditions and circumstances of the advance of auto-
mated production, make a case for the transfer of the ‘rules’ of such
techniques (based on the breakdown of ‘social’ behaviour and atti-
tudes into ‘standardized’ forms) to a technological system of control
(this is in fact one of the most dangerous aspects of the development
of artificial intelligence). But given the social contradictions inherent
in automated capitalist production, it would be a gross mistake to
imagine that such all-embracing technological systems of societal
control can be effective in the structuring of social behaviour or the
manipulation of attitudes. It is not simply a question of technologi-
cal capacity and power, but fundamentally one of social conflict, of
struggles between differing values and attitudes, of the rising tide of
social contradictions and ultimately of class warfare.
The functions of social control (i.e. societal control) cannot by defi-
nition be externalized from society. Or rather their externalization
from ‘society’ is nothing but the transformation of ‘social’ control
into direct political control as relation of domination. It is, I believe,
here in relation to social/class control that the limits of objectifica-
tion, of the transfer of control functions to technological systems, is
reached.

Finally, a few words are in order here in relation to the scope of this
study as regards to ‘time and space’, and other considerations:
I take the capitalist world system to be the global homogenized
space of value, which necessarily includes not merely Western capi-
talist nations and the so-called ‘Third World’ countries, but also the
state-capitalist countries of the East (including China) which are mis-
takenly but commonly referred to as ‘communist’, ‘socialist’ or ‘state
socialist’ nations. My examination of the implications of automa-
tion, however, is not concerned with any particular social formation
within this global space. If Western advanced countries appear more
prominently in the study, it is simply because in reality they have
such a prominent role within the system; it is in this region that we
find the most advanced trend towards automation of material
production.
24 Capitalism and Automation
Insofar as the ‘time’ factor is concerned, the study is not simply
concerned with the current technical changes taking place, but
essentially with the ‘long-term’ implications of the process of auto-
mation. ‘Time’ consideration is even more of a problematic issue
than that of ‘space’. But perhaps the simplest way of conveying what
I mean by the notion of ‘long term’ is to make a comparison
(though it is not wholly accurate) of the process of automation with
that of mechanization. The process of mechanization, which truly
began with the Industrial Revolution, took some two centuries or so
to reach its full maturity. The pace would certainly be far quicker
with automation, but nonetheless it would undoubtedly require a
good many years, a few decades or so, before it reaches its full deve-
lopment and widespread diffusion.
However, just as with mechanization but to a far greater extent
and more dramatically, automation will also have far-reaching impli-
cations as its process of further development and application gathers
momentum. Indeed, unlike mechanization, given the existing com-
position and size of capital units and the particular structural fea-
tures of capitalism today, the radical consequences of the advance of
automation increasingly tend to manifest themselves long before the
global generalization of this technological system. For automation of
capital production to begin to undermine the process of accumula-
tion and the capitalist social order, it is enough that we should have
the full automation of the major productive capital units in the most
advanced capitalist countries. It goes without saying that this study
is not committed to a specified time-span; or to the prediction of the
‘exact’ time of capital’s final hour.
As regards the so-called ‘neutrality’ of the technological system of
automation (or indeed any form of technology) and its application
and use under a different social system (socialism, communism, or
whatever), I take the standpoint that while technology cannot be
‘neutral’ (in whatever sense this notion is meant), any new social
system necessarily (as is evident from historical records) inherits the
productive forces developed under the old system. As an integral and
necessary part of its struggle for dominance, it must institute a
radical transformation of the technological system it has inherited;
failing this it cannot become established.
This is precisely what occurred with the rise of capitalism; the cap-
italist mode of production proper became dominant (established)
not with ‘formal’ but with ‘real’ subordination of labour: with the
development of the manufacturing system and the strictly capitalist
division of labour. It is from that basis that technology came to be
designed to increase the efficiency of exploitation through the
enhancement of capitalist control and domination - i.e. technology
as Capital.
However, whether there can be something called ‘socialist’ tech-
nology, and if so what form it should take, are issues I do not even
attempt to deal with. Nor does the study deal with ‘alternative
 Introduction 25
technologies’ and ‘alternative’ methods of production. Although
such issues may have a great deal of importance, they are certainly
not essential to the process of capitalist breakdown. Moreover, there
are many other social, cultural, environmental and _political pro-
blems I have not touched upon. I have attempted to concentrate as
much as possible on the most essential issues relevant to the implica-
tions of automation. At times the force of this concentration appears
as a forceful overstatement of some ideas and propositions. Thus the
reader may find a certain measure of exaggeration, which I found to
be unavoidable in order to state my case.
 Part I: Automation

A serious attempt is being made to shape our future. It is a ‘revolu-

tion’ in the making. But it is a revolution managed by and for
capital. The relationships and structures are not yet sufficiently
developed, but all the indications are that it is as compulsive and
cancerous as the Industrial Revolution. Much still remains to be
fought out; and it is being fought out at the heart of society, in the
domain of production. It concerns the transformation of what Marx
called ‘Modern Industry’ by means of a technological revolution.
The fact that this ‘revolution’ has an international character is
unquestionable. But equally unquestionable is the fact that its
centre of gravity is firmly located at the core of the system, in the so-
called ‘Free World’. The technologies of automation were developed
in the geographical regions where the system of mechanization was
and is most advanced: the United States, Europe and Japan. It is here
that there exists the most developed social and economic infrastruc-
ture which could support and provide the conditions for the produc-
tion of the necessary technical knowledge and the financial and
other means of applying this knowledge to the production process.
It is here in the West that we have the greatest concentration of
capital. And all technological innovations depend in the first place
on the force of that concentration.
This part of the study is concerned with the process of develop-
ment of the technologies of automation. It attempts to provide an
explanation of the qualitatively distinct and unique character of
automation as a technological system of production.

27
1

The Development of
Technologies of Automation

Technology, the degree of its sophistication and its different charac-

ter and nature, is certainly a most powerful indicator of the form of
society in which it functions. It is one of the most crucial founda-
tion blocks that structure the process of social production, in which
both technology and labour-power combine in a specific manner.
The latter process initially always functions with a given set of
implements and devices, which have been developed in the past by
previous generations of intellectual and manual workers.
As artefacts, technologies are, by definition, social products; they
are not merely physical objects with certain technical characteristics
and qualities, but also, and at the same time, social objects designed
to satisfy certain given social needs. But, beyond this generalization,
instruments and technological systems are not merely shaped by defi-
nite social and economic forces, they are in themselves objective
(material and technical) manifestations of the given dominant social
relations of production. Technological systems are powerful objec-
tive means of exploitation and class domination.
Under advanced capitalism, technologies are far more precisely
designed not only to function in particular production processes, but
also, as they function in these processes, to fulfil more completely
the essential (capitalistic) goals of the maximum reduction of labour-
time and the real material (i.e. technical) subjugation and control of
living labour.
Here the process of objectification and the result of that process,
technologies, are more specifically geared towards such goals. These
social goals determine the basic functional principles of technolo-
gies, and are critical features incorporated into the actual design of
their technical make-up. This, as we shall see, is clearly evident, and
of particular significance, as regards the development of automation
technologies, which through their technical functioning impress
their specific social aspect as capital.
The wealth of our age, more than any other, appears to spring
from an immense and complex network of _ technologies.
Technology seems, therefore, to have a kind of magical power that
somehow creates wealth and prosperity ‘independently’. Progress,

Zo
30 Automation
development and affluence appear to be the direct result of techno-
logical advancement. Automation technology, and, in particular,
computers, are both presented and, as they function, present them-
selves, either as independent or, at the least, as dominant, factors
which ‘affect’ and have a substantive ‘impact’ on society. This
appearance, the notion of technological determinism, is an
immensely influential and powerful ideology that has its real
premise in, and is generated and regenerated consistently and sys-
tematically by, the very functioning of the capitalist mode of
production.
It is only in a society founded on the basis of the systemic separa-
tion of labour from the means of production, whereby a central
characteristic emerges and becomes supremely dominant - the cha-
racteristic that the labour of each and every individual producer can
only be rendered social through the exchange relations between
‘things’ as commodities — that technology takes on a deterministic
role, and with this provides the real premise for a mode of conscious-
ness and thought that is technologist.
In no other social system of production have the instruments of
labour taken on such an intimidating role as under capitalism. It was
(and still is) imperative that the design and development of instru-
ments of production should move in such a direction that would
enable the greatest production and expansion of capital, and, simul-
taneously, reduce the previously immense dependence of produc-
tion upon the skill, knowledge and practice of the labouring class.
The Industrial Revolution was motivated by this social imperative;
so, for that matter, was the continuing advance of mechanization,
and now the great stride towards automation.
The ‘dominance’ of technology, which is inherent in the produc-
tion relations of capitalism, is undoubtedly socially fabricated and
determined. But the beauty of it (for capital) is that this ‘dominance’
is actually built into the very framework, structure and mode of
operation of production itself.
The postulate of technological determinism springs from capital as
a social relation that projects and functions through the increasing
objectification of the ‘labour’ process. The ever-growing objectified
character of the ‘labour’ process, which is essentially the result of the
functioning of capitalist social relations, presents itself, and must do
So, as a feature of technology. The subjective principle of the process
becomes increasingly less important, not because of the ‘natural’
development of human knowledge, not because of the inner dyna-
mics of technology in itself, but by choices and decisions which are
themselves determined by the social conditions of capital
production.
These systemically determined decisions are transformed into
reality through the design and development of technologies which
express, in their mode of functioning, the ever-decreasing role of
human labour (mental and manual) in production. The notion of
 Development of Technologies 31
technological determinism expresses (ideologically) the supremacy
of capital which took centuries of class struggle for it to be given
reality; in this task, science and technology had (and have) a funda-
mental role.
The so-called microelectronics ‘revolution’ is the key component
of the long and cherished dream of achieving this ‘absolute’ supre-
macy in production. Technologies (and techniques)! are a most pow-
erful weapon in capital’s struggle with labour, and the competitive
struggle among its constituents - the many different capital units —
which is an inherent feature of the process of accumulation. But
technological developments must take account of changes both in
the conditions of the struggle with labour, and the competition
among capitals - in other words, the changes in the conditions of
capital accumulation.
Thus in the history of capitalism we see a whole range of techno-
logical developments. A close examination of these will reveal not
only the link between these and the basic imperative of capital accu-
mulation, but, more specifically, the connection between certain
technological developments and the different phases of the accumu-
lation process.
Although it is only in the last decade or so that microelectronics
has achieved fame (and notoriety), it is in fact part and parcel of the
legacy of the establishment and diffusion of the technological
system of intensive mechanization (from the late 1920s to the
1940s), and the era of sustained economic expansion which began
in the 1940s and ended in the late 1960s/early 1970s.
This revolution in technology is a product of the same historical
process of capitalist development that gave rise to the global institu-
tionalization of capitalist social relations, and the transformation of
the war economy, following the Second World War, into a perma-
nent arms economy and the establishment of the so-called ‘military-
industrial complex’.
War and militarism have always had a most decisive part in the
development of capitalism. War is, after all, both a weapon in the
competitive struggle between capitals and an extreme manifestation
of capitalist crisis. It is a most active factor in the process of restruc-
turing social and economic institutions as well as the development
and application of technologies.
It was thus no accident that the development of the nascent tech-
nologies of automation received its real major boost in the 1940s.
Militarization of the economy necessarily means not merely the
involvement of the state in the economy (which has always been the
case to a greater or lesser extent) but that the nation-state must act
directly as capital. Militaristic competition - that is, competition in
the production of ever more sophisticated, accurate and advanced
armaments — tends to have the same compulsive force as price com-
petition. This means that the capitals involved in arms production
are constantly under great pressure to improve not only the
32 Automation
efficiency (destructive potential) of the weapon systems being deve-
loped and produced, but also the efficiency and productivity of the
processes of arms production itself.
Moreover, given the perceived role of arms production as literally
a matter of life or death for the different national capitals, the
quality of products and their processes of production need a very
high degree of constant and thorough supervision. Not only is
quality control imperative, but a great reduction in the risk of
worker ‘insubordination’, sabotage or strikes is obviously para-
mount. The notion of ‘cybernetics’ and the development of techno-
logies associated with it are a response to these needs.
The development of automation technologies is directly linked to
the enormous growth in military expenditure that occurred after the
Second World War. Until the 1940s, the development of electronics,
for example, took place at a relatively slow pace. This situation
changed as a result of the war and the following period of intense
military competition. Although the industry was as yet compara-
tively marginal, the rearmament boom initiated by the Korean War
and the continued unprecedented ‘peacetime’ high levels of military
expenditure following that war, established the electronic field as a
new and important branch for capital investment.
It was the United States, more than any other of the so-called
‘great powers’ (including the UK), that emerged from the Second
World War as the most powerful industrial and military might
within the world system. However, the reality of American industrial
and military superiority did not in itself guarantee total and com-
plete security of its hegemony. This reality was based upon the
postwar rise of labour militancy not only in the US itself, but
throughout the ‘Free World’, and the rising tide of national libera-
tion movements throughout the backward South, the colonies and
semi-colonial countries.
It was this sociopolitical background, itself a result of the process
of capital accumulation, in addition to the general condition of the
‘Cold War’ and the Soviet/US military competition, that coloured
the outlook of the military and economic planners in the advanced
heartlands of the system.
Massive amounts of capital and scientific and technical labour
were channelled towards the production of weapon systems, military
equipments, communication and transportation systems, as well as
institutional, managerial, organizational and intelligence support
structures. Two basic imperatives guided the research and develop-
ment programme backed by the state: on the one hand the develop-
ment of products that would ensure a high degree of reliability,
efficient performance, accuracy and combat readiness; on the other,
the development of technologies of production and backup systems
that would be highly responsive not only to the delivery of products
according to the precise specifications required, but also to the
reduction of the risks of human error and industrial conflict.
 Development of Technologies 33
Insofar as production technology is concerned, research and deve-
lopment were concentrated on the improvement of the existing
system of mechanization. The key factor, however, that was increas-
ingly singled out as a fundamentally significant field of study was
the development of control systems. It is the development of
machine control systems which is the key to understanding the
qualitatively distinct character of the new technologies of automa-
tion. It is therefore clearly important for us to begin by giving an
explanation of this developmental process.

1. The Advance of Mechanical Control

A mechanical device consists of three fundamental functional fea-

tures: (a) transmission of power; (b) transformation of motion; (c)
control mechanism of direction and speed.2 Its structure is the com-
bination of various elements and parts, according to a set of
mechanical principles, in such a manner as to produce an articula-
tion of the transmission, transformation and control functions that
would enable the device to perform the desired task.
For early machinery, as Braverman points out, ‘the sequence of
operations is either built once and for all into the mechanism and
cannot be altered ... or the machine may be adapted to a limited
variety of functions by changing its internal (cam or gearing)
arrangements.’3 Such a machine is thus inflexible, however ‘self-
acting’ in principle.4
Because the functions of transmission, transformation and control
of movement are mechanically integrated by the same set of elemen-
tal parts, modification of machines to perform with greater speed
and accuracy, or to perform different tasks and operations, would be
very costly. To modify one function, say, of transformation of
motion by improving the gears, affects the transmission of power
through those gears, and so on.°
In fact at this stage (i.e around the early and mid-nineteenth
century), a greater improvement in the performance of a machine
was achieved by making it more specialized and single-purpose. This
techno-physical limitation had a direct affect on the organization of
the labour process and on the composition of the working class. For,
while the increasing application of machinery decreased the relative
number of workers being exploited,® at the same time it technically
and objectively narrowed down the ‘total craftsman’ into a spe-
cialized worker serving the machine, thus reinforcing the old manu-
facturing division of rank and status based on skill. Ironically, in this
early transitional phase of the process of mechanization, the more
specialized the network of machinery (in order to improve its perfor-
mance and ‘efficiency’), the more dependent would become the cap-
italist on the skill and knowledge of a specialized machinist.
Whatever the size of the network of machinery, the early stages of
34 Automation
the development of machine production - in particular the engi-
neering trades and machine-tool industry — was still highly depen-
dent upon a hierarchical organization of labour based on degrees or
levels of skill: from the highly skilled machinist to the unskilled
labourer. And although the action of the machine and the network
of machines determine the performance of human labour, the pro-
ductive knowledge and experience of the machinists are essential to
the performance of the machine network.”
In other words, because of the specific nature and character of
early machinery, there was an organic unity between the network of
machines and the collectivity of workers employed. Technically, the
specialized machines and the specialized workers became interlocked
and inseparable.
However, since the application of this early machinery, when gene-
ralized, lowered the social value of the commodity to its individual
value, and since the technical structure of machine production sets a
definite limit upon the ability of the capitalist to raise the intensity
of labour in order to compensate for the decrease in the relative
number of workers being exploited (the decrease in surplus value),
the capitalist is driven to lengthen the working day and to increase
surplus labour absolutely.®
But the excessive lengthening of the working day could not com-
pensate for long for the limits imposed on the extraction of surplus
labour by the rigid character of early machinery. It produced a
response among the working class that eventually compelled the
executive power of capital, the state, to reduce the hours of labour.9
The question then becomes one of increasing the intensity of labour
by a further improvement of the machine systems. However,
progress in this direction takes time, and was relatively slow for most
industries, with the exception of a few, notably steel production.
By the late-nineteenth century, the prevailing mode of extraction
of surplus labour, based on the use of the early machine systems
which had a rigidly fixed and highly constrained mechanical charac-
ter, had reached its point of exhaustion. The increasing of surplus
value became difficult, both by an increase of relative, and of abso-
lute, surplus labour. The technical limitation of the existing system
of machinery and techniques was the major obstacle for the increase
of relative surplus value, and the compulsory reduction of labour-
time had increasingly eroded the ability to increase absolute surplus
value.1° In Britain, for example, both the ‘rates of industrial growth
and increase in productivity ... show a distinct falling off after the
mid-century decades of high prosperity’.11
The effects of this difficulty in increasing the production of
surplus value became visible with the fall in the rate of profit. In the
period from 1873 to 1896, as Landes writes, ‘prices fell unevenly,
sporadically, but inexorably through crisis and boom - an average of
about one-third on all commodities ... And profits shrank, while
what was now recognized as pericdic depression seemed to drag on
 Development of Technologies 35
interminably. The economic system appeared to be running
down.’12
The Great Depression of 1873-96, however, forced through a
radical modification in the structure and design of the machinery of
production. The development and application of new or modified
technology is the most important means of raising the rate of exploi-
tation (of surplus value), which is ultimately the only way capital
can (temporarily) overcome its crisis. The main force of this change
had already been developed in 1831 with Faraday’s invention of the
first electric generator. But the essential breakthrough came with the
development of the electric motor. It is, I believe, extremely difficult
to accept that it was either incidental or accidental, that in 1873 the
application of electric motors to drive machinery was first demon-
strated.13 Or that, by 1881, in the middle of the Great Depression,
the application of electric motors to lathes, printing presses, sewing
machines and drilling machines was shown at an exhibition in
Paris.14 To imagine that this was a result of the ‘natural’ develop-
ment of science and technology is to forget the steadfast role of
capital in the process of technological change as the most important
way of raising the rate of exploitation or surplus value.
For early mechanization, before the introduction of the electric
motor, the more self-acting or ‘automatic’ the machine, the more
specialized and inflexible its character: ‘Because machines are
mechanically organized by the interplay of masses, forces, torques
and linkages, their functions must narrow as they become increas-
ingly automatic. In becoming more productive, they lose flexi-
bility.’15
With the use of the electric motor, the transformation of motion
could be separated from the transmission of power. As Hirschhorn
explains:

The mechanic could now place two or more motors in a particular

machine. The constraint on machine design was reduced, since dif-
ferent parts could move at different speeds without being connected
to the same primary power source. Long gear trains were eliminated.
In large machines, independent portable motors could now direct
individual segments moving in different planes, eliminating the
need for linkages that translated motions in one place to motions in
another.16

If the machinist could not be made to work harder by means of a

modification of the method of production (i.e. the organization of
labour), because of the constraint imposed upon the latter by the
particular mechanical structure of machinery; if, also, surplus labour
could no longer be increased through the excessive lengthening of
the working day, since this path had become more or less closed to
capital, then the only means which ensured an increase of surplus
labour was to heighten the intensity of labour by modifying the
36 Automation
structure of machinery to make machines run faster. Capital had to
resort to the weapon of technological modification in order to raise
the rate of surplus value.
This was especially important for capital in the important
machine-tool and engineering trades. Since here, more than in any
other branch, labour was ‘strongly organized, craft-oriented, and
[justifiably] fearful of technological unemployment’, fighting ‘all
changes in conditions of work’.!? The process of introducing new
technologies is, as always, initiated through the method of ‘rationali-
zation’. As Landes has observed: ‘The issue was at the heart of dozens
of major and minor strikes in the industry from 1897-98 on. The
very existence of this conflict, of course, is evidence that a certain
amount of rationalization was taking place.’18
The use of electric motors greatly increased the speed of machines,
and produced more continuous production runs. It also greatly
increased the rate at which surplus labour was extracted. The
workers involved, the skilled machinists as well as the unskilled
labourers, were now forced to increase their expenditure of labour in
the given time. The use of the electric motor provided a technologi-
cal means of heightening the tension of labour-power (before the
electric motor this was mainly achieved through the mode of
payment, especially through the piece-work system)19; because it
made possible a more continuous production run, it also reduced the
wastage of time by decreasing the gaps during the working day - i.e.
it improved the ability to fill up the pores of the given working
day.2°
This was made possible by the replacement of the old mechanical
arrangement by electrical sectional drive, which eliminated mecha-
nical linkages, reduced the number of parts, which thus not only
reduced the ‘danger of mechanical slippage, or backlash, at higher
speeds’, but also diminished the consumption of operating power by
reducing friction and slippage between parts.?1
Overall, not only was the speed of machines enhanced, but less
operating power was wasted. In addition to these improvements, the
great advantage of electrification, as against mechanical power trans-
mission, is that it speeds up the modification of machines for diffe-
rent operations at a considerably reduced cost. As Hirschhorn
explains: ‘To change the relative speeds of different machine sec-
tions, the mechanic or engineer, instead of stripping the machine
and replacing old gears and cams with new ones, need only adjust
the relative speeds of the different electric motors.’22
With electricity and electric motors, technological conditions now
required a modification of techniques and methods of organizing
shopfloor labour. First of all factory layout was changed, as the need
for special housing of the prime movers was eliminated. The various
transmitting parts which were required with the old prime movers,
such as belting and shafting, were no longer needed. Now the work
force needed to be made more ‘scientifically’ organized in relation to
 Development of Technologies 37
the networks of machines. Now, also, Taylor’s principles seriously
began to creep into the managerial restructuring of the labour
process.
From 1900, one branch of production after another became
affected by this electrical ‘revolution’. And the First World War, by
increasing the demand for machines of various kind, gave a great
impetus to the process.23 Between 1914 and 1920, for example, the
etpeiticarion of US industry had grown from 30 per cent to 70 per
cent.
However, although the use of electric motors, and the process of
electrification asa whole, greatly enhanced productivity and
increased the intensity of labour, this technological advance had a
much greater impact upon large-scale and ‘mass’ production, than
on small batch production which lies at the heart of the so-called
‘capital-goods’ industry. The one major ‘problem’ which still
remained was, in the eyes of management, the mechanical con-
Straint imposed upon the function of control.
This is not a ‘problem’ as such for the production of goods in
general, but comes to be seen as a problem only in relation to the
increase of the rate of extraction of surplus labour under certain con-
ditions of capital production.
Control of speed and direction, of the movement of the tool in
relation to the workpiece, is a concentrated area of skill and experi-
ence. In handicraft, just as in art or music, the function of control is
separate from the tools being used. The control of the movement of
the tool rests entirely with the craftsman. Particular tools and the
properties of the materials used, do set limits to the form of the per-
ceived object to be produced. But within those limits, it is the hands
of the craftsman in combination with his eyes, his skill and experi-
ence (his brain), that transmit power and transform motion. Not
only is the speed and direction of the tool controlled, but also the
movement and change of the workpiece.
This form of production has obvious limitations in terms of quanti-
tative production which machine production overcomes by incorpo-
rating these various functions within its structure. However, by doing
this, it does not free quantitative production from the restriction of
specialization. The mechanical arrangement of those functions once
performed by a craftsman, even as regards the most self-acting
machine, can be changed, as we have seen, but at the expense of
losing time and hence money.
In the initial phases of machine development, the replacement of
the hands of the craftsman was achieved by a specific component
that basically allowed the workpiece to be transformed by a compo-
nent that guided the movement of the tool. Maudslay’s slide rest
and Blanchard’s lathe were pioneering mechanical devices of this
kind.
While for Maudslay’s slide rest the base screw acted as a template
controlling the movement of the tool, in Blanchard’s lathe this
38 Automation
function was performed by the cam (containing in its form the basic
controlling ‘information’) which guided the action of shaping and
cutting wood.
This mechanical component had obvious positive implications in
terms of costs and the time and rate of adjustment of machines for
the production of different products. Since, as Hirschhorn states, ‘a
wide range of shapes and motions can be produced without strip-
ping down and rebuilding the machine each time the workpiece
must be shaped to a new design’.25
However, although cams certainly eased the previous structural
restrictions on adaptability, they had their own limitations. First,
while the incorporation of the cam as a template meant that part of
the skill, but in particular dexterity, of a craftsman was incorporated
into the structure of a machine, it did not mean the displacement of
craft skill. For the cam had to be shaped by hand and this entailed
certain complications and required the skill of a craftsman; it was
thus time-consuming and costly to produce. ‘Even today’, as
Hirschhorn points out, ‘machine shops make only small quantities
of such complicated parts; the fixed costs involved in producing the
cam may not be recovered in selling the automatically produced
pieces.’26
Secondly, since the cam is the component that provides the
linkage for two functions of directing and the force of moving the
tool, its design and construction is further complicated by the
requirements of its physical makeup: ‘Not only must the cam be
powerful enough - that is, of sufficient metallic thickness and mass —
to impart the necessary force, it must also be shaped so as to guide
the tool accurately.’2” This entails additional costs and difficulties of
shaping and construction.
The problem of control was therefore far from over. It was cer-
tainly eased somewhat by the use of the cam. And, indeed, the use
of the cam-following machines increased productivity, though
mainly for large runs producing universal pieces (e.g. bolts and
screws).28 But insofar as the machine-tool industry was concerned, it
was still both more economical and technically necessary to employ
the skilled machinist.
It is this that provided the objective conditions for the relative
strength of the machinist at the shopfloor level. And as long as the
control system remained dependent upon the machine’s ‘specialized
internal construction’29 the role of the machinist remained indis-
pensable, especially with short-run production of components and
parts. Productivity could be increased here, but only to a limited
extent, by dividing the workforce into skilled and semi-skilled
machinists. Only in this way was the cost of labour somewhat
reduced, and the labour process made to function at a relatively
faster rate and more continuously.
But in the eyes of capital this was hardly satisfactory, since the
level of productivity of small batch production, machine-tool
 Development of Technologies 39
industry in general, has a direct effect, in terms of costs of parts and
components upon all other branches of production. And the one
factor that plagues this branch of capital production is the problem
related to control systems.
The separation of transmission from transformation was achieved
quite efficiently by the use of the electric motors and electrification.
The cam eased the constraint of mechanical structure, but as a
control system it imparted ‘information’ (the shape to be reproduced)
from within the operating mechanism itself. And because of this the
machine’s adaptability would still be very costly, as we have seen.
Now if ‘information’ could be made to come from outside the
internal mechanism of the machine - i.e the system of control could
be separated from the systems of transmission and transformation —
then this would tremendously boost the machine’s adaptability. ‘A
lathe’, as Braverman states, can then ‘be controlled even more effi-
ciently by a punched-paper or magnetic tape, and be immediately
adaptable to work of every kind suitable to its size and power.’30
However, a complete separation of control systems from the phy-
sical structure of machines took a long time to be achieved; and the
process eventually involved a radical qualitative break with the prin-
ciples of mechanics and mechanization. Perhaps by far the most
famous (and significant) advance of production technology which
demonstrates the importance of the process of ‘externalization’ of
control systems was the development of numerical control machine-
tools. This is also an excelent example that reveals the close connec-
tion between the process of development of automatic control
systems and the significant role of the military-industrial complex,
particularly after the Second World War. At the same time, it is an
example that illuminates the vital significance of the fusion of the
techno-physical and social aspects of technologies.

2. The Example of Numerical Control

The concept of this type of machine control has been traced back to
the Falcon knitting machine invented in 1725, and the Jacquard
loom of 1804.3! The idea was taken up much later, in 1916, and a
version of it was subsequently patented in 1930. Yet its development
took place only after the Second World War.
It was at this time that the idea for such a form of machine
control was picked up again by John Parsons, a US air force subcon-
tractor and manufacturer of rotor blades for helicopters. In 1949,
with the backing of the US air force, the research programme was
carried out by the John Parsons Corporation and, somewhat later, at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and in 1952 a prototype
of the numerical-control machine tool was produced.32 But even
then its application and industrial utilization took some time before
it became relatively widespread.33
40 Automation
The question is: why did it take such a long time for such a
concept of machine control to become developed and applied? Why
after the Second World War, and not before — say, in the 1930s, or
even earlier?
It can be said that the further development of such a control
system required the development of science, of engineering, of
machine technology itself, of electronics and so on (I shall come to
this point later). And there is no doubt that this is perfectly true. But
this only provides part of the answer, and, moreover, begs the
further question of why the progress of science and engineering
resulted, at least in this case, in the development of this particular
form of machine control and not any other form? In reality there
were other developments, or at least one that we know of for certain;
namely, the record-playback, a machine control system developed in
1946-7 by General Electric, Gisholt and some others.34
However, while the ‘record-playback’ control system soon faded
into obscurity, the numerical-control system was hailed as ‘probably
the most significant development’ since the introduction of the
assembly-line.35 Why was this? Was there something in the techni-
cal makeup and mode of functioning of the N/C, as against the
‘record-playback’, which made it more acceptable as a form of
control technology? And, furthermore, acceptable to whom?
Noble, to the best of my knowledge, is the first historian of tech-
nology who has provided a substantive explanation for the develop-
ment of N/C. As he explains:

Record-playback was, in reality, a multiplier of skill, simply a means

of obtaining repeatability. The intelligence of production still came
from the machinist who made the tape by producing the first part.
Numerical control, however, was based upon an entirely different
philosophy of manufacturing. The specifications for a part — the
information contained in an engineering blueprint — are first broken
down into a mathematical representation of the part, then into
mathematical description of the desired path of the cutting tool
along up to five axes, and finally into hundreds or thousands of dis-
crete instructions, translated into electrical signals for the machine
controls. The N/C tape, in short, is a means of formally circumvent-
ing the role of the machinist as the source of intelligence of
production.36

Here we have a development that reduces the role and status of

living labour in production, as against one that still depended on the
skills of the worker. Clearly it would be naive to think that the deve-
lopment of such a technology, with its specific technical characteris-
tics, was merely accidental, or even the result of the ‘purely’
technical requirements of the machine-tool industry itself. There is
no evidence, as Noble has pointed out, that the N/C was any more
‘efficient’ in itself, for the particular conditions of the machine-tool
 Development of Technologies 41
industry at the time, than the alternative record-playback. The fact
that it only became more widely diffused some decades later is, in
part at least, sufficient proof that its development was not altogether
guided by its presumed technical/productive ‘efficiency’, at the time of
its development.
However, by looking at the particular social conditions of the time
and the technical characteristics of the N/C itself (the combination of
these), we can get a much clearer picture of the N/C’s specific socio-
technical function, and thus the essential reasons for _ its
development.
The first thing to remember is the general social condition in
which the idea was picked up and developed; it was after the Second
World War, the ‘Cold War’ and the permanent arms economy.
Intense military competition between the ‘superpowers’, and
other powerful states, was a dominant factor which conditioned the
behaviour of state capitals, and thus in turn significantly influenced
the activities of a large section of individual capital units. As Kidron
has observed: ‘Once adopted, if only by chance, an arms economy
becomes necessary. It is not merely that a system of mutual compul-
sion through military threat is more imperative than any other, but
that it becomes difficult to unscramble military from economic com-
petition. They fuse.’37
The second point to remember is that it was the US air force that
financed and backed the project, and, insofar as the application of
the N/C is concerned, it was the air force that ‘undertook to pay for
the purchase, installation, and maintenance of over 100 N/C
machines in factories of prime subcontractors; the contractors, air-
craft manufacturers, and their suppliers would also be paid to learn
to use the new technology.’38 The US air force not only financed the
development of the technology, but also generated the market for it.
Thus, in the words of Noble, ‘ ... what made N/C possible —
massive air force SWlous - also helped determine the shape the tech-
nology would take.’3
What, in part, explains the choice of the N/C system is the social
condition of military competition and the support from the US air
force. And once we know this, it is possible to dig deeper into the
reasons for the determination and shaping of the particular techni-
cal characteristics of N/C.
Technically N/C has a number of advantages over the record-
playback and manual methods. There is a general agreement among
the various authorities that N/C machine-tools could perform much
more complex metal-cutting tasks, and, since the calculations are
coded relatively easily, it is faster and less demanding and can
perform the tasks with more assurance and reliability. And it is pre-
cisely here that one must take care not to confuse the issue of why
and how such a means of labour with its particular technical feature
was developed. it was the particular conditions of aircraft produc-
tion, both in the immediate sense of the actual processes involved
 42 Automation
and in the general sense of military competition, that demanded
such technical features, rather than any other that could be
developed.
It is not the case that the air force, or the aircraft manufacturers,
‘found’ such a control system ready at hand, and simply seized the
opportunity of utilizing it to their benefit. It was because aircraft
manufacturing at that particular time - guided by the air force’s
stringent specifications in line with the requirements of the particu-
lars of aircraft design dictated by the pressures of military competi-
tion - demanded the development of such specific technical
features. As Braverman commented, the technical advantage of
complex metal-cutting ‘was one of the features which, because of its
applicability to the shaping of dies and other parts used in aircraft
production, interested the air force in the method.’49
However, the technical development of this form of control
system had to correspond to the needs of aircraft production within
the framework of the constraints imposed on it by the capitalist relations
of production. It was not ‘production in general’ that required such a
technology, but capitalist production of aircrafts. It is here that one
must not forget that military competition is a particular manifesta-
tion of capitalist competition, and not something independent of it.
The engineering and technical aspects of the N/C system not only
had to respect the constraints and requirements of aircraft produc-
tion, but had to be able to reinforce the rules and norms imposed
upon the production process by capital.
Indeed, this is precisely what the technical features of the N/C
were able to deliver. It was a technology that could enhance the
most essential objectives of capital: namely, the increase of control
and domination of living labour, the reduction of costs in general
(e.g. storage costs) and labour costs in particular, and that it could be
used effectively in the struggle with labour at the shopfloor.
A major factor influencing the process of development and
design of this technology was the massive discontent among the
aircraft workers after the war.4! According to Noble, in the aftermath
of the war: ‘Major strikes took place at Boeing, Bell Aircraft (Parsons’
prime contractor), McDonnell Douglas, Wright Aeronautical,
GE
(Evandale) (jet engines), North American Aviation, and
Republic
Aircraft.’42
Now let us look at the N/C’s central technical characteristic and
see to what extent, if at all, this corresponds to the social conditi
ons
of capital production and accumulation at the time.
Control devices in relation to machine-tools did not begin
with
the N/C. Such devices were introduced as early as the
mid-
nineteenth century. The turrel lathe, for example, was able
to ‘me-
morize’ a number of tasks, but with manual sequencing. Some
mechanical sequencing was introduced later, at the end of the
nine-
teenth century, by the use of cams, relays and switches (as
we have
already seen).
 Development of Technologies 43
However, what distinguishes the N/C from all such control
devices is the development of its software. The first signs of an
advance in this direction, based on the development of switching
technology of the 1930s, appeared in connection with the require-
ments of controlling anti-aircraft guns in order to improve guidance
systems during the Second World War.43 The operation of digital
logic systems (the basis of the first digital computers developed in
the 1940s to improve the calculation of the trajectories of artillery
Shells), which are the key components of N/C systems, clearly sepa-
rates even the early N/C systems from all the previous control
devices.
It is now, for the first time, that we can see the beginnings of a
clear-cut break with the old mechanical technologies. What is
important about the N/C is not the hardware as such but the combi-
nation of hardware and software as a single package. It was the
development of the software contained in the N/C tape that made
the new technology not only qualitatively distinct, but also ‘eco-
nomically’ viable. And it was the development of Automatically
Programmed Tools (APT), which was a skeleton programme to be
‘fleshed out’ to suit particular applications, that gave the technology
its unique character.
The N/C as a package of hardware and software now allowed the
Opportunity to remove the input of direct machinist labour. In
effect, the software replaced direct labour by indirect labour and
gave the technology a great deal of flexibility. As Noble comments:
‘It seemed to allow for rapid mobilization, for rapid design change,
and for interchangeability between machines within a plant,
between users and vendors, and between contractors and subcon-
tractors throughout the country (presumably of ‘strategic impor-
tance’ in case of enemy attack).’44
If one were to concentrate the analysis of the N/C merely on its
hardware features, one could agree with Braverman that, ‘There is no
question that from a practical standpoint there is nothing to prevent
the machining process under numerical control from remaining the
province of the total craftsman.’45 However, by looking at it as a
package (the software also as essential to it) it becomes clear imme-
diately that the system is incompatible with the direct labour of the
‘total craftsman’: the software is designed to allow the displacement
of the ‘total craftsman’. As Braverman himself further remarks, the
N/C ‘offers’ the ‘opportunities ... for the destruction of craft and the
cheapening of the resulting pieces of labour into which it is
broken’.46
The transformation of direct labour into indirect labour is
achieved through various stages of programming: from the process
of part programmer who records the specifications of an engineering
drawing on to a planning sheet in detailed and standardized form,
leaving no room for decision-making at the machine by the opera-
tor, to the conversion of the planning sheet with all the details of
 44 Automation
tool-list to be used and the cycle of time required for each particular
job, into machine-readable form.
The technical aspects of the N/C as a package of software and
hardware allows no other interpretation than the fact that its deve-
lopment was determined by the social imperative of reducing the
dependence of production upon direct living labour; to remove the
need for direct decision-making within the production process; to
speed up the change of particular jobs being performed; to enable
reductions in the interruption of the overall operation; and to allow
a more efficient and continuous use of expensive technologies. All of
which have a direct impact on productivity, and therefore on profits
and the accumulation of capital.
Thus by taking into account the fusion of the technical and the
social aspects of the numerical-control system, it then becomes pos-
sible to view its development as having been determined by the
requirements of capital production and not that of ‘general produc-
tion’ or ‘technical efficiency’ in the abstract. It was a technology that
in its technical aspects and functioning respected the needs of
capital at a particular historical phase of its development. Its techni-
cal features, moreover, made this technology an objective moment
of capital; in its application and as it functioned it was capital. And
this was neither by chance nor by accident, but a purposely designed
characteristic; a characteristic which is best exemplified by the
concept of ‘feedback’ as a fundamental feature of the advance of
control systems, and, as we shall see, of automation.

3. The Concept of Feedback

A system of technology, just as a single machine, is held together as

a functional unit, or an arrangement of functional units, by the pos-
session of a means of control for the appropriation, use, retention
and transmission of ‘information’. A template, such as a cam, con-
tains a ‘message’ (a given set of ‘information’) as a pattern which is
transmitted in the process of producing a given object.47 Since,
however, the pattern is physically incorporated into the shape of the
cam, the message is fixed and unalterable. To change the message,
the controlling agency of a machinist is required. The instructions
to
the machine are ‘programmed’ through such parts as cams, stops,
slides and the actual physical configuration of mechanical parts.
All machinery of production has what is called a control loop,
which adjusts the performance of the machine according
to the
action required of it. In the mechanical instruments of product
ion
this often takes the form of an open loop. In other words,
living
labour is needed in the various stages of the cycle to determine
the
ultimate character of the output. If control of machine perform
ance
is based on a closed loop concept, then the machine becomes
‘self-
correcting’. Such self-correcting machines are said to
have simple
 Development of Technologies 45
‘feedback’ control, in that information about machine performance
is continuously measured and fed back into the process affecting the
succeeding action.
A now well-known, early example of such a principle was con-
tained in Watt’s use of the ‘governor’ in his steam engine. The prin-
ciple was one of regulation: instruments and devices were used to
regulate the movement of machines as well as correct errors or irre-
gularities in the motions.48 But although the principle of such a form
of regulation can be seen in the use of the governor, Strictly speaking
the latter was not in fact a feedback control system. It was not until
the twentieth century, with the further development of power gene-
ration and transmission, that sensing and amplification devices
could be developed to enable the development and introduction of
feedback technology in the strict sense.
With mechanical technology, error is excluded, and the sequence
of motions and transformations from one step to the next is invari-
ant and predetermined. If a machine is constructed to shape a parti-
cular metal into a particular form, the sequence of transformations is
carried out rigidly even if, for example, a metal of a different thick-
ness, which requires a different sequence of motions, is fed in. It
cannot alter its orientation; it follows its physically predetermined
old sequence, although it is not suited to this new material. It
cannot, in other words, ‘sense’ and adjust itself to a new or different
condition, material and desired character of output.
However, as Hirschhorn points out: ‘In contrast, the feedback loop
transforms by importing error and developing a sequence of conti-
nually compensating movements so that a fixed outcome is
achieved. The resulting sequence is flexible, changing as input con-
ditions change.’49
The incorporation of a feedback loop into a process or a machine
produces adaptability. The structure of the machine or a process is
now designed to measure the workpiece or output, compare such
measurements to a standard value and specification, detect the mag-
nitude and. ‘sense’ the direction of any error or difference and then
adjust the process or the machine to eliminate or reduce that error
or difference. Such a designed structure can respond to multiple con-
ditions affecting the output or product being produced. It is, in an
extremely simplified and ‘primitive’ sense, a ‘learning’ sequence.
The application of this principle, however, required not merely
the development of the science of engineering, and the development
of sensing and, in particular, amplification technology, but also the
long process of the actual transformation of the process of labour
from that based on the all-round skill of the ‘total-craftsman’ to the
limited specialized labour involving what can be called habitual
sequences. That is, it was not until labour had become simplified
and entailed the performance of repetitive routine tasks that the
principle could be applied. Taylorism, and the techniques developed
on the basis of time and motion studies, were of fundamental
 46 Automation
importance to the eventual application of feedback principle. In
practice, the design and application of the feedback loop is an
attempt to not merely to incorporate ‘total-craft’ skill into a process
or a machine, but to go beyond it.
The development of feedback-based technology and its structural
design is the basis of the separation of the control system from the
transformation and transmission systems; it then becomes possible
to modify the control system independently. This is crucial for the
transformation of the technological system of mechanization into
automation. Technologically this process of transformation —
although it was obviously based on all the various developmental
features of mechanization - essentially began with the invention
and development of the vacuum tube as the first universal amplifica-
tion device.5°

4. The Separation of Control Systems

For the purpose of the application of feedback control to the techno-

logical system of production, the development of the vacuum tube
was crucial. This development goes back to Fleming’s two-electrode
or diode detector (1904) and De Forest’s triode with grid, the audion
triode (1906-7). De Forest’s triode came to be used as rectifier (its
initial and principle function of a ‘valve’ to ‘rectify’ an electric
current to pass in only one direction), detector, amplifier and, by
1913, also as a generator of high-frequency oscillations. It is with
this device that the electronic revolution truly began. With the
vacuum tube we have an electronic gate and the basis of electronic
amplification.5! It became the embryo of a radically and qualita-
tively distinct form of technology.
The tube’s introduction enables the amplification of weak detector
signals, which could then be used to actuate a large-power system. It
allows modulation, rather than a simple on-off movement. It
enables transference of frequency response from the detector to
the
power system, the motors. Its use and further development, there-
fore, enables the transmission of ‘information’ to the various
devices
which actuate the production process. Through this ability to trans-
mit ‘information’ to the machine system (to dead labour), the latter
can be controlled, at least in principle, without the mediation
of
living labour.
With the use of the vacuum tube it became technically possibl
e to
relax the physical and structural constraint of mechanical techno-
logy. A structure and apparatus of control could be designe
d which
‘combines detection, computation, and message-transmitting
Capa-
bilities within a low-powered system of great flexibility’.52
But before
such a step could be taken, a number of technical problems,
particu-
larly concerned with distortion of Signals, disturbance and ‘noise’,
had ‘to be resolved. It was not until the 1930s, through
the work
 Development of Technologies 47
with feedback structures for radio circuits (servomechanism), that
the ground work had become established.
The Second World War pushed forward the revolution in elec-
tronic technology, as state-financed research and development of
new weapon systems — radar, anti-aircraft guns - was stepped up.
Also, by this time, a new way of thinking and resolving technical
problems had emerged which differed radically from the mechanis-
tic one. Insofar as we are concerned, technological reality came to be
looked at in terms of wholes (‘Gestalten’), which is an arrangement
of parts, and not merely an addition or aggregate of these, in depen-
dent relationship to the whole: i.e. a technical system. The electronic
circuit is a practical expression of such an arrangement.
Meanwhile, however, because of the special features of the chemi-
cal and petrochemical form of production - the fact that it is based on
an integrated process, continuous flow, volume and molecular reac-
tions - by the 1920s the application of feedback control had already
become a feature of chemical production systems, even before the
actual development of feedback theory proper. Thus, in a sense, the
first practical step towards a non-mechanized technological system
was taken during the expansionist phase of the system of mechaniza-
tion itself. The devices used, however, were based on mechanical
principles and designs: for example, pneumatic or hydraulic regula-
tors of volume, pressure and temperature; and sensing devices such as
thermostats, tachometers, float balls and thermometers. But since the
control system was independent of the power system and the trans-
formation of material, the chemical industry should be considered as
the first industry to have begun the practical institution of automatic
control system in place of manual operation.
The importance of this was not so much in terms of techniques as
such, but the growing awareness, on the part of management and
engineers, of the centrality of automatic control systems to the
increasing adaptability of production processes. Just as significant,
though less often mentioned, is the practical demonstration of huge
industrial complexes being operated by a comparatively low input of
living labour: in other words, the demonstration of an enormous
increase in productivity.

5. The Development of Microelectronics

By the 1940s, the invention and application of the vacuum tube,

and the practical implications of integrated and continuous flow
process in the petrochemical and chemical industries, had made the
separation of the control system from the transformation system a
feasible proposition, but it was not until the development of micro-
electronics that the principles of cybernetic production could
become a real practical proposition in a whole range of industrial
and manufacturing processes.
48 Automation
From the end of the 1930s a number of developments, at different
levels, were of profound significance to the coming of age of the
electronics technology.
At the theoretical level the clarification of certain key concepts
prepared the ground for the advance of electronics and, later, of
microelectronics. For example such concepts as negative feedback
(i.e. taking back an output increase to decrease the input) and posi-
tive feedback (i.e. taking an increase in output to increase the input);
as well as the development of a framework, as Noble has shown, for
the ‘understanding of phase control (the basis of all automatic
control systems), pulse code modulation (the basis of radar and
digital computers and control systems), information theory (for
mathematically analysing the behaviour of complex switching cir-
cuits, like com puters)’.53
At the technical level, such devices as phototube amplifiers, oscil-
loscopes and voltmeters as testing equipment, electron microscopes
and pulse transmitters were developed. Moreover, as a result of the
Second World War and the subsequent intensification of ‘peace
time’ military competition, there was a great deal of concentration
of research and development in the fields of ‘radio detection and
ranging’ (radar), ‘sound navigation ranging’ (sonar), and ‘long-range
navigation’ (loran), all of which were crucial to the advances made
‘in methods of pulse technology (essential to digital electronics) and
microwave detection’, as they were also to the greater understanding
of ‘the properties of semi-conductors like germanium and silicon’.54
Just after the Second World War, the principal and most impor-
tant element of the technological system of automation had been
developed — the digital computer. First developed and used for the
calculation of the trajectories of shells fired by artillery guns,55 the
digital computer was developed on the basis of the thermionic
valves, which enabled the utilization and performance of binary
logic by a ‘machine’.5é
However, the thermionic valve was not only cumbersome, but
also unreliable and ‘power hungry’.S7 It was not until 1948, with the
development of the transistor, that a small, low-power amplifier was
found to replace the old valve-driven system. Now binary logic gates
could be established which were based on the interrupted flow of
electricity rather than moving parts. The application of the transistor
to the computer not only reduced costs, since the transistor was
much cheaper to produce and operate than the thermionic valve,
but also considerably improved reliability.
Nevertheless, the great potential of the digital computer ‘was not
quickly appreciated’ by its developers.58 In fact, the push for its
further development and greater application came not from the
inside of the nascent computer industry itself, but from the military
establishment.
It is worth noting once again that the period in question was one
of intense military competition (i.e. the beginnings of the so-called
 Development of Technologies 49
‘Cold War’). The role of the permanent arms economy in generat
ing
the need and the market for increasingly more sophisticated
and
more reliable weapons systems and quality controlled armame
nts
production processes, in particular for missile and satellite systems
,
is a vital socioeconomic factor in channelling the simply enormo
us
human, financial and material resources towards the develo
pment of
ever more complex, sophisticated and cheaper electronic tech-
nologies.
The direction of the process of development, promoted in every
sense by military and space agencies of the United States, was at first
dictated by three main aims: miniaturization of electronic compo-
nents, greater reliability and reduction in costs of production as well
as operation.
By 1959, with the development of the all-important integrated
circuit, the advance of electronic technology had reached a critical
phase, the threshold of a qualitative leap. With the integrated circuit
the separation (by the use of rectifiers) and interconnection (by a
photoemissive conducting film of evaporated metal) of circuit ele-
ments and transistors was accomplished electrically rather than
physically.S? This development truly inaugurated the age of electro-
nics, and provided the central element in the advancement of com-
puter technology — the birth of minicomputers.
It was on the basis of the integrated circuit that Hoff developed
the microprocessor, by placing a central processing unit (CPU) on a
single chip. This was the single most important qualitative break-
through in terms of production technology. It meant, as Braun
States, ‘that the circuit does not just react in a fixed, pre-
programmed way to an input signal to produce an Output signal’.
Now ‘its response, its logic, can be altered’. Furthermore, on this
basis, by the attachment of two memory chips - one to transfer data
in and out of the CPU and another to provide the program to
operate the CPU — the microcomputer was born. Thus, with the pro-
grammable microprocessor, developed in 1971, we enter the era of
microelectronics and the beginnings of the age of automation.
The programmable microprocessor also achieved the three main
aims of miniaturization, greater reliability and considerable reduc-
tion in costs. The significance of miniaturization is not only that
costs are reduced, but also that the basic performance of the device is
greatly enhanced, since: ‘Delay times are directly proportional to the
dimensions of circuit elements, so that the circuit becomes faster as
it becomes smaller. Similarly, the power is reduced with the area of
the circuit.’61
One other factor, a fundamental one, needs to be emphasized:
electronic technology is highly sparing of energy and materials.
Thus, with its application and use, it becomes possible to control the
disposition of large quantities of energy and force with a very low
level input of energy.
In addition, and of essential significance for production
 50 Automation
technology, the microprocessor became the core technology of auto-
matic control systems. As a general-purpose logical unit, it can be
programmed to perform an unlimited number of tasks, for example,
in conjunction with mechanical devices, and can be used in a con-
siderable variety of different applications in work processes, without
the necessity of re-designing the circuitry for each different
application.
In other words, and this is of crucial importance to any commer-
cial application, the microprocessor could be incorporated into exist-
ing mechanized systems without the need for an initial major or
complete restructuring. This is, obviously, highly significant, consi-
dering the enormous investment in existing fixed capital and infra-
structural complexes.
As Hoffman and Rush® have shown, the application of microelec-
tronics appears in two ways: (i) Incremental application, whereby the
new technology is incorporated into an existing machine system
without a radical and fundamental change in the design of equip-
ment or system. This is a form of technological rationalization
which costs far less than complete or even partial restructuring and
is easier and quicker to implement; for these reasons it is extremely
attractive to capital. (ii) Systemic application, whereby the new tech-
nology is applied comprehensively as a system to the whole produc-
tion process and its sub-processes. This form of application requires
more or less complete restructuring or the establishment of new pro-
cesses by newly formed capital units.
Whichever the case, however, the application of microelectronics
would eventually lead to a fundamental transformation of the mech-
anized technological system of production. For, although its applica-
tion and full utilization has not yet been perfected into a system, it
is not hard to predict that in its essential elements, in its function
and performance, it requires a systemic structure which differs fun-
damentally from the old (and still existing and functioning) system
based on mechanical principles of fixed routines and tight
scheduling.
What is by far the most important characteristic of microelec-
tronic technology ( or in essence of microprocessors) is that it has a
capability for communicative and symbolic manipulative simulation. Its
re-programmable quality, interactive high volume storage capacity
(‘memory’), lightening receptive, retrieval and processing speed, and
thus its fantastic capacity for the handling of ‘information’ in mea-
surement, communication and data manipulation in general, gives it
the potentiality of high order feedback, in which stored past deci-
sions and experiences can be used not only to regulate and control
specific movements, but also whole processes. It is this characteristic
which no previous instrument, network of devices or even whole
technological systems had ever possessed.
It is, therefore, a technology that potentially can be utilized to
perform any task which a worker (manual and intellectual)
can
 Development of Technologies 51
perform in a production process, and, from capital’s
standpoint,
much faster and more reliably. Its only basic limitation
at present is
its own physical structure. Since, in the words of Wiener,
‘the struc-
ture of the machine ... is an index of the performance that
may be
expected from it’.63

6. The Technology of Software

The storing and communication of information, as well as

the trans-
mission of accumulated knowledge between human beings and
from
one generation to the next, have been fundamental characteristics
of
social life since time immemorial. With the invention
of writing,
and much later of printing, information could become transformed
into an objectified form, becoming more widely available
and
accessible.
Objectification also made possible repeatable manipulation, quan-
titative arrangement and classification, as well as the specialization
and standardization of information. However, the actual processi
ng,
selection and transformation of information into an applicable form,
as, for example, into instructions, commands or data, derived from
experience, skills and know-how, to be used for the production of
the materials of life and the controlling of motion and processes
remained the sole province of living labour until very recently.
Any form of production requires not merely materials and energy,
but also information which is essential to all forms of activity: how
to carry out the smallest to the most complex tasks, the various
modes of operations involved, the type, location and position of the
means of production, the quantity, time, intensity of labour, the
conditions and detailed processes required.
With the exception of the human brain, any form of storage and
accumulation of information requires its objectification in one form
or another. The appropriation of information is possible in only two
essential ways: through the appropriation of ‘alien’ labour (the
labour of another), and through that of the medium in which infor-
mation is objectified.
Moreover, as von Foerster has pointed out:

A library may store books, microfiche, documents, films, slides and

catalogues, but it cannot store information. One can turn a library
upside down: no information will come out. The only way one can
obtain information from a library is to look at those books, ... etc.’
The medium, in other words, must not be ‘confused with the thing
it does only when someone makes it do it. Someone has to do it. It
does not do anything.§4

What is crucial, therefore, is not merely the fact that ‘someone’

Must store, retrieve and process information using a medium, but
 52 Automation
who that someone is. Who is the appropriator, and how is appropria-
tion accomplished? The act of appropriation is determined by the
object to be appropriated, by the person appropriating and by the
manner in which it must be effected. In capitalism this appropriation
takes place through commodification, and insofar as production is
concerned, that someone mentioned above is the ‘management’.
The commodification of ‘information’6S is achieved through its
objectification. It is the objectified information as a ‘medium’ which
becomes a commodity. The essential presupposition of such a com-
modification is the commodification of labour-power.
The purchase of labour-power provides the purchaser access to a
wealth of accumulated information by the worker (whether it is sci-
entific knowledge, work experience or whatever skills are possessed
by the collectivity of labour). In this case it is labour-power as the
‘medium’ which is commodified, not the information which belongs
to the owner of labour-power. Similarly, I can appropriate informa-
tion through the reading of a book which I have purchased. It is the
book which is a commodity, not the information contained in it.
This is important to bear in mind. For if information as such is
viewed as a commodity, it must be something that can be made to
exist independently of a human being. It can therefore be created by
machines, is merely quantitative in character and can be machine-
produced just like bubble gum.
We should not confuse the commodification of objectified infor-
mation with information itself.66 When information is objectified it
becomes an instrument, in which form it is dead and therefore
needs to be brought to life by ‘someone’. When objectified for the
purposes of production of commodities (which concerns us here), its
structure limits the qualitative character of information; it becomes a
‘message’ which has all the imprints of its maker, with a definite
purpose; it no longer involves freedom of choice within its objecti-
fied form as such.”
So it is through the objectification of information that capital
attempts to further enhance its control of the production process.
This objectification of information is achieved by the transformation
of information into a pattern which can then be transmitted
as a
message. But to transform information into a pattern is to restrict
it
to ‘signals’.68 The pattern is that of signals, instructions, comman
ds
or data, not of knowledge, intelligence, of information as
such, but
diluted, or degraded (in the strict sense), formalized and
stan-
dardized knowledge.
The formalization of information into signals is in fact indistin
-
guishable from the process of the degradation of labour. And
the
term ‘information’, as used in connection with control systems
, soft-
ware engineering and design, is indistinguishable from signal.
This means that the ‘meaning’ it contains and the ‘unders
tanding’
obtained is determined by the input, by the abstraction of inform
ation
into patterns of signals. Whoever controls the input, and
the means of
 Development of Technologies 53
its transformation, controls the ‘meaning’ of the message. As a human
being I can accept or reject the message, but in the production process
my decision and power to act is affected by the absence of my control
over the input and the means of its transformation.
Past forms of objectified information could not be directly used to
set the process of production into motion. These required ‘re-
transformation’ either partially or completely, depending on the
extent of the development of such objectification (of the productive
forces) into forms of human action of one kind or another in order
to activate production. In other words, human intervention (manual
and mental) was required at various stages from conception to exe-
cution and co-ordination.
However, since the development of the microprocessors, and the
whole microelectronics technology, there is now a set of technolo-
gies available that can actually directly accept objectified informa-
tion, process such information automatically and transmit a result
without the necessary stage-by-stage intervention and mediation of
human labour-power.
Under mechanization, the system of machinery in the process of
production required the mediation of human labour in order to func-
tion. With computerization and the use of microelectronics, the
system of technologies requires, at least in principle, no direct labour
to activate it. The process of production can be activated by the infu-
sion of a set of instructions and relevant data in a computer and other
types of devices. This is made possible, however, not because these
microelectronic technologies have magical powers, but because of the
objectification of information in the form of software (programs).
Software is a form of technology; it is the objectification of human
labour-power. Though its form is different from hardware technolo-
gies such as machinery, it is nevertheless dead labour. Essentially a
computer, or any form of microprocessor-based technology, is made
up of a package of hardware and software; it can only function as
such a package.
Unlike a mechanical machine, the computer and microelectro-
nics hardware are unusable without software. The process of devel-
opment, design and construction of these technologies requires the
co-operation of hardware designers, or computer ‘architects’, and
hardware engineers, who design what the hardware will do and how
it will be constructed to enable it to perform to the desired specifica-
tions; and software engineers and designers who design a complex
set of ‘messages’ which enable the hardware to function or bring it
to life (e.g. operating systems).
But it is not only in this sense that we must consider the unity of
hardware and software as a single package. Although an essential
ingredient of a computer is its operating system or the program that
will run the machine - i.e. the system control software, including
network control programs, that manage the operation of the diffe-
rent hardware components, as well as the operating system - the
 54 Automation
computer also needs application and utility software in order to be
able to perform the various tasks required.
The latter forms of software are not merely ‘optional’, they are
necessary and indispensable requirements. Application software are
either programs employed by different users for specific tasks, or
they can be general purpose programs (e.g. accounting, word-
processing, manufacturing operations and control). These can be
tailor-made for detailed operations, various processes and different
industries. Utility software are mediating programs that enable the
marriage of operating systems with application software; they are
compilers which transform programs into coded forms acceptable by
the operating system or a source program into an object program. In
order that the message reaches the receiver, it has to be converted
into a physically transportable form. This is done by the conversion
of the message according to a set of rules (the code). The signal is
transported to the receiver’s decoding and receiving device.
The critical importance of software for microelectronic technologi-
cal networks is unquestionable. It is a technology which brings to
life the machinery of production; it is thus in itself a radically new
form of objectification of labour. The further development of this
technology is obviously vital to the greater diffusion, applicability
and advancement of microelectronic-based systems, as well as to the
greater convergence of these with systems of communications. But
although microprocessors, computers and other microelectronic
devices are essentially dependent upon software technology, one
should not underestimate the qualitative significance of these hard-
ware technologies.

7. The Unity of Software and Hardware: A Qualitative Break

It is true, as the CSE Microelectronics Group comments, that the

basic functions of computers are actually ‘limited’, and that ‘their
entire operations depend on following pre-determined instruc-
tions’.6? But we cannot ignore the fact that it is the hardware, it is
the particular quality, the technical and physical structure, of these
devices, as distinct from any previous mechanical instruments and
machines, that make the use of objectified information (as a pre-
determined set of instructions) possible as a substitute for direct
living labour, and also increasingly for that of indirect labour itself.
These hard technologies, therefore are not simply just another set
of machines, but a new and qualitatively different set of machines. It
is therefore essential to view these as a package, which means that
we cannot, even implicitly, degrade one or more elements of this
technological mix. For example, the various input/output (I/O)
devices are not simply secondary to the Central Processing Unit
(CPU) - they are an absolutely vital feature of the package. They are
essential in practical terms for the application and use of
 Development of Technologies 55
microelectronic-based networks and systems. The development of
various I/O devices is crucial to the convergence of communication
technologies and computers (i.e. the ‘informatics technologies’).
With regard to the application of these technologies, for the
moment I shall just mention a few examples of technically induced
advantages.70
(a) The miniaturization of equipment, greater flexibility and forms
of decentralization of units of production, makes economization of
space for industrial production more feasible.
(b) Maximization of the intensity of use of technological net-
works, i.e. the use of expensive networks around the clock with a
minimum of ‘down-time’.
(c) Potentially a considerable reduction in the input of energy.
And a reduction of waste of raw materials with greater improvement
of quality control systems.
(d) Greater reduction of production and circulation time, and thus
of turnover time.
(e) Potentially the elimination of the storing of products, and a
considerable reduction in the quantity of capital stock (commodity
capital) lying fallow.
(f) Initially a considerable reduction of labour costs, and ulti-
mately their elimination.
(g) Greater centralization of control of co-ordination of produc-
tion, transportation, commercial activities and financial manage-
ment with the radical improvement of the means of communication
(information technology).
In the technical sense, therefore, there is no doubt that the tech-
nologies of microelectronics, the package of software and hardware
as a unit, lend a fundamentally distinct qualitative character to the
mechanized technologies of production. It is on the basis of such a
distinction that we can refer to these as the -basic technologies of
automation.
In the social sense, their qualitatively distinct character, as against
mechanical technology, can only be grasped in relation to the social
organization of capital production. The level of advancement of a
given technological system is often regarded as the degree to which
human manual and mental labour has been replaced by objectified
(materialized or dead) labour. Although we may agree with such a
characterization from an evolutionary perspective (developmental
process of technology as such), and it is certainly helpful for an
understanding of the history of technology, it does little, however,
to illuminate the qualitative distinction between different systems.
What distinguishes one system from another is the combination of
the technical and social quality of particular technological systems.
Only in that way can we see not merely the ‘degree’ of
advancement, but the different ‘kinds’ of development.
The point is to explain technological systems in terms of the capi-
talist organization of the production process, the mode of extraction
56 Automation
of surplus labour and accumulation of capital. By looking at the role
of particular forms of technologies within the context of production,
it is possible to see whether there is a qualitative break in the conti-
nuity of the advance of technology.
Both historically and logically, capitalist production is based upon
the exploitation of a comparatively large number of workers. If the
labour realized in value is labour of average social quality, if it is thus
an expenditure of average labour-power, then that average magni-
tude is merely the average of a number of individual magnitudes of
human labour. Neither labour of average social quality, nor therefore
value, can exist without the exploitation of a certain minimum quan-
tity of living labour powers.
For the system of capitalist production you cannot have one capi-
talist exploiting one (productive) worker. Nor can you have even a
large number of capital units each employing such a small quantity
of labour-powers that the self-expansion of value is made impossible.
In other words, for capitalist production ‘a certain minimum number
of workmen must be employed in the same field of labour’.7! Less
than a certain number of productive workers and capitalist produc-
tion becomes impossible. The application of microelectronics tech-
nology to production processes will radically reduce that ‘minimum’
quantity of living labour-power essential for the self-expansion of
social capital. At a certain stage, the quantitative displacement of
living labour generates a qualitative break in the organization and
structure of capital production.
Just as the difference between the workshop of the medieval
master craftsman and that of capitalist manufacture, appears at first
as ‘purely quantitative’,?2 so with the initial use and diffusion of
microelectronics technology, the displacement of living labour also
appears as purely quantitative; i.e. ‘only’ a matter of degree of labour
displacement. But at a given stage in the development of manufac-
ture, ‘the narrow technical basis on which manufacture rested, came
into conflict with requirements of production that were created by
manufacture itself’.73
In the same sense, the development of mechanization has now
reached the stage where its technical basis is in ‘conflict’ with the
requirements of production created by mechanization itself. And,
just as the manufacturing system proper had to give way, with the
introduction of machinery (the Industrial Revolution), to Modern
Industry which revolutionized production to its very core, So now
mechanization is beginning to give way, with the introduction of
microelectronics technology, to automation. Automation, in its
fullest sense is, however, completely antithetical to mechanization
and capitalist production, for it entails such a quantitative reduction
or displacement of labour, going beyond the limits set by the nature
of capital as self-expanding value (i.e. the ceaseless extraction of
surplus, unpaid labour).
Marx quotes two descriptions of the structure of the ‘automatic’
 Development of Technologies 57
factory given by Ure; they are: (a) ‘Combined co-operation of many
orders of work-people, adult and young, in tending with assiduou
s
skill, a system of productive machines, continuously impelled by
a
central power’; and (b) ‘a vast automaton, composed of various
mechanical and intellectual organs, acting in uninterrupted concert
for the production of a common object, all of them being subordi-
nate to a self-regulated moving force’.74
For Marx, the first description applies to ‘every possible employ-
ment of machinery on a large scale’, while the second is characteris-
tic of the use of machinery by capital. The reason he gives is this;
that in the first, ‘the collective labourer, or social body of labour,
appears as the dominant subject, and the mechanical automaton as
the object’. In the second, however, ‘the automaton itself is the
subject, and the workmen are merely conscious organs, co-ordinate
with the unconscious organs of the automaton, and together with
them, subordinated to the central moving-power’.75
The distinction is based on which of the two ‘factors’ of produc-
tion are the dominant ‘subjects’ - living labour (the collective
labourer) or dead labour (the technological system). But what is of
crucial significance for us here, is that Ure’s second description (b),
and Marx’s identification of this as the characteristic use of machin-
ery by capital, while applicable both in principle and in practice to
the mechanized production processes, even the most advanced that
have existed since the establishment of the modern factory system
(and are functioning today, irrespective of the enormous advances
made in the technologies of mechanization), cannot by any stretch
of the imagination fit the picture of automated production processes
which are emerging at the core of the system.
With these, the ‘automaton’ can no longer be considered the
‘subject’, or rather it has become the absolute subject — which only
means that the very determinateness of the essence of capital pro-
duction (the extraction of surplus labour) and of capital’s existence
as Capital (a social relation of production) has dissolved itself.76
In other words, in spite of the great advance in the development
of mechanized technologies, the technical structure of the produc-
tion process in essence has remained the same as in Marx’s day,
though formalistically there has obviously been a great deal of
change. But this has been quantitative; a simply enormous increase in
size (though not necessarily for all processes) of plants, scale of ope-
rations, productive capacity and complexity of machinery combina-
tion. In all cases the use of machinery (the application of
mechanization and hence its principles) has necessitated the use of a
certain minimum of living labour, as the ‘collective labourer’, ‘co-
ordinate with the unconscious organs of the automaton’.
The advance of mechanization has certainly degraded the quality
of concrete labour employed, transformed the labour process into a
machine process and even systematically reduced the proportion of
combined labour to the machine system. But in essence, as regards
58 Automation
the technical structure of production, these are only modifications
of the given structure of what Marx called Modern Industry.
Even the most advanced mechanized assembly plant has a techni-
cal structure which still consists of an organization of labour
deployed around an arranged network of machinery. It is a composi-
tion which must always include a given proportion of direct and
indirect labour which can only change quantitatively, in relation to
the size and scale of machinery. The mechanized technical structure
always engenders the collective labourer which belongs to it and is
both essential to, and preserves, its regulations (laws).
Between the first modern (machine or ‘automatic’) factory and the
existing intensively mechanized factory of the present, there has
obviously been a whole range of technological development. But
nothing that has been developed, until now with the application of
microelectronics, has affected the regulations (laws) of the basic
composition of workers and machines; hence there has been no
qualitative transformation of the relation between labour and the
machine as capital.
The technical structure of the production process remains qualita-
tively as it was, despite all the modifications and refinements of
mechanical technology. Its technical features fit the essential struc-
ture of the production process appropriate to capital’s self-
expansion.
However, with the development of microelectronics, and in parti-
cular the microprocessor, and its increasing application to the pro-
duction process, the necessary composition of living labour and
machine is being disturbed. It is only with the development of this
technology that it has become possible to objectify the conscious
‘controlling’, or rather guiding, organ within the production process.
The qualitatively unique feature of microelectronics automation is
that it makes possible not only the objectification of direct labour,
but even that of indirect labour involved in the conception pro-
cesses. The further development and application of these technolo-
gies can in fact bring about the objectification of the collective
labourer in total. And because of this potentiality, it enables the
complete dissociation of living labour (direct and indirect) from the
production process.
Technically this appears through the process of not merely com-
pleting and finalizing the separation of the control system from
those of transformation and transmission, but the externalization of
the control system. If managerial control has always required the
mediation of living labour (particularly that of intellectual or mental
labour), externalization or the complete abstraction of control
systems through objectification (in particular as a result of the deve-
lopment of software systems such as ‘expert systems’ or ‘artificial
intelligence’) makes possible the removal of the mediatory role of
labour. Once this process is fully developed, social and technical
control become totally fused. But such a total fusion is, by
 Development of Technologies 59
definition, a negation of capital as an alien power, i.e. as a social
power which confronts living labour.
Capital is the antithesis of the worker (a relation
of production):
its social power rests fundamentally upon its comma
nding power
over living labour in the production process. It can
only realize itself
through the extraction of surplus labour which takes
place in the
process of production. Since the externalization
of the control
system can only take place through the total objectificat
ion of both
direct and indirect labour, capital can no longer posit its
command-
ing power as alien to the collective labourer which no
longer exists
within the process of production.
In other words, with automation proper, the technical
structure of
production is not simply modified, but radically transf
ormed. The
qualitatively distinct character of automation technologies
funda-
mentally alters the technical composition of capital; this has
a direct
effect on the social structure and Organization of the
capitalist
system, since it has a direct bearing on the very conditions
of wage-
labour and hence of the accumulation of capital.
Fa

The Concept of Automation

The concept of automation refers to a process that involves a

complex system of productive forces which in their particular form
of combination result in a specific mode of control and organization
of economic activity. It refers to a network of hardware and software
technologies in relation to a particular structure of production and a
specific mode of utilization of information. It is a totally integrated
technological system of control with various components, i.e. diffe-
rent sets of technologies, each of which react upon the other as ele-
ments in a single process that can be activated through the input of
information.
Automation involves the systematic application of the principle of
feedback. The system includes a procedure of measurement and
inspection (or ‘sensing’), the evaluation and processing of this infor-
mation and an output of instructions as a response, which is then
utilized by the system to control all aspects of the particular opera-
tion undertaken.
This conception of automation excludes any reference to ‘levels’
or ‘degrees’ of automaticity. The continuity in the development of
the technologies of mechanization reaches a qualitative break; here
we are not talking about a quantitative adjustment of the process of
production, or any other process of work, but a qualitative restruc-
turing of these. It is important to note, however, that this concep-
tion of automation is not a reference to the prevailing structure of
modern industry. In practice, the current system of production is
based on a mixture of mechanized processes and elements of auto-
mation technologies in which the principles of mechanization are
still dominant, but increasingly being modified. In some notable
cases, and especially in certain process industries, the principles of
automation are rapidly gaining ground. But we have as yet no
overall sphere of economic activity which is exclusively structured
on the basis of cybernetics, or automation.
One of the major characteristics of automation is that it encom-
passes a wide spectrum of operations and functions, much wider
than mechanization proper ever did or could. In contrast, mechani-
zation, with some minor exceptions, was concerned almost exclu-
sively with the process of material production and made few inroads
into other spheres of economic activity. The process of automation

60
 Concept of Automation 61
is intended as a system of technologies that incorporates within its
framework all direct and indirect functions and activities associated
with human labour-power involved in the various sectors of the
economy.
The general activities involved in capital production can be
divided abstractly into three interdependent fields:
(i) Conception: The process of working out the nature and form of
the output, whatever that may be, from material objects to services.
The process includes design, engineering, specification, evaluation
and appraisal, planning, research and development.
(ii) Execution: The actual process of transforming ‘conception’ into
a product or a service (production process) and the operations
involved in the circulation and realization of the value of the
output. ‘Execution’ is therefore more than merely producing com-
modities: it includes such activities as storage, handling and trans-
portation and the marketing and sale of commodities, as well as the
so-called ‘intermediary’ activities associated with the credit system,
banking and finance.
(iii) Managerial Control: The process of direct managerial supervi-
sion, administration and co-ordination of both fields of ‘conception’
and ‘execution’. This process includes the whole system and network
of collection, processing and communication of information and the
relay of instructions and managerial decisions.
The ultimate vision of an automated system is to fuse all three
fields into an all-embracing purely managerial function.
In the early literature on automation there seems to be little
general agreement on a specific definition of the concept of automa-
tion.”7 The meaning of automation varies from one used as ‘a
synonym for advanced mechanization’,”8 to Thomas’, in my view,
more accurate statement that ‘“automation” is a technology quite
distinct from “mechanization” and it is concerned with replacing or
aiding human mental effort as distinct from aiding man’s physical
effort’.79
This ‘confusion’ in the literature, according to Kaplinsky, for
example, remains with us even today. The problem is that many of
the authorities on automation, including Kaplinsky himself, tend to
define automation from the ‘widest possible perspective, embracing
both feedback and mechanization’.®° In this they follow Bright®!
and the later work by Amber and Amber.82
While Bright divides the development of industrial technology
into 17 levels of mechanization, Amber and Amber represent the
progress of industrialization in terms of ten orders of automaticity.
The problem with these two contributions is not only the fact that,
as Kaplinsky has pointed out,83 they fail to distinguish different
forms of automation and concentrate on degrees of mechanization,
but also that they fail to elaborate on the qualitative change that
occurs in the technical relations of production. It is important to
emphasise that in the progress of mechanization, a qualitative
 62 Automation
transformation has taken place. We are no longer merely seeing
‘degrees’ of advances in mechanical devices, but forms of technolo-
gies that are not mechanical as such. This change in the forms of
technologies has a crucial effect on the operation, and more signifi-
cantly the control, of productive processes.
Kaplinsky’s categorization of automation into three types is an
important break with earlier definitions. Basing his categorization on
the organization of modern industrial firms, he has distinguished
three spheres of activities: design and ‘information processing’; the
actual production and processing of the final product; and the
sphere of co-ordination.
On this basis he has distinguished his three types of automation:
‘inter-activity automation’, which refers to a level of automation that
is limited to a particular activity in isolation from other activities;
‘intra-sphere automation’, which refers to automation of particular
activities linked together with other activities within the same
sphere of operation; and finally ‘inter-sphere automation’, referring to
a level of automation that involves the linking of activities between
different spheres of production.
Here again, in spite of Kaplinsky’s important contribution, we
have only a description of the process of automation. In Kaplinsky’s
study there is no analysis of the qualitative change in the production
of value and production relations envisaged by the development of
these new technologies.
Other studies concerning the impact of the development of auto-
mation (and information) technologies on economic activity and on
society also tend to ignore the central principle of capitalist
economy: namely, the production and augmentation of surplus-
value.84
Nevertheless, there is general agreement that we are in the process
of a major restructuring of economic and social organization.
Moreover, the importance of such studies lies in their empirical doc-
umentation, investigation and survey of the actual application of
new technologies. Thus, for example, the recent studies by Francis,85
Gill86 and Purcell, Wood, Waton and Allen,87 provide valuable over-
views of case-studies concerning new technology and changing work
organization.
A more comprehensive coverage is provided by Daniel®® and
Batstone and Gourlay.8? Daniel’s study of the impact of new tech-
nology is based on a detailed examination of a survey carried out by
the Policy Studies Institute (PSI) in collaboration with the
Department of Employment (DE), the Economic and Social Research
Council (ESRC) and the Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration
Service (ACAS). This DE/ESRC/PSI/ACAS survey covers the responses
from both British managers and union representatives.
In summary, his finding is that the application of new techno-
logy, though having had a varied impact, has been on balance posi-
tive in terms of enhanced skills and improved wages, but has
also
 Concept of Automation 63
resulted in job losses. In larger establishments, however, control over
the work process and the pace of work has been far more acutely
reduced.
Daniel’s study of the survey also suggests that there was little
involvement of workers, and a low level of union consultation over
the technical changes introduced. And yet the study finds that
workers accepted restructuring, even its negative aspects, when this
was linked to the introduction of new technology.
Batstone and Gourlay base their study on a postal survey of tech-
nical change, as well as on some case-studies. Although the survey
material they used is much less comprehensive than Daniel’s, their
account of the impact of new technology nevertheless parallels his.
They also report that there were enhanced skills; wages remained
stable, often increasing rather than decreasing and opposition to the
introduction of new technology was low among union members. Job
loss, however, was a common feature, more especially in larger
workplaces.
A more recent survey of the use of microelectronics in Britain’s
factories has been carried out by the Policy Studies Institute.9° In
summary, the report finds that the diffusion of microelectronics has
more than trebled in the last six years. But the advance of automa-
tion in Britain still remains piecemeal, lagging far behind the US,
Japan and West Germany, as well as smaller countries like Sweden
and Denmark. The main reason for this, according to the report, is
the shortage of skilled persons, especially engineers and designers.
The study, moreover, finds that opposition to the introduction of
new technology, from both unions and the shopfloor, occurred in
only 6 per cent of factories. And job losses as a result of new techno-
logy are reported at 45,000 between 1983 and 1987; losses have been
ten times higher among the unskilled than the skilled and twice as
high among men than women.
Another recent study carried out by a team of industrial sociolo-
gists and economists is a detailed empirical investigation of the
process of automation and computerisation in French manufactur-
ing industry.?! The study is concerned with the production lines of
four units: (i) toolmaking and small-batch production in a polyva-
lent branch plant employing French skilled workers, located in the
Paris area; (ii) assembly and mounting plant, located in Paris,
employing mostly immigrant workers; (iii) mass production of gear-
boxes using computer-integrated manufacturing lines in a plant
located in Normandy; and (iv) robotized assembly and welding
shop, located in Nord Pas-de-Calais.
This study shows that, even at this relatively early stage, the
switch from advanced mechanization to the first new forms of the
use of microelectronics technologies involves some major changes in
the following factors: the principles of labour organization within
workshops and the division of labour within the factory as a whole;
the principles of assessment of productivity; and the relations
64 Automation
between ‘productive’ and ‘unproductive’ labour as well as that
between ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ labour.
The writers argue that traditional management principles are
increasingly seen as being unsuitable in the changing production
environment. But despite this growing awareness of a crisis in tradi-
tional management, the dominant trend still seems to be neo-
Taylorist with regards to the division of functions and the organiza-
tion of tasks.
Moreover, the study demonstrates that not only is human involve-
ment not disappearing, but that it is, in fact, crucial for repair and
maintenance. This necessary involvement of labour is a mixture of
manual functions, typical of still-mechanized processes (e.g. func-
tions of cleaning, loading and unloading, adjustment of machines),
and mental functions, for example, of programming and certain
forms of maintenance. Thus even with computer-integrated manu-
facturing lines the process is not yet self-regulating and controlled
from the outside. This is in contrast to the process industries for
example.
It is clear from this study (as also from the others mentioned
above) that the process of automation is still at an early stage. We
are witnessing a transitional period. Nevertheless the French team’s
observations are clearly significant for understanding the process of
change and thus for the development of a theoretical framework
concerning the future trends of automated production processes.
In fact Jean Lojkine, one of the members of the French team
involved, has developed some interesting theoretical points on the
basis of the above mentioned study. Thus, for example, he has
argued that: ‘the computerized production line in its present form
derives its chief characteristic, not from the electronic synchroniza-
tion of “handling” operations (loading, transfer, and unloading), but
from the electronic synchronization of the operations of supervision,
correction and control’.92
In effect, it is argued, if we take mechanization as a machine/
labour system based on ‘product handling’, computerization is
‘founded on the handling of symbols, signs and therefore sense’. From
this Lojkine makes a distinction between the term ‘computer revolu-
tion’ which ‘places a new instrument of work in the forefront, i.e.
software, as an extension of indirect work and reflective cerebral
activities’, and the concept of automation which, according to
Lojkine, is ‘still linked to mechanization insofar as it designates com-
pletion of the objectification of direct work’.93
This latter observation, i.e. the distinction that Lojkine makes
between ‘automation’ and ‘computerization’, seems to me, however,
not to be a substantive distinction but one which is characteristic of
the peculiarities of the transitional phase currently in process. In
principle the process of automation necessarily involves the compu-
terization of work processes, as well as the utilization of communica-
tion and information technologies. In practice, since the
 Concept of Automation 65
introduction and diffusion of such new technologies are incremen-
tal, there appears to be a distinction between the two. And, indeed,
as Lojkine also mentions, this must be seen as due to the ‘ambiguous
nature of the present period’ of transition.
Furthermore, Lojkine’s statement that the ‘automation revolution
... leads to the creation of new human functions connected with
indirect work, including management, maintenance, optimalisation
and design’%4 is very misleading since, essentially, no new human
functions have been ‘created’. Management, maintenance and
design have always been human functions connected with indirect
work. What the automation revolution aims to accomplish is to
completely replace all direct forms of labour by indirect forms, and to
carry the objectification of indirect work itself to its limits of ‘pure’ man-
agement. In other words, the aim is to fuse the activities involved in
conception, co-ordination and execution into an all-embracing man-
agerial function. This brings us to the realm of Artificial Intelligence
(AI) and the whole field of Expert Systems, Intelligent Robots and
the Fifth Generation Computers.?5
For Boden, AI refers to the use of computer programs and the tech-
niques of programming which illuminate the principles of human
intelligence. She defines AI as: ‘The study of how to build and
program machines that can do the sorts of things which human
minds can do’.96 This notion of machine ‘intelligence’ is taken to
the extremes of futurology by the head guru of the AI engineers,
Edward Feigenbaum.?” He envisages a world of ‘mechanical’ doctors,
‘geriatric’ robots that ‘listen’ and machine systems that exchange
‘Knowledge’: a world dominated by the ‘automaton’ as the ‘Absolute
Subject’.
However, what is important is not whether such visions of the
future are desirable, but what is the purpose and aim behind the
whole AI industry. Weizenbaum’s sober assessment of the world of
computers and AI is an eloquent condemnation of those who have
excessive faith in technology,% yet it must be remembered that the
realm of AI research and development is governed both directly and
indirectly (through state institutional backing) by big business inter-
ests.99 As Athanasiou points out, the AI scientists and researchers are
well organized, well supported and funded by both government and
business. The AI market, according to Athanasiou, is expected to
reach $2.8 billion by 1990, and AI stocks are growing at an annual
rate of 300 per cent.100
Competition for the development of commercial AI is rapidly
increasing, and on a global basis. One of the important reasons for
this is the existing limitation for increasing productivity in software
design and engineering. Software production is still extremely
labour-intensive and, as Ernst’s study has shown, very expensive; it
‘still defies a systematic application of the instruments of so-called
“scientific management”’.!01 To overcome the gap that exists
between software and hardware productivity there is great pressure
 66 Automation
to develop new systems of objectification, through computerization,
of the skills of software designers, engineers and programmers.
Both in the case of basic software packages (i.e. application and
systems programs) and expert systems!02, an ultimate objective is to
reduce the role and quantity of ‘intellectual’ labour involved in the
processes of conception and co-ordination. Moreover, the develop-
ment of expert systems is intended to continue the quest for the
achievement of full automation. The aim is, therefore, for ‘know-
ledge’ engineers to extract as many human skills as possible and to
codify them into rules and heuristics.
Behind the facade of scientific progress lies the quest for profits.
Just as with the industrial revolution, mechanization and Taylorism,
now with automation, the fundamental aim is the greatest augmen-
tation of relative surplus-value. Although we are still a long way
from the dream - or nightmare - of machine ‘intelligence’, AI is
undoubtedly the basis of a new wave of automation. Taking into
account the high cost of mental labour, the future trend in automa-
tion, in addition to the completion of the objectification of manual
labour, will be in the field of human ‘experts’.
However, while the whole process of automation is intended to
increase the quantity of surplus-value, the further development and
diffusion of automation technologies will have far-reaching and ulti-
mately negative consequences for the very creation of value and
surplus-value.
It is important to note that microelectronics and automation
systems are developed and applied not in order to eliminate human
involvement and control in general, but to displace certain catego-
ties of human skills. The design of control systems that are flexible
enough to respond to certain unpredictable changes in ambient con-
ditions; the development of sensor technologies that could detect
even slight changes in speed, temperature, pressure or vibration of
machines and respond automatically to make the necessary adjust-
ments in the operational procedure; these do indeed eliminate many
categories of human labour. But the system as a whole is ultimatel
y
dependent on the commanding judgement of an elite of manageri
al
executives who have, and must have, final control
over all
operations.
The controlling computerized system is itself controlled by a given
number of human agents. Automation is intended to displac
e and
transfer the whole series of different skills from the shopfloor,
from
the direct processes of design and engineering, and even
from the
lower levels of management itself, to the higher echelon
s of the
managerial structure. This transference is achieved through
the
objectification of skills and knowledge in the form of a network
of
software and hardware technologies.
Such an all-embracing process of objectification of
productive
knowledge requires a period of transition during which
not only
new processes of control, but also new skills and learni
ng processes
 Concept of Automation 67
that are capable of coping with the ever-increasing changes in mate-
tial inputs and end products, are developed and introduced. Given
the pressures of competition, the controlling agency must not only
be capable of monitoring and controlling the entire processes of con-
ception and execution, it must also be able to respond to the almost
constantly changing requirements of the market and express these
in its re-adjustment and/or re-design of the software (and, if neces-
sary, hardware) components under its control.
The transitional period has already begun, and a number of deve-
lopments in the organization of the workplace (e.g. the ‘Just-in-
Time’ system), and that of plants, processes and operations (e.g.
‘decentralization’)!3 clearly point to a process of adjustment of the
structure of production in preparation for the transformation to
automation proper.
 3

Preparing for Automation:

Modification of Methods of
Labour

The struggle over the control of the production process has been
guided by capital’s need for the establishment of abstract labour in
practice, through the enhancement of the pliability of labour.
To extract the maximum of surplus labour, the self-development
and self-activity of workers must be restricted as much as possible.
Yet it is the very elastic characteristic of human labour-power which
is crucial to the complex needs of capital’s ceaseless expansionist
drive. Capital attempts to resolve this contradiction through the
development of technology and methods of organization of labour.
By draining and taxing human capacities by means of objectifica-
tion, it constantly attempts to reduce its utter (and in fact inescap-
able) dependence upon human labour. But, by the same means, it
tries to compensate for the restrictions imposed on the elasticity of
human labour. The development of the technologies of automation
is precisely the continuation of this drive to find a solution to this
contradiction, which is in fact inherent in, and cannot be resolved
by, capital itself.
The development of methods of labour organization also follows
the same principle, and is always directly related to the technologi-
cal changes taking place. The methods of labour are crucial to the
effective utilization of the technological framework. It is in this
sense that we should recognize the significance of Marx’s remark
that: ‘Labour is organized, is divided differently according to the
instruments it disposes over.’104
It is also important to recognize that in the modification of
methods of labour, capital not only attempts to make the best use of
the fixed means of production (fixed capital), but also to reduce
the
rigidity of time that its very nature and laws impose on production.
This rigidity is reflected in the technical division of labour, the very
detailed specialization of tasks, which are ironically themselves ways
of enhancing the management of time.
But more than this, through the team organization of labour,
capital receives a feedback concerning detailed operations which
is
68
 Preparing for Automation 69
essential not merely for a better management of time, not only for
the development of more efficient systems of control, but also for
the preparations needed by management to introduce advanced
control systems. The complexity of management Strategies should
not blind us, therefore, to the essential, underlying reasons for the
conscious, deliberate modifications of methods of labour. In this
sense it is important to recognize that the methods of labour organi-
zation known as the ‘Just-in-Time’ and ‘Modular’ systems are a vital
aspect of preparing for the introduction of automation proper.
In the first stages of the process of automation, the excess of pro-
duction time and the working day over labour-time is tackled from
both the organizational and the technological angle. Further, the
specific quality of the new technologies of automation allows man-
agement to tackle not only time ‘problems’ in assembly-line pro-
cesses, or generally the continuous-flow processes (including process
industries), but also, significantly, small or medium batch produc-
tion where many ‘savings’ in time can be made. But automation
technologies and the ‘rationalization’ techniques which prepare the
groundwork for the future transformation of the technical system,
can also significantly reduce the lapses of time due to storage and
transportation, as well as the internal transfer of stocks.
The chief concern of the intensive system of mechanization is to
achieve a high volume of standardized output as a way of lowering
costs per unit. This applies to both the assembly and pre-assembly
processes of components’ production (as far as it is technically pos-
sible). It also applies, though obviously less predominantly, to batch
production. The principle is to minimize dead time, i.e. to go for as
long a run as possible in order to reduce the re-setting time of the
given network of machinery.
However, with intensive mechanization this is only possible as
long as there is a very limited variation in product type. Naturally,
the more standardized the components and products, the more effi-
cient the system. But, for precisely the same reason - since it is ‘dedi-
cated’ to repeatable single operations — it is highly rigid.
The so-called flexibility or inflexibility is important in terms of
time: it is imperative that the continuity of production runs should
not break or be interrupted. For the greater the value of fixed capital,
the greater the need for the maximum utilization of the technologi-
cal network, So the longer it takes to set up, or re-set machinery, or
the more porous the working day, the greater the period of time
during which fixed capital remains idle; though this may not mean
a loss of value, it certainly means no surplus-value production. And
if one thinks of the colossal amounts of fixed capital involved, it
becomes an important problem in terms of profitability.
This makes the system of intensive mechanization extremely vul-
nerable not only to the workforce’s behaviour on the line and at any
stage or location within the overall process, but also in terms of sup-
plies, stock availability, repair and maintenance and quality control.
70 Automation
So while there appears to be a greater labour-time put in by the
workers because of continuous flow, there is also some wastage of
time due to the segmentation of operations, particularly the func-
tions of repair and maintenance and quality control. But just as
important, if not more so, is the effect on the workers and the loss of
time due to fatigue and absenteeism.
Moreover, intensive mechanization demands fairly large ‘buffer
stocks’ and a sufficient level of stocks of parts from the various sup-
pliers. Large stocks, for example, not only incur interest charges,
storage, insurance, monitoring and quality testing costs (estimated
at some 30 per cent of production costs,!°5 but they mean inactive
capital and time lapses in between operations and _ transfer.
According to one estimate, for example, only S per cent of the
working time on average is spent on working upon stocks of materi-
als and parts.106 Breakdown or any problems with supplies can cause
hold-ups and great wastage of time. Thus at any one time, under this
system, a not-too-insignificant part of capital lies fallow as ‘latent’
capital, only in order to maintain the continuity of production. The
specific features of the system imposes a constraint on the quantity
of capital that can be fully active in a single space of time.
The system of mechanization is, however, a system of technolo-
gies (the hardware) and techniques; a system of organization of both
labour and machinery, as well as the combination of various detailed
operations and processes, such as the specialization of workers and
sections of the plant for demarcated tasks and various operations,
often even in far-flung locations; bulk ordering and infrequent sup-
plies of materials; relatively large warehousing for stocks; special
departments and personnel for quality checks and for inventories.
Such organizational details as these were certainly important deve-
lopments and of enormous benefit to capital accumulation. But they
have always in practice involved problems, which with time have
become cumulative.
A first practical step towards automation involves the correction
of these problems by the rationalization of the organizational tech-
niques and the piecemeal introduction of certain elemental automa-
tion technologies. The most rational way is to rearrange the division
of labour and the structure of operations, and to introduce certain
modifications in machinery, control systems and plant layout. This
is precisely the way capital prepares the ground for the advance of
automation.
The immediate objectives are to reduce time wastages and increase
labour-time. The principle of continuous-flow still remains the basis
of the new reorganization, but the combination of labour, tools and
stock is changed into segments of work-stations with a small group
of workers. The new GM/Toyota plant at Fremont, California, for
example, has ‘five to seven person teams covering a range of jobs
and taking a number of responsibilities formerly the preserve of
middle managers’.!07 In a reorganized experiment at a Renault plant
 Preparing for Automation 71
in Hebi the number of workers in such teams varies from three to
six.
In the so-called ‘job-enlargement’ method of assembly, the
workers are still related to a central conveyor belt, but rather than
the traditional method which meant that the workers move very
little, while the various items move successively in front of them —
with a cycle time, in the case of Renault, for instance, of 50/100
minute! — it is now the workers who follow the line, taking items
from a supply point and assembling components in succession. The
work cycle, again for Renault, is increased from one to 15
minutes, 110
But higher productivity is obtained with the reorganization on the
basis of ‘Modular’ assembly, whereby teams of workers work on fixed
positions, with each team sharing the various detailed tasks, and
assembling complete units according to a pre-established fixed
schedule. In this case, each team is responsible for the quality of the
units assembled, and perform rectification work themselves.
With the ‘Modular’ reorganization for the assembly of the Renault
6 front suspension, for example, the number of workers is reduced
from 17 in the case of traditional assembly to 8; while output of
front suspensions increased from 26.5 to 33.5 per worker per day.111
The method enables the reduction of time in rest periods, from 5.6
per cent to 4 per cent, and a saving of 6-7 per cent of total time by
the elimination of the separate repair worker.
The experiment with the assembly of engines shows even more
productivity advances. Here the output per worker per day nearly
doubled, from 10.5 engines with traditional assembly to 20 with the
‘Modular’ method. In this case there are also major savings in time
both as a result of the reorganization of operations and the reduc-
tion of movement and motion of workers.
There is also a reduction of down time, effectively cutting the
losses (25 per cent) associated with traditional assembly!!2 - and in
direct and indirect labour. Relief workers (one for every 15), and rec-
tification functions, are eliminated.
This is what can be called direct operational reorganization; add to
this the savings of time and costs which are made by the other fea-
tures of the Japanese ‘Just-in-Time’ (JIT) system, and the immense
benefits of such a reorganization for capital becomes apparent.
As Sayer has shown, with JIT, savings in time are made from
almost all operations. And they are considerable: for example, the
set-up time for a press was cut by Toyota from one hour to 12,
minutes, the equivalent time for the US was six hours.!!3 This allows
a reduction in buffer stocks, as Sayer writes: ‘Buffers are regarded as
evidence of waste - waste of labour (in producing more than is
needed at a given time), waste through imbalance between workers
and between processes ... ’114
The chief feature of the system is that workers produce ‘the neces-
Sary quantity at the necessary time.’!!5 In this way there is a great
72 Automation
reduction in stocks of parts and materials. Storage, warehousing and
related operations such as transportation and internal transfer are
thus reduced considerably. This means an enormous saving in costs,
in time and the reduction of idle capital. But such an arrangement
can be beneficial only if the plants which supply the materials and
components are also organized according to the JIT system, and
located within a short distance from the main plant(s). The JIT
system therefore also entails a far greater level of interrelationship
between all the different plants and suppliers. It ‘relies upon close
management surveillance, cooperation and overlapping owner-
ship’.116
ifwe take each of the different operations affected by the JIT and
the Modular method, it can be seen that in every case, without
exception, one or other type of the existing automation technologies
can be applied to change the whole structure of the production
process radically. The reorganization on the basis of these methods,
developed by the various departments involved in production and
process engineering, is a preparation for the introduction of automa-
tion. There is no doubt that some such rationalization is needed in
order to clear the inefficiency of the older methods of management
and organization of different and segmented operations both within
plants and between them. The improvement in working practices of
labour is, however, a transitional feature.
The most significant aspect of automation technology is that it is
re-programmable. This gives it the flexibility that is absent even in
the JIT and Modular system. In the internal operations, the work
done by the various teams can be done by programmable robots.
Break down the movements into simple standardized motions, codify
these into a set of rules and instructions and feed them to a micropro-
cessor controlled robot. This has the added advantage (for capital) of
not having to deal with rest periods, sabotage, go-slows or strikes.
The considerable reduction of movements, the simplification of
body-motion and what are called shorter handling cycles, which
were achieved in Renault’s case, for example, are clear indications
not only of how greater productivity can be obtained, but also how
these aspects can become objectified.
The supply of parts and components in ‘sets’ reduces the move-
ment of getting supplies.!!7 It also makes it easier for robotic assem-
bly; the robots deal with ‘sets’ rather than the successive movement
of various items. It also makes the objectification of the functions of
rectification, repairs and quality control that much simpler.
If the teams are meant to regulate themselves,!18 rectify difficul-
ties and carry out ‘preventative’ maintenance as they work, and if
the JIT system is therefore ‘a particular and sophisticated method of
learning-by-doing’,!!9 then the crucial question is: who is ‘learning’
and who is ‘doing’?
Feedback to management is obviously the critical essence of the
method. As Sayer writes in the case of ‘error elimination’,
 Preparing for Automation 73
management and process engineers need ‘to be highly knowledge-
able about the details of the work process, to keep work under close
surveillance, and to be able to elicit the workers’ own knowledge of
the process in order to improve it’.120
Thus, while the workers are ‘doing’, the management is ‘learning’.
The learning process certainly improves managerial performance,
but it is also essential for the objectification of different tasks and
operations. Stock control, close managerial surveillance and high co-
operation between managements of different plants and suppliers,
all require a great deal of information and feedback. This can be, and
is being, achieved far more cost effectively through computer to
computer linkages, with enormous savings of time and labour.
As Sayer mentions: ‘Where advanced automation, such as flexible
manufacturing systems, is introduced, its effects on productivity are
greatest where it is applied to a production system that has already
been rationally organized.’121 That is precisely the point. As more
and more elements of automation technologies are introduced into
the ‘rationally organized’ production processes; as the reduction in
wastages of time achieved so far are further reduced through the
greater application of more sophisticated automation technologies;
so the excess of production time over labour-time approaches its
limits.
One example suffices to illustrate both the amount of time ‘saved’
and the immense pressure which is exerted on all capitals to push
for the rapid restructuring of industrial production. Take the car
industry as an example; on average it takes 36 hours to assemble one
complete car in Europe, while the equivalent time for the US is 24
hours and for Japan only 17 hours.122 The difference in time is not
marginal but considerable, and it is this level of productivity which
is now becoming the social average norm.
But such a reduction in time and therefore increased productivity
— a reduction in the input of living labour —- is only the result of the
first stages of rationalization towards the complete restructuring of
the production process on the basis of automation. And, as we shall
see in the next chapter, the advance of automation involves a fantas-
tic development of the productive forces, which once applied and
diffused, makes the very notion of ‘labour-time’ itself basically
irrelevant.
A

The Process of Automation

The essential characteristic of human labour in general is that

human beings can conceive, design and plan a particular product
and the operations involved in producing it before the actual execu-
tion of production begins. Human labour is both conscious and pur-
posive; viewed as an abstract, general social activity, it is the unity of
conception and execution.
Conception and execution are essentially two distinct (but interre-
lated) processes, whatever the form of society. They are distinct in
the sense that conception always proceeds the process of execution.
But this does not mean a separation of the two processes. For
example, in an ancient agricultural family unit, where the division
of labour was extended over proportionately few people and the
bulk of goods was produced for the household’s consumption needs
within the confines of the household itself, the work of conception
(however limited it may have been) preceded in time the labour of
execution: but not as separate processes carried out by separated
individuals.
It is important not to confuse the processes of conception and exe-
cution with the division between mental and manual labour. It is
often assumed that ‘conception’ has always belonged exclusively to
the province of mental or intellectual labour; that manual labour,
associated with direct production, involved little or no conceptual
work. Historically, this is erroneous. The division between mental
and manual labour far preceded in history the separation of concep-
tion from execution. Manual labour, say of a crafts person or an agri-
culturalist, had involved conception as well as execution. The same
applies to intellectual or mental labour, even though the form of
execution here is different.
It is only with the development of the capitalist mode of produc-
tion that the two processes become truly separated. It is only under
capitalism that the objective conditions of production for exchange
necessitate the constant raising of productivity and efficiency. And
one of the important means of achieving this aim was the break-
down of the processes involved in the making of commodities into
various detailed operations performed by different sets of workers.

74
 Process of Automation 75
1, Automation of the Process of Conception

As capitalism advanced it became more and more imperative to

cheapen and simplify labour by means of fragmentation and de-
skilling. This strongly reinforced the existing division between
mental and manual labour, and set forth a process which further
subdivided them both by separating the work of conception from
that of execution.123
With the separation of conception from execution, it was then
possible to transfer the knowledge of the work process already pos-
sessed by the workers (e.g. craft workers) to planning and manage-
ment departments. Moreover, a further subdivision and fragmenta-
tion of the work process was made possible whereby, for example,
the work of conception could now be divided into various detailed
functions, each performed by a different group of workers — engi-
neers, designers, etc. With this subdivision each detailed function
could then be standardized routinely.
This transformation of the mode of organization of labour was
essential to the advancement of systematic mechanization. The frag-
mentation and subdivision of the process of conception and its
potential for standardization now paved the way for the transference
of certain routine functions performed by specialized labour to be
performed by machines.
The increasing application of scientific principles to the process of
conception gained greater momentum with the introduction of flow
processes in the chemical industry towards the second half of the
nineteenth century.
With the development of computers, electronic instruments and,
later, microprocessors, the many specialized tasks performed by engi-
neering, design and technical service departments could now be
automated and certain detailed functions imitated repeatedly at a
much faster rate than that possible by human labour.
If the elements of manual labour could be broken down to a
certain number of basic physical motions, then, in principle at any
rate, a similar breakdown of elements of mental labour can also be
achieved. When ‘codified’, these can be incorporated into computers
and other microelectronic devices. It is this form of subdivision, clas-
sification and codification of the elements of mental labour that
helps to accelerate the process of automation of conception.
At present the process is in its infancy, and the hardware and soft-
ware components of this process appear as ‘tools’ and ‘aids’ to the
conception workers rather than as their dispossessors. But the tech- '
nology of, for instance, computer-aided design (CAD) - developed
on the basis of minicomputers, digitizing boards and visual display
units — contains, in embryonic form, the very elements which can
lead to a greater objectification of the process of conception.
Every attempt is being made to advance software and program-
ming methods to reduce progressively the dependence of
76 Automation
computerized systems on direct human intelligence and creativity.
For example, as already mentioned above, there are heavily funded
research and development projects in the so-called ‘artificial intelli-
gence’ (AI) systems, which seek to expand the role of automation in
the conception process.
It is a mistake to underestimate the significance of AI and to reject
out of hand the goal of capital in attempting to create ‘machine
intelligence’ as science fiction. It is not so far-fetched as some have
claimed it to be; for, as long as AI scientists and engineers can trans-
form elements of human knowledge into a standardized form and
carry out its compartmentalization and congealment into limited
fields, isolated from the complexities of the multi-dimensional social
relations, then such a ‘bee-like’ form of ‘intelligence’ can become
objectified.
Competition is already compelling many advanced nation-states
and large corporations to develop what is known as the ‘fifth genera-
tion’ computer technology. The Institute for New Generation
Computer Technology, established by Japan in 1982, for example,
has the specific goal of designing a system of computer technology
that goes beyond mere ‘data processing’ into ‘symbolic reasoning’.
The more ambitious project for the development of ‘neural com-
puting’ is also well under way in Europe and the USA. And recently
Japan has also entered the race with a ten-year programme instigated
by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI). The goal
is the imitation of the human brain: to produce a computer that is
not only capable of processing more information, faster, but that can,
at the same time, perform many different functions and numerous
detailed tasks simultaneously. Conventional digital computers work
on single problems in sequence; parallel-processing supercomputers
are much better, but are still very far removed from the capability of a
human brain. Neural computers should supposedly bridge this gap.
Unlike conventional computers, neural computers are not pro-
grammed. They handle particular tasks through learning by
example; the information is then ‘hard-wired’ into the system. The
neural computer network, therefore, would be good at solving pro-
blems which cannot be easily described and structured by a set of
rules. The convergence of such disciplines as biology, cognitive
science and computing, and the availability of parallel computers,
lies behind the research and development into neural computers.
In the US, a few firms have already developed some forms of neural
networks. These are tested in processes for, for example, sorting dif-
ferent types of cola bottles, as well as for assessing loan applicants for
their creditworthiness. UKAEA is applying this technology, at its
Harwell laboratory, to problems in ‘non-destructive testing’.
There are three lines of research concerning the development of
such computers. One is based on biology, which is an attempt to use
organic molecules to provide bi-stable elements, the basis of all
logical circuits. The aim is to make certain proteins, for example, to
 Process of Automation 77
to conduct electricity. If this is achieved, it can reduce production
costs and dimensions by a factor, so it is estimated, of 100, since pro-
teins are able partly to assemble themselves. It can also greatly
advance the heat barrier which limits the integration density of tran-
sistors. The two giants in this field are IBM and Bell Laboratories,
both working towards the development of the ‘biochip’.
The second line of research is concerned with the achievement of
the ‘third dimension’, which is a process involving the stacking of
layers of circuits in a solid block. The technical objective is similar to
that of the ‘biochip’: that is, to integrate more logic circuits into a
smaller volume. Japan, the USA and France seem to be most
involved in this research.
The third area, showing more promise than the other two, is the
research into ‘opto-electronics’. Using light signals through a type of
laser, it is possible to overcome the speed limitations of electronic
circuits. ‘Optically bi-stable devices’ have already been demonstrated
both at Bell Laboratories and in Edinburgh University. Although
there is a long way to go, this line of research certainly promises the
development of an entirely new generation of devices which can be
linked by fibre-optic cables rather than electric wires.
As regards software development, programming has advanced
considerably since the early days of computers. ‘Expert systems’ are
programs intended to reduce the number of people involved in the
process of conception. At present such systems as, for example,
CADUCEUS II (for medical diagnosis), PROSPECTOR (for geological
analysis), DIPMETER adviser (for sample oil-well analysis), R1/
XCON-XSEL (for computer system sales support and configuration),
and CATS-1 (for locomotive trouble shooting), are as yet only ‘aids’
to assist the specialists. But they have shown that the knowledge of a
specialist can, in diluted form, be represented as a series of ‘rules’,
each rule being appropriate for a category of situations and describ-
ing a possible step of reasoning in the area.
In this field these knowledge-rules are treated as a particular type
of data and manipulated by a general model for the resolution of
problems; this is called an ‘inference engine’. The system can be
updated and revised by retaining the inference engine and connect-
ing it with other sets of rules. This is what happened with the
MYCIN system, designed at Stanford in 1974 for medical diagnoses
In a few months researchers at IBM were able to design the DART
system for the diagnoses of computer faults by retaining its inference
engine. The number of expert systems is growing all the time; recent
examples include systems for the design of computer architecture
and tool ranges.
One of the notoriously significant aspects of the development of
knowledge under capitalism has been the increasing subdivision of
human knowledge into numerous ‘expert’ fields (specialization).
From this basis experts are attempting to produce programs that
incorporate specialized ‘expertise’ in the form of hundreds of rules
 78 Automation
and facts. Capital’s creation of experts has paved the way for the
creation of ‘expert machines’ and programs.
The fundamental problem, however, will always be the ambiguity
of the human social world. Even if it becomes possible to remove, or
at least limit, this ambiguity, inevitably it would be purely artificial
and far removed from the real world of human relations.
How far removed from the real human world an expert system
may be, or whether a machine can actually have intelligence and
what is the meaning of such intelligence, is of no interest to the
warped world of capital. The crucial point is whether any of these
systems or machines actually work — and the meaning of the term
work here refers to whether it can increase profits over rival capitals
and advance the expansion of capital. It is this fundamental purpose
that lies behind the funding of AI research and development.
Thus, there is no doubt that the further automation advances, the
more the ‘intellectual’ professionals become dependent upon the
machines and systems they once helped to produce - and large
numbers of them (or at least the less talented) become redundant.
The technologies of automation are increasingly losing their charac-
ter as tools or means of labour and taking on a more and more
autonomous role. The first signs of machine displacement of mental
labour are beginning to appear with the increasing standardization
of methodology; with further development there may be a drastic
reduction in the number of technocratic and skilled professionals
employed in software production.
Automation of the conception process will not only reduce the
size of this group and displace a considerable number of ‘mental
workers’, but can have a potentially devastating effect upon the
development of human knowledge as capital attempts to standardize
human intellect and ingenuity. Objective dehumanization and-stan-
dardized codification of knowledge is the nightmare to come. In the
drive towards maximum automation of the conception process the
microelectronic-computer technology of today is merely acting as
the Trojan horse of capital.
Automation of conception is an attempt to confine the intelli-
gence and creativity involved in that process to an ever-decreasing
body of elite ‘experts’. It provides the necessary objective means for
the centralization of control. It is the process of establishing produc-
tive knowledge as capital.

2. Automation of the Process of Execution

(i) The Production Process

Traditionally, the sphere of production ~ as the essential, domina

nt
battleground of labour and capital and as the only process
through
which value and surplus value is produced — has been the
chief area
 Process of Automation 79
affected by extensive and intensive mechanization, receiving the
greatest application of scientific knowledge.
One of the most crucial elements in the move towards automation
in this sphere was the design and development of Numerical Control
(NC) technology and its application in the machine tool industry.
However, as we have seen, the key innovation that transformed
the steady quantitative evolution of the mechanized and electronic
systems into a qualitative change was the microprocessor.
Microprocessors are now used to control individual machines and
equipment; they are then linked to supervisory minicomputers that
gather and communicate managerial information and reports for an
entire plant. These are finally collected, compiled and processed bya
large central computer.
Progress towards such control systems was advanced by the deve-
lopment of Direct Numerical Control (DNC) and the linking of a
group of machine tools together by a minicomputer. In certain
cases, fully mechanized loading and unloading, often using robots,
is linked to a DNC system. And, more recently, automatic flexible
transfer lines and automatic work-piece transport have been added
to DNC machines. Though still in its infancy, this Flexible
Manufacturing System (FMS) is a major development towards full
automation of the direct material production process.
FMS is an integrated manufacturing system which can co-ordinate
different robotic devices, NC machines and computers with auto-
matic material handling and monitoring as well as automatic
replacement of drill bits and other implements, when necessary. The
objective is the simultaneous production of a variety of parts in
small batches on a single assembly line.
For example, FMS has already been implemented in Japan by
Yamazaki Machine Works. The process of production at this
advanced factory is equipped with 65 computer-controlled
machine tools and 34 robots. The overall process is controlled from
the Yamazaki head office by means of a direct fibre-optic cable
linkage. The Yamazaki management directs the FMS by giving the
central computer the appropriate codes for the operation of each
machine tool to produce particular items in the specific quantities
required.
Besides its tremendous labour-saving features, the FMS also con-
tains some important capital-saving features. Since it can be rapidly
reprogrammed to make new parts or products, it can replace several
different conventional machine lines which thus generates a consi-
derable saving in fixed capital investments.
Moreover, for individual capitals, restructuring on the basis of
FMS has enormous advantages. First, there is a phenomenal increase
in productivity, with direct labour input virtually eliminated.
Second, there is round-the-clock utilization of fixed capital (an
example of this is Fujitsu Fanuc’s automation lines for the produc-
tion of industrial robots and motor-assembly).
80 Automation
Furthermore, a firm using FMS can update its product range and/
or launch a new product at a far greater speed than previously pos-
sible, keeping up with rapid changes in the marketplace. It can also
relocate plants closer to markets, since the flexible system frees the
firm from heavy investment in hard mechanization.
Therefore, by contrast with the past forms of mechanization
which were generally inflexible - this includes the pre-
microelectronic NC systems - the new systems are flexible enough to
be applied to small and medium batch production which covers
some 75 per cent of manufacturing output.
The production of machines and their parts is invariably based on
small batch methods of production. A large proportion of output is
made according to a set of stated specifications and requirements by
various firms. As the type of product made varies a great deal, mass
production, which requires a high degree of standardization, was not
possible under the old system.
Small batch production lies at the heart of modern industry: it
forms the basis of most of the mechanical and machine-tool indus-
tries and quite a large part of the instrument and electrical engineer-
ing industries. Thus any reduction of costs and increase of
productivity in this field will have great benefits ultimately for capi-
talist production in general.
Conventional batch manufacturing generally used single-task
machines, which needed to be redesigned and rebuilt or completely
replaced, with a change of product. With FMS this is not necessary,
and a different variety of products can be made on the same line
whenever required. This system can produce small batches or even
single items with the same efficiency as a mass production line.
General Electric, for example, turns out some 2,000 different ver-
sions of its basic electric meter at its plant in Somersworth, New
Hampshire, which has a total output of more than one million elec-
tric meters per year.
As these systems are further developed, there is no technical or
economic reason why small batch production cannot be almost fully
automated in time. In fact, even as early as 1980, the Japanese expe-
rimental factory (the ‘Methodology for Unmanned Metalworking
factory’), supported by MITI, showed the enormous potential of
using microelectronic and computer technology in small batch pro-
duction. For instance, this factory is capable of producing some 30
items per day out of a range of SO product types in batch sizes
varying from 9 to 25; and it only employs 10 people instead of the
normal requirement of 700.124
By the 1990s the MITI project envisages the construction of facto-
ries that employ only 1 per cent of a conventional plant’s labour
force. And Japan is not alone in pushing hard towards full automa-
tion of direct production. Europe and the US also have their projects.
One example is the McDonnell Douglas aircraft parts factory in St
Louis, Missouri, where only a few men are present either for
 Process of Automation 81
sweeping the cuttings or occasional tasks at the automated control
panel. Here all machine tools are com puter-controlled.
General Motors, Ford and other mass producers are also fast realiz-
ing the advantages of flexible automation. GM has already installe
d
an Italian-built flexible system at its Chevrolet Gear and Axle
Division in Detroit. General Electric’s $300 million investment in
restructuring its locomotive facility is going to displace the labour
force drastically; a batch of locomotive frames which was conven-
tionally produced by 70 skilled machinists and took 16 days to turn
out will take one day to produce without any machinist.125
. For the automation of the extractive industries, the case of the
British coal mining industry is a good example. In the 1970s, but
especially after the miners’ strike of 1974, a great deal of investment
was poured into the restructuring of coal mining processes at all
levels (underground, surface and office) based on the introduction of
microelectronics technology.126
By 1983, within less than a decade the British coal industry had
been transformed into the world’s most technologically advanced
underground coal mining process. Microelectronics was applied to
every major mining operation, and the computerized system that
was developed for the central controlling of collieries is known as
MINOS (Mine Operating System).
It is interesting to note here the way in which the management
attempted to restructure the industry on the basis of automation
technologies. The MINOS system uses a closed loop design, yet
because of its modularity it can accept different sub-systems at diffe-
rent times. This was a purposely designed feature since it enabled the
piecemeal introduction of automation ( with the application of the
different sub-systems eventually, at a right time, to be linked
together).
We can elicit four basic reasons for such a piecemeal introduction
of automation. First, the obvious economic and cost factors con-
nected to any major restructuring. Secondly, the technical reasons of
testing new equipment and to introduce modifications and further
developments as needed.
But far more interesting is the third reason. Piecemeal application
tends to project the illusion of a ‘natural’ process of technological
change as ‘progress’, thus tending to legitimize the great human cost
of displacing labour. Further, some of the displacement could be
attributed to ‘normal’ retirement, as well as making ‘voluntary’
redundancy more cost efficient and acceptable.
The fourth reason is even more interesting. Given the strength of
the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), at least during the
1970s and even early 1980s, and given the initial.amount of job
losses involved (at least 70,000) and the strength of feeling within
the mining communities, any major restructuring at that time
would have been a highly inadvisable and dangerous move on the
part of the Coal Board and the government, without adequate social,
82 Automation
political and economic preparations. The downfall of the Heath gov-
ernment in 1974, as a result of the miners’ strike, was a bitter lesson
always to be remembered by all governing parties.
Be that as it may, job losses have been far more than at first admit-
ted by the Coal Board and the process of automation is yet to be
completed. The development of MINOS sub-systems will enable the
control and monitoring of underground transport networks, coalface
machinery and fixed equipments such as fans and pumps. These can
then be monitored from the surface through a central control room.
The sub-systems incorporate many of the traditional mining
skills.127
Even in such fields as electrical and mechanical maintenance,
which seemed out of the reach of automation, there have already
been some important developments. The Inbuilt Machine
Performance and Condition Testing system (or IMPACT) enables the
performance of electrical and mechanical maintenance by small
‘teams of specialized technical craftsmen ... while other craftsmen
are finding their jobs being de-skilled or are faced with the possibi-
lity that ... the NCB [National Coal Board] may be able to use
unskilled workers to do their former work’.128 As I have already men-
tioned, such objectification is only the first stage of introducing
automation. The greatest impact is not de-skilling, though that is
important, but the actual displacement of mine workers including
‘craft’ technicians.
In the not-too-distant future, when the FMS type and other
advanced robotized systems are linked not only to computer-aided
design and automated conception systems, but also to the other
automated networks in other spheres, then the true scale of the
potential labour displacement will be seen. Increasingly, automation
will spread to large-run and then short-run, non-continuous pro-
cesses, affecting all forms of production.
It is clear, therefore, that the introduction of automation involves
a profound restructuring of the process of production, which is still
being further developed. Once fully accomplished, it could substan-
tially increase productivity and efficiency, particularly for the
advanced national and international capitals which have already
fully committed themselves to the development of automation with
a vast and increasing amount of capital investment. Also, and at the
same time, it will result in the transformation of the basic relations
between labour and capital, and have a dramatically negative effect
on the production of surplus value.

(ii) The Process of Circulation

Although accumulation of capital depends in the first place upon

the exploitation of labour at the point of production, it is also
dependent upon the process of exchange and circulation. The value
 Process of Automation 83
and surplus value produced must be realized so that capital
can self-
expand. The circuit of capital involves both the process
of produc-
tion and that of circulation.
The realization of value depends on a whole complex networ
k of
organizations and activities that actualize the process of circula
tion.
These range from transportation and Storage (althou
gh strictly
speaking these belong to the sphere of production) and wholesa
le
and retailing operations, to other crucial but auxiliary commer
cial
activities. Moreover, fundamental to the whole process of
execution
is the credit system: the banking and financial institutions,
insu-
rance and other related activities.
Capitalists involved in the sphere of circulation must appropriate
a portion of the total surplus value produced in the sphere of
pro-
duction and receive this according to the share of the capital
advanced, just like any other form of capitalist. For this reason it
is
just as crucial for circulation capital, as for industrial capital, con-
stantly to attempt to improve efficiency and productivity. Only by
such means is it able to reduce costs which are financed out of
surplus value and affect the rate of profit. Because of the very nature
of commercial activity, which involves dealing with various forms of
information concerning credit, interests, records of orders and trans-
actions, cheque processing, price information and purchase and sale
data, it is well suited to the application of computer technology.
For example, banks have already used the magnetic-ink character
recognition (MICR), which enables machines to read the number of
accounts, on cheques. The MICR’s machine-readable data accele-
rated the diffusion of computers in this field of record-keeping and
cheque-processing. The introduction of electronic terminal systems
facilitates a direct linkage between firms and financial and banking
institutions, enabling faster transactions and minute-by-minute
information on liquid assets and other financial and investment
matters.
Both in banking and retailing, one of the important aspects of
microelectronics is further to reinforce the development of ‘self-
service’ systems (which began around the 1930s in certain retailing
operations) with the introduction of automatic teller machines in
banking.
A clear example of the significance of computerization to commer-
cial capital is provided by the American Clearing House Interbank
Payment System (CHIPS), established in 1970. CHIPS was introduced
to replace the earlier system of messengers carrying paper cheques
from major banks to the New York Clearing House. It was found that
with the growth in both the volume and traffic of cheques it became
increasingly difficult to ensure that complete processing of transac-
tions was achieved each day, and that, therefore, the day’s outgoing
payments were adequately covered by deposits and in-flowing Pay-
ments. Two important points were at stake here. The first was the
time factor. The second was that, due to the pressure of time, some
84 Automation
clerks and junior staff were forced to rely on their own initiative and
judgement as regards the forwarding of specific payments. This
meant that often it would be the lower level officials who would
authorize large amounts of credit rather than higher management.
Now, by means of computer-to-computer telecommunication net-
works and the whoie process of application of automation techno-
logy, not only can the commercial industry reduce its labour force,
but, simultaneously, it can considerably enhance managerial control
over the work processes involved. In the above case, not only were
messengers displaced, but, at the same time, computerization
removed the danger of lower level officials relying on their own
judgement in the day-to-day decision-making process.
According to some observers, the retailing side of commercial
activity will be among the first to see some major changes and dis-
placement of labour, as retail store automation systems are further
developed and gradually diffused.
Electronic checkout terminals are only the first step in this
process. By enabling the automatic recording of sales and re-ordering
of stocks needed, by facilitating direct connection to the computers
at banks and warchouses, it automates many of the activities pre-
viously performed by living labour.
These terminals can operate because of the standardization of
information concerning price and other matters, encoded on the
packaging of commodities. The introduction of Universal Product
Code (UPC) bars enables terminals, through photoelectric laser scan-
ners, to identify each purchase. The link between terminals and main
computers then enables automatic inventory control and re-ordering
systems; it also provides all the relevant information for market
research, accounting, cost control and even shelf-space allocation.
Accounting terminals, installed in banks and businesses, once
further developed, will push forward the process of automation of
commercial activities. Teletext terminals could advance the process
even further by enabling not only banking transactions, but also the
purchase of goods, to be performed in the home. Electronic funds
transfer (EFT) and point-of-sale terminals have only just begun to
transform the worlds of banking and commercial activities. Add to
these developments the whole network of telecommunications and
satellite systems — that is, developments in Information Technology
- and the transformation of commercial enterprises will be as dra-
matic as that in the sphere of production.
More advanced than retailing is the storage of commodities.
Completely automated warchouses are now operational: once loads
are delivered, a camera reads the label and a computer automatically
decides where the load should be stored. No manual operations are
necessary, although there are still many warehouses that combine
manual and automatic operations.
The diffusion of equipments with sensors and microprocessors, of
systems that include automatic palletizers and de-palletizers for
 Process of Automation 85
moving cartons on and off portable platforms, computer systems for
scheduling and record-keeping, location tracking, will diminish the
labour force involved in storage to as low as perhaps one or two
overseers Or operators.
And, finally, computers and electronic equipment are being
applied in all forms of transportation and all aspects of this industry,
which already in the past has been subject to an ever-increasing
degree of mechanization. From brokerage services, cargo manifest
control, computer-to-computer transmission of manifests by tele-
communications, microprocessors and_ electronic equipment
installed in ships, trains and trucks, to electronic reservation systems:
all are only examples of the infancy of the automation process.
Thus, in addition to all the labour-saving costs and increasing the
centralization of managerial control, automation promises substan-
tially to enhance and promote the economy of time. For capital is
not only intimately concerned with the rationale of quantification,
but also with that of time. The application of automation technolo-
gies will undoubtedly increase the rate of turnover of capital. This is
important to the rate of accumulation of capital, since the latter
depends not only on the quantity of surplus value but also the speed
with which it is produced and reproduced.
Moreover, once surplus value has been extracted at the point of
production, embodied in commodities, it is of the utmost impor-
tance to capital to speed up their conversion, their metamorphosis,
from the commodity form to money. For it is during this time that
the capital-value is immured within a bodily form that generates no
motion (in terms of value), and hence no possibility of self-
expansion. The sooner the commodity form is converted into
money, the sooner a part of this money can then be re-converted
into productive capital and the process of extraction of unpaid
labour can begin afresh.
This effort to speed the turnover of capital, which, with mechani-
zation, was mainly confined to the sphere of direct production and
transportation, is now also being increasingly directed, by means of
the development of automation technologies, to the sphere of circu-
lation. This would have immense benefits in terms of reduction of
costs, but by increasing the level of unemployment, as the process
advances more and more towards full automation, it drastically
increases the burden of costs for the capitalist state and the collecti-
vity of capitalists.

3. Automation of the Process of Co-ordination:

The Enhancement of Managerial Control

All forms of social production need a certain degree of co-ordination

and supervision. But, for capitalist production, these functions
take on especial characteristics. Co-ordination, supervision and
86 Automation
administration are much more than mere organizational activities
associated with the ‘technicalities’ of complex institutions and the
organization of combined labour on a large scale. They are also
essential activities in the exercise of control.
The essence of management is the control of all aspects of social
production for and on behalf of capital. This exercise of control can
be made more effective with the greater gathering, processing and
storing of more precise and detailed information. In order to have an
adequately effective control of production, and business activities in
general, capitalist management needs to have decisive command
over the flow and transmission of information, without which man-
agerial functions (and strategic decisions), both in the technical/
organizational as well as the social/class sense, become weak and
ineffective.
The traditional means of gathering and processing information is
through a hierarchically structured organization. Bureaucracy and
the bureaucratic form of organization has been, until now, the prin-
cipal means for such a task. And, although within the organizational
format, various tools and instruments have long been used to
increase organizational efficiency and productivity, nonetheless, to a
great extent capitalist management has relied for its information on
the human component, rather than on technology.
With the development of capitalism, the growth and greater cen-
tralization of capital and its internationalization, information and
the means of its transmission gained greater and greater importance.
From around the second half of the nineteenth century, a new
stratum of workers began to take shape. The function of direct and
constant daily supervision, of administration and co-ordination,
required a new type of wage-labourer, the clerical worker.129 As capi-
talism developed, so grew the mass of workers employed to gather,
process and transmit the ever-increasing mass of information upon
which the management of various institutions and firms (industrial,
commercial, state) were dependent.
However, as information is a vital ingredient of managerial
control, the work process involved in the collection and transmis-
sion of it had to be organized and structured in such a way that
would not only limit the power of direct control of clerical workers
over that process, but would also make the process as efficient and
cost-effective as possible.
Capitalist management has, therefore, used various methods of
dividing and subdividing the clerical work force, in order to increase
their productivity, and, simultaneously, reduce their relative control
over the flow of information. Until recently, the principal method
has been that of ‘scientific management’ (i.e. the various methods of
Taylorism, etc.).
Despite the revolutionary invention in 1885 of the Hollerith
machine for counting punched cards, which seemed to promise new
changes, as information could be recorded in a form which
 Process of Automation 87
machines could classify, sort out and tabulate, mechanization
of the
clerical work process developed extremely slowly compared to that
of manufacturing processes, and its diffusion was even less pro-
nounced. Except for the introduction of the telephone, office
machinery (e.g. typewriters) remained at a primitive level and,
for
the most part, information control remained labour-intensive and
paper-based.
Even as late as the post-war era, when the mechanization of manu-
facturing, agriculture, process and extractive industries had rapidly
advanced, there was only a certain refinement of existing office
equipment and the introduction of only a few new instruments.
Three major intertwined factors lay behind the slow progress of
office mechanization. First, the very structure and working process
of the long-established bureaucratic methods of organization tend to
generate conservatism which stands as a main obstacle to technolo-
gical change.
Secondly, in the period of post-war expansion, capitalist institu-
tions not only needed, but could also maintain, a growing army of
clerical workers; the technological devices which could handle infor-
mation and office tasks were either not yet available or were, in com-
parison with the price of labour-power, too costly. The employment
of a cheap, relatively unorganized and largely female labour force
was still generally considered as less costly than the introduction of,
for example, mainframe computers. Thirdly, given the period of
growth, the pressures of profitability and competition were less
exacting than when the system entered into its recent crisis in the
late 1960s.
Certainly, by the mid-1960s, many large businesses had intro-
duced computers to deal with certain large-scale routine and repeti-
tive ‘back office’ operations, such as payrolls, billing and inventory
control. But still the bulk of information processing, co-ordination
and administrative activities remained heavily dependent upon a
bureaucratically organized clerical work force.
Towards the end of the growth era, the tremendous expansion of
the clerical work force had resulted in the growth of white-collar
labour costs as a major business expense and a major tax on capital
accumulation. In some branches of the economy, such as insurance,
it is estimated that the white-collar payroll can account for as much
as 70 per cent of a firm’s expenses.
However, things began to change by around the early 1970s as the
spreading economic crisis began to bite. Pressured by the problems of
profitability and raging competition, capitalist managements began
to rationalize and restructure the sphere of co-ordination in order to
reduce costs. Thus from a relatively primitive level of mecha-
nization, within an extremely short period this sphere is being
thrust into the age of automation.
The process of office automation is still in its early days. But, as
information technologies continue to become cheaper and more
88 Automation
sophisticated, the old bureaucratic organizational structures will
become subject to a major and fundamental transformation. The
number of different clerical operations and tasks which are already
undergoing a process of simplification in preparation for eventual
automation is growing daily.
Traditional skills such as typing and accounting are fast becoming
more and more simplified and mundane, requiring considerably
shorter training periods. A visual word processor not only displaces
the work of up to five typists, increasing productivity by between
150 and 400 per cent, it also requires minimal operator training.
Some information technologies now being introduced require train-
ing periods as short as 15 minutes.
The office production line process with its pools of clerical
workers, subdivided into various specialized fields, will be gradually
but radically altered. It is becoming much cheaper to communicate
electronically than it is to communicate on paper. For example, with
the introduction of the word processor, according to some estimates,
secretarial costs can be reduced from more than $7 per letter to less
than $2. Even more dramatic savings are estimated with the use of
electronic mail and electronic filing.
The rate of diffusion of automation technology within the process
of co-ordination (as in all other spheres) depends on the difference
between the price of the technology and the price of clerical labour
that capital needs to meet. If the difference is in favour of techno-
logy, then the rate of diffusion of office automation will accelerate.
The great advantage of microelectronics is precisely this: its applica-
bility, sophistication, quality and productivity (i.e. potential dis-
placement of living labour) are fast improving.
The process of automation of the sphere of control is, essentially,
as Ursula Huws points out, ‘a two-stage’ process. We are only now
witnessing the first phase based on microelectronics. The second
Stage of this process will depend ‘much more heavily on telecommu-
nications technology’ which will consist of linking all the different
electronic systems together: ‘It is only when this has occurred on a
wide scale that the major productivity increases will take place, since
it is only at this stage that the labour-intensive paper processing
phase of information handling can be eliminated.’130
The most important development, still not fully matured, is the
‘integrated workstation’ which would be the entry and exit point for
information on a digital, voice, data, text and image network. When
fully developed, such a system will replace almost all conventional
instruments and organizational structures.
Finally, it is important to point out that as the processes of pro-
duction, circulation and conception are transformed by the applica-
tion of automation systems, as greater and greater numbers of both
mental and manual workers are displaced by such systems, the struc-
ture and function of co-ordination and supervision, as well as all
administrative processes, must inevitably also change.
 Process of Automation 89
Managerial control over social production will become highly cen-
tralized as almost all intermediary supervisory layers will be
removed, their functions to a very large extent incorporated into
technological systems. The process of automation of conception and
execution, therefore, in itself, will remove capitalist management’s
need for many categories of activities within the sphere of control.
Moreover, as the process of exchange, commerce and banking are
transformed by automation, the vast majority of administrative tasks
now performed by human labour will be performed by dead labour.
For example, direct computer links will permit supermarket chains,
department stores and other large-scale retailers, directly to convert
records of purchases into orders for new supplies, thus eliminating
the need for buyers and sales people, as well as all the accessory
administrative office staff which used to deal with these records.
Thus, as automation advances, the process of co-ordination and
control will see major fundamental changes not only as a result of
the planned and co-ordinated direct intervention of management to
automate this sphere itself, but also as a result of the diffusion of
automation in the other spheres of the economy.
The actual diffusion of automation depends on more than the
technical possibilities involved in the development of applicable
technologies. There are not only economic, but also social and poli-
tical factors which also determine the speed, the rate and the extent
of diffusion. Although these interacting factors may, in practice,
delay the advance towards full automation, or certain social and
political developments may actually temporarily counteract the eco-
nomic pressures towards such a system, nevertheless, given the logic
and laws of motion of capitalism, as evident from the actual histori-
cal development of the capitalist mode of production to date, I
suggest that such a move is not only possible but highly probable.
The socioeconomic implications of such a development are
immense, complex and multi-dimensional. But even if the concep-
tion of full automation of all economic spheres may appear as a
‘futurological’ delusion, that of material production is not only fea-
sible and possible, but actually taking place today at the core of the
system. And it is the latter which is of essential significance to the
central driving force of the capitalist system - the accumulation of
capital.
heer the most important issue for the next few decades is the
implications of automation for the production of surplus value, its
effect on the functioning and operations of productive capital.
The whole foundation of capital’s social order rests entirely upon
the production of surplus value. Since it is self-evident that automa-
tion will have a negative effect on the production of surplus value,
the contradiction between the material conditions of production
based on automation, and the dominant social relations based on
value/wage relations, must inevitably reveal itself in ever-increasing
class conflict and social upheavals throughout the entire social
90 Automation
system. Behind this qualitative technological change, one general
and fundamental trend is manifest: the ever-increasing poverty of
the mass of humanity. But, as Marx had remarked, we should not
‘see in poverty nothing but poverty, without seeing in it the revolu-
tionary, subversive side, which will overthrow the old society’ 131 In
the next part I shall attempt to explain the various issues involved in
this process of degeneration of capitalism as the age of automation
unfolds.
 Part Il: Automation and
Capitalism

For most of its life capitalism formed a relatively small system.

For a
fairly long time its growth was contingent upon the expansion
of
wage relations, by the destruction of the pre- and non-capitalist
modes and forms of labour beyond and within its immedia
te
borders. Today this process of expansion, the ‘civilizing mission
’ of
capital, is complete. The world is capitalist not merely in market
terms but in terms of production. There is no non-capitalist space
to
be absorbed and conquered.
The world is now a single, homogeneous space of value. It is still
a
fragmented world, but now made up of formally independent
national capitals of varying sizes and compositions.
The largest and hence the most powerful national capitals (as few
as perhaps a tenth or so of all nations), considering themselves the
bastions of democracy and the cham pions of the free reign of private
Capital, spread their tentacles throughout the globe through their
largest constituents as international capitals (the so-called multi-
nationals), protected and promoted by their national states.
Within the individual borders of each of these national States, the
immense concentration of capital, though split into many units, is
directly co-ordinated through administrative guide-lines promoting
the greatest possible extraction of domestic unpaid labour by the
development and use of new technologies. Internationally, these
states promote not the interests of their many capitals within their
borders as such, but that of their concentration as national capital
directly and unambiguously. Here the fusion of state and capital is
not based on the nationalization of private capitals, but on their
extreme concentration.
For the fully state capitalist Eastern bloc, the violent process of
‘primitive accumulation’ through autarchy has long since finished.
And even for the most successful of these (Russia), survival, i.e.
growth, is no longer feasible on the basis of autarchy. The augmenta-
tion of state capital can no longer be carried out on the basis of the
extraction of absolute surplus labour, or the absolute restriction of
consumption. A new social norm - socially necessary labour-time -
is being established within the system, and even the most advanced

ot
92 Automation and Capitalism
sectors of the Eastern bloc as yet cannot match the techniques and
technological structures which are increasingly transforming the -
(global) rate of surplus value.
Now, more than ever before, the further growth of these state
capitals is dependent on the raising of productivity by means of
increased technological efficiency. Only then is there a chance of
expansion, and then only through the direct participation in the
sharing of the mass of surplus value. This entails, however, not only
the sharing of what surplus is produced outside the borders of the
Eastern bloc, but also, and necessarily, the sharing with ‘external’
capitals of the surplus extracted within its borders.
None of this is possible unless these state capitals can raise the
necessary resources needed for a thorough restructuring of the mode
of extraction of surplus labour. Thus their apparent urgency for
political and economic reforms, decentralization of state capital, and
the opening up of their internal markets. But for the bureaucratic
ruling classes there is a heavy price to be paid, and great risks
involved, with no guarantee of future success.
For the rest (the Third World), from the weak, the very weak, to
the near bankrupt, the price paid and being paid for industrializa-
tion - more specifically, the mechanization of production - and new
capital formation, should be measured not merely in labour-time
(dollars and pounds), but in the concomitant growth of ‘superfluous’
population, mass starvation and deaths in millions. Here the
enclaves of growth are dwarfed by the oceans of stagnation: scat-
tered geographically, and protected by the military might of the
national states, they are nothing but zones of cheap labour at the
mercy of giant international capitals.
The few national capitals (no more than half a dozen or so, the
so-called Newly Industrializing Countries) which have managed to
grow in real terms with the collaboration of Western and Japanese
capitals, still rely heavily (at best) on methods of intensive mechani-
zation and Fordism. They are hardly a match for the rapidly chang-
ing technical structure of production at the core of the system.
Whatever the complexities of the world economy, it is undeniable
that capital is god, and the nation-state its supreme organizational
representative. In essence, if not as yet in completed form, capital-
ism has transformed itself into a closed system: a world state capital-
ist system.]
Today the expansion of social capital is entirely dependent upon
the mobilization and exploitation of resources internal to the system
itself. In the absence of non-capitalist social formations neither
plunder, nor unequal exchange, has any role to play in the self-
expansion of social capital. Growth of the system is dependent upon
the number of productive workers being exploited within the system
itself, and the rate of that exploitation.
It is on the basis of this profound and irreversible transformation
that the implications of automation for capitalism must be
 Automation and Capitalism 93
considered. The development and introduction of automation tech-
nologies are themselves reflections of this change in the structure of
the system. In this part I shall be examining the consequence of this
revolution in technology upon the essential socioeconomic relations
which determine the fundamental character of the capitalist world
order.
What is, however, of the utmost significance is the effect of auto-
mation upon the production of surplus value, for it is this latter
which is essential for the accumulation of social capital, and there-
fore for the entire operation and functioning of the rule of capital. I
shall essentially concentrate on this principal issue, therefore, and it
is only from that perspective that I examine the implications of
automation for the role of the state, ideology, social services and
welfare, or those related to the changing shape of capitalist society
in general (‘information’ or ‘post-industrial’ society), as well as its
implications for the Third World.
 1

Productive Capital and

Automation

The accumulation of social capital depends on the extraction of

surplus labour and its appropriation as surplus value embodied in
the output produced. Surplus value can only be created within the
realm of production. All other spheres and processes of the
economy, although clearly necessary and supportive, are nonethe-
less entirely dependent upon the processes of production of surplus
value.
The consumption of labour-power (i.e. the worker's capacity for
labour) in the process of production of commodities, under the capi-
talist’s direction, is simultaneously the creation of use-values and
value; it is the creation of abstract labour by means of useful labour.
As a commodity, the value of labour-power is measured by the
amount of time socially necessary for its production and reproduc-
tion. But this amount of time is demonstrably less than the period
for which its owner, the labourer, is hired. It is this difference in
time which is the measure of exploitation, or the amount of time
expended in producing surplus value: creating the flow of profit,
interest and rent.
All capitals are compelled to grow. But not all capitals produce
surplus value. Growth for individual capitals, whether they are
surplus-value producing or not, is a result of their participation in
the process of distribution of the already produced surplus value by
productive capitals.
Productive capital is that capital which is employed in the sphere
of production of such material commodities (use-values) that are used
or consumed directly or indirectly to sustain the ability to work, and
of those material commodities that can become inputs for further
production.
This sphere comprises what are generally known as manufacturing
or industrial firms, agriculture and extractive industries, services
such as transportation and industrial storage, and firms involved in
certain aspects of conception such as design and engineering. Those
capitals involved in such activities, in the final analysis, are directly
responsible for the expansion of total social capital, and are there-
fore productive.

95
96 Automation and Capitalism
It is only as a result of the creation of surplus value by the wage
labourers employed by productive capital, that social capital can
expand. Individual capitals can grow, of course, even if we assume a
state of stagnation. But such a growth is only possible at the expense
of other capitals. Whatever the method or however it is achieved, it
does not in itself entail the growth of social capital. It can only do so
if it intensifies and accelerates the process of accumulation, or the
self-expansion of capital-in-general, and this is ultimately dependent
upon the extraction of unpaid labour and its appropriation as
surplus value.
In order fully to appreciate the fundamentally significant effect of
automation upon capital production, it is therefore imperative to
examine, if briefly, the specific characteristics of this extraction and
appropriation of unpaid labour. Both the development and the
increasing application of automation technologies are a result of the
dynamic process of accumulation (the process of extraction, appro-
priation and realization of surplus value) which is an objectively
imposed condition. The very problematic nature of the technologi-
cal system of automation is thus inescapably tied not to production
in general (or in the abstract) but to capitalist production as such.

1. Extraction and Appropriation of Surplus Value

Human labour-power has the capacity to create a value above and

beyond its own value, but only because, under capitalism, it is
abstract labour (wage labour) and not because it has or is some
magical power in itself. It is the form of labour, the form of produc-
tion relations, and not the capacity for labour in itself, which is the
essential point.
The form of labour as wage labour characterizes a social system
based on production for exchange and a social mechanism of mone-
tary constraint or the objective imposition of monetary costs. As
Marx wrote, all economy is finally reducible to the economy of
time.? But the measurement of value by labour-time is essentially
different from the conscious distribution of concrete labour-time.
With wage labour, both the duration of labour (the working day)
and necessary labour-time become socially established indepen-
dently of individual producers. This is crucial, for it brings forth not
only a quantitative standard of measure, but also a qualitative one.
Thus, while a direct producer can, under all previous class systems,
be forced to produce more than his/her keep (often on pain of
death), with wage labour the production of surplus value is not only
the very condition of the labourer’s life, but also of the capitalist as a
capitalist. The labourer is forced to perform labour beyond necessary
labour, as the capitalist is forced to make sure not only that he/she
does so, but that he/she does so in keeping with or at a higher
degree of performance than the social norm.
 Productive Capital 97
In other words, the production of surplus value, through the
extraction of surplus labour, is not dependent on the caprice of indi-
vidual capitalists; it is not dependent upon their individual greed.
Greed, on the contrary, becomes a social phenomenon, incessantly
given life and reinforced by the very act of production itself. As a
social phenomenon, and the motive force derived from the depth of
production, it becomes insatiable. There is an incessant drive to
improve and develop the technologies of production - and indeed
the very movement towards the automation of production must be
seen as a vital moment of this objectively imposed social
phenomenon.
We know that because of the separation of labour from the means
of production and subsistence, workers are compelled to sell their
labour-powers. And we know that this economic compulsion is
carried over, well after the formalities of exchange have been com-
pleted, to the realm of production, for a given duration. But within
the production process this economic compulsion on individual
workers does not automatically guarantee that their performance is
in line or above the social norm. To ensure that it is so, is a function
of the capitalist. Thus surplus labour has to be extracted. And for this
the act and agency of direct control is a necessity. It is at this point
that the ‘necessary illusion’ of exchange of equivalents gives way to
the reality of despotism of capital. It is therefore here that the roots
of class antagonism and class conflict lie.
The economic compulsion of wage labour is the basic principle of
exploitation, but needs to be buttressed by a different kind of com-
pulsion at the point of production. To ensure that labourers perform
an adequate amount of work, it is necessary, as is well known, for
the employers to take direct charge of the production process, and to
organize it in such a manner that the maximum performance of
surplus labour is ensured. The capitalist class is required to search for
and develop ways and means (organizational and technological) to
create the conditions for discipline and control. Thus we have the
whole history of the development of technologies and techniques -
from the manufacturing method of organizing and subdividing
labour, the process of mechanization (modern industry), and now
that of automation - all of which have been specifically concerned
with this problem.
The mode of extraction of surplus labour refers to this power of
compulsion, which is cemented as a coercive force, through the par-
ticular manner in which the technical relations of production
operate and function. It refers to the actual manner in which the
material forces of production (techniques and technologies) are uti-
lized to ensure the adequate performance of surplus labour. Control
of the production process thus becomes an essential function of
exploitation, and inseparable from it.
The process of development and application of control systenis -
from the mechanical to the now developed microelectronic systems
 98 Automation and Capitalism
which were discussed previously — is conditioned by this imperative
of ensuring an adequate performance of surplus labour as dictated by
the prevailing social norm. The enormous enhancement of manage-
rial control, specifically connected to the greater utilization of com-
puters, communication and other information technologies, is, at
least initially, the result and a necessary function of exploitation, or
the mode of extraction of surplus labour.
For the specific character of the process and relationship of exploi-
tation, the form of surplus is significant, since it expresses the deter-
mination of the mode of extraction of surplus labour - which is a
function of the direct process of production - by the dominant
social relations of production. The value form of surplus labour tells
us the social form of appropriation of unpaid labour. In capitalism,
appropriation takes place in the homogeneous space of value, or
within the global interaction of capitals. It is in this space that con-
crete labour is simultaneously performed and rendered abstract.
It is important to distinguish appropriation from extraction of
surplus labour. For it is obvious that before surplus labour can be
appropriated (as surplus product or commodities) it must first be
extracted. Appropriation, however, should not be confused with the
realization of surplus value. Appropriation takes place in production,
as the capitalist process of production consumes the use-value of
labour-power. Once production takes effect, surplus labour is
extracted and appropriated. Whether the value of the already materi-
alized surplus labour is later actually realized is entirely a different
matter, and does not in any way alter the fact that surplus labour
has been performed and the labourer has already been exploited.
The form of appropriation as value is a function of the relation of
production by virtue of the exchange between capital and labour
(the exchange of money for labour-power). What the form signifies
is that the already appropriated materialized surplus labour must be
converted into money. If not, surplus value has not been realized,
and thus there is no self-expansion of value. Because of this fact it is
extremely important that the process of realization of value is not
only as fully controlled as possible, but also accelerated. It is this
need which has been behind the great push towards the develop-
ment of the new technologies of automation applicable to the
process of circulation of commodities which we have already
discussed.
The value-form of appropriation, therefore, expresses the mecha-
nism that renders the extraction of surplus labour social. That is, it
establishes the socialized nature of exploitation under capitali
sm.
Thus, while surplus labour is extracted within particular individu
al
productive units, it is not appropriated as surplus value by each indi-
vidual capital. Surplus value exists only as the mass of surplus value
(SV), and it is appropriated by the Capitalist as a class. This point
is
crucial, as we shall see later, for the understanding of the implicat
ion
of the process of automation during the transitional period, whereby
 Productive Capital 99
the more advanced capitals at the centre of the social system can
actually become fully automated and yet despite the fact that they
are no longer exploiting productive workers (i.e. there is no input of
living labour) they can nevertheless gain huge amounts of profit.
However, the mode of extraction is not established arbitrarily by
particular capitalists. Just as individual labourers are forced to labour,
so individual capitalists are compelled to make sure that forced labour
is properly performed. Each individual capital is compelled to ensure
that its consumption of labour-time (living and dead) is no more
than the prevailing social norm (socially necessary labour-time).
This compulsion, though certainly different in kind, springs from
the same condition which forces the labourers to labour: the condi-
tion of separation of labour from the means of production, or the
creation of a homogeneous space of value. After all, we are dealing
here with an antagonistic social relationship between two histori-
cally specific classes - capitalists and workers. And in this, individual
capitalists are mere personifications of social capital, which is but
the realization of their reciprocal interaction. As such, each indivi-
dual capital is compelled to behave in relation with its labourers
according to how social capital behaves in relation to the working
class as a whole (globally).
The concrete manner in which individual capitals extract surplus
labour is thus always a result and an expression of the struggle
between the two classes involved. Thus the manner in which exploi-
tation is concretely effected - hence the choice of techniques and
technologies used to translate the desire for surplus value into actual
production of it, as, for example, with the decision to introduce
computerization and other automation technologies - despite the
appearance of individual managerial choice and decisions, is deter-
mined by the struggle over the increase of the rate of surplus value.
The value-form of surplus labour is therefore once again crucial here,
since the degree of exploitation exists as a social norm separate from
each particular process of production.
In all previous class societies, the mode of extraction of surplus
labour within the different production units was particular. There
was no objective (social) criterion on the basis of which the effi-
ciency of the particular modes of extraction of surplus labour could
be measured. With capitalism the mode of extraction must in itself
express the essence of capital as a social relation. This is realized
through the form which techniques and technology (as well as
labour-power) takes as capital. This metamorphosis of productive
forces as capital is essentially based on the reality of value-relations,
and has a direct link to the dynamics of the system; in the way the
struggle over the rate of surplus value determines each and every
concrete manner of the exploitation of labour.
The rate of surplus value expresses the ratio of paid to unpaid
labour, or that of necessary to surplus labour. It exists for total social
capital; it is, in value terms, the ratio of the total mass of surplus
 100 Automation and Capitalism
value produced (SV), within the system as a whole, to the total value
invested in the employment of labour-power (V, or total variable
capital): i.e. s' = SV/V.
Whatever its duration, a working day is made up of necessary
labour-time and surplus labour-time. Capital is essentially only con-
cerned with the increase of the latter (surplus value). The existence
of surplus value already implies that the duration of the working day
is more than necessary labour-time. But by how much, and to what
extent, depends entirely upon the prevailing rate of surplus value. If
it is in the interest of capital to increase this rate, it is just as much in
the interest of collective labour to resist any such increase. For an
increase of this rate has a direct effect upon the very conditions of
the working class.
It is this struggle at the point of production which is an essential
(and primary) lever behind the almost constant revolutions in pro-
duction and the development of the material productive forces.
Thus, for example, the mechanization of production, and now the
move towards automation, are technological aspects of this struggle.
The insatiable greed of capital for surplus value - inherent in the
nature of capital as self-expanding value — is directly reflected in the
mode of extraction of surplus labour.
However, as we shall see later, it is precisely on the basis of this
development of the productive forces that capital comes face to face
with its own inherent limitations. The historic mission of capital to
develop the productive forces (as witnessed by the new technologies
of microelectronics, which we looked at in the previous part), which
Marx often refers to, should be seen in this light. That is, capital’s
thirst for surplus value, or rather the process of its self-expansion,
involves qualitative transformations within the mode of production
because of the struggle of the working class, i.e. because accumula-
tion (or self-expansion) necessarily involves a process of class strug-
gle. From its social aspect, the rate of surplus value is an expression
of this process.
To overcome the limitations of raising surplus value absolutely, or
relatively by the reduction of the quantity of use-values workers
consume, the mode of extraction itself, the very concrete ways and
means of pumping surplus labour, need to be changed. The intro-
duction of computers (microprocessors) and other automation
devices, for example, and their further development into a system of
automation, is a radical and qualitative transformation of the mode
of extraction of surplus labour.
The choice of techniques and technologies is clearly crucial and a
class conscious decision. Although for the world system as a whole
there is no overall institution that makes binding decisions, none-
theless, the decisions and choices made by individual capitals are
entirely determined by one overriding principle - self-expansion or
growth. No technology or technique will be either introduced or
maintained for long, unless it can raise the rate of surplus value,
 Productive Capital 101
unless it can aid the increase of relative surplus value and the growth
of capital.
But the decisions to improve or change the mode of extraction of
surplus labour are taken at the individual level, since they are con-
cerned with the manner in which living labour-power is used con-
cretely. Therefore, in practice, the concrete application of technology
and technique is far from evenly spread throughout the system.
Thus, while the advanced capitals of the centre are already fast
moving towards automated production systems, in many other parts
of the world system there are still capitals which rely heavily on
mechanized systems of production. Moreover, historically there is
uneven development of different parts of the social system and dif-
ferent units within these parts, which further complicates the tech-
nological picture of the capitalist system of production.
Despite this, or rather on the basis of it, the mode of extraction
and exploitation are socialized through the interaction of capitals -
through the mechanism of competition. It is precisely this specific
characteristic of capitalism which necessitates that the new techno-
logies of automation, and the very structural framework and system
of automated production, are diffused not only within particular
branches and spheres of each national economy, but, at least in prin-
ciple and according to past experience, universally throughout the
world system (in a similar manner, but with potentially far more
radical consequences, as the process of mechanization has already
spread throughout the globe). It is therefore on this basis that for
individual (and national or state) capitals the principle of ‘automate
or die’ is an objective necessity imposed by the very functioning of
the capitalist mode of production itself, in accordance with and as a
result of the law of value.

2. Automate or Die: an Inescapable Paradox

There is no doubt that, at least in the advanced centre of the system,

the technical composition of capital is beginning to be rapidly
changed. The introduction of some elemental technologies of auto-
mation (computers, robotics) is raising the ratio of dead to living
labour in many industries. When this rise will actually result in a rise
in the organic composition of social capital cannot be exactly pre-
dicted. That it must sooner or later do so is a certainty, given the fact
of competition.
The present evidence of automation technologies clearly indicates
that the process of automation currently in progress is having some
important effects on productive activity. Although much of the
empirical evidence suggests a complex and varied picture of the
impact of automation, it is, nevertheless, indicative of a process of
transformation as fundamental as that which ensued with the rise of
the Industrial Revolution. On the basis of even the present limited
102 Automation and Capitalism
character of this change and the transitional nature of the techno-
logical system, it is no longer far-fetched to envisage the application
of a more or less fully developed automation system of technology
to the productive sector.
The tendency towards automated production is rooted in the
process of the accumulation of capital itself. Long ago Marx (in the
Grundrisse and Capital, for example) had suggested that the progres-
sive development of material productive forces, with the greater and
increasing application of science to capital production, having
reached a stage when ‘labour in which a human being does what a
thing could do has ceased’,3 must result in an ever-decreasing mass
of surplus value, on which the whole foundation and future of capi-
talism rests. On the basis of Marx’s theory of value, as the process of
automation of production advances, a point is reached when ‘pro-
duction based on exchange value’4 breaks down.
However, for some writers - Ernest Mandel for example - the
notion of full automation can only be a tendency. Thus, Mandel has
argued that it would be ‘impossible for automation to spread to the
entire realm of production in the age of late capitalism’.S This is
because capitalism, according to Mandel, is ‘incompatible with fully
automated production in the whole of industry and agriculture,
because this no longer allows the creation of surplus value or valori-
zation of capital.’6
It is perfectly true that full automation of the productive sector
means zero surplus value, and thus the end of capitalist production.
But it is simply unbelievable for Mandel to suggest that the existence
of ‘a contradictory unity of non-, semi-, and fully-automated enter-
prises’ is evidence ‘that capital must by its very nature put up
growing resistance to automation beyond a certain point’.’
First, such an uneven development and diffusion of the techno-
logical system of production has nothing to do with automation as
such. If Mandel had paid more attention to the development of
machinery and the process of diffusion of mechanization since the
Industrial Revolution, he would have realized (as is evident even
today in many parts of the system) that there has always been uneven
application of the productive forces, i.e. of technology.
Thus, the existence of ‘non-, semi-, and fully-automated enter-
prises’ to which Mandel refers can hardly be proof or evidence ‘that
capital must’ be resisting automation, since in that case capital has
always been resisting technical change. One could always say that,
because there is unevenness in the technical conditions of produc-
tion (with manufacture, machinofacture and mechanization) capital
‘must’ have at all times resisted any technological development.
Clearly this is an absurdly mistaken proposition.
Secondly, the point is that the development of the material pro-
ductive forces is a function of the process of accumulation. The deci-
sions about the direction of the development of technology is made
only under the compulsion to grow.
 Productive Capital 103
A situation may emerge whereby individual capitalists, with their
eyes firmly fixed on the rate of profit, will no longer be able or
willing to invest in further restructuring of their production pro-
cesses on the basis of automation. This, however, effectively means
that now the interaction of capitals results in the freezing of the
development of material productive forces.
But because wage labour/capital relations determines the entire
character of the mode of production, expansion (accumulation) is
the central driving force of the system. But once we accept the neces-
sity of growth and accumulation, then the process of accumulation
itself necessitates the development of productivity, of productive
forces. Thus, the freezing of the development of the productive
forces can appear for only a limited time. And since the basis of the
existing technological knowledge and applied science is one-sidedly
automation oriented, and given that this sets the limit to what
under capitalistic conditions can be further developed and applied to
production, the unfreezing of the development of the productive
forces, due to the necessity of growth, can only be a return to the
advancing of automation.
The diffusion of automation to the entire realm of the productive
sector is not only not impossible, but, in fact, a realistic future pros-
pect dictated by the very dynamics of accumulation of capital itself. It
is certainly a potentially self-destructive process, as far as social capital
is concerned, but a process which is nonetheless an integral aspect of
accumulation. The fact that it would result in explosive socio-
economic and political contradictions does not make it impossible.
Mandel states that: ‘For reasons of its own self-preservation,
capital could never ... afford to transform all material production
into full automation.’ There is implicit in this statement a con-
founded conception of ‘capital’ as some ‘super-authority’ that
somehow consciously governs the world system.
But capital, as Mandel would surely be the first to agree, is not a
‘being’ or a single institution, but a process, a system of social rela-
tions between beings. Individual capitals, of course, do act in accor-
dance with their own particular self-interests and self-preservation.
But the system (the existence of ‘capital-in-general’ or social capital)
is made up of many capitals. The behaviour of each capital is deter-
mined by the interaction between all capitals (by competition).
There exists no overall authority that consciously plans and governs
the actions of these capitals.
The ‘blind unconcerted compulsion to grow’? under the constant
and intense pressure of competition, is the only authority that
guides and governs the world of capital. It is this that ensures (in
part) the constant raising of productivity and efficiency. And this
can only mean an ever-decreasing input of living labour; it can only
mean the utmost development of technology in the direction of
automation. It is precisely for ‘reasons of its own self-preservation’
that every individual capital must ultimately automate or die.
104 Automation and Capitalism
In pursuing their own individual self-interests, constantly attem pt-
ing to ensure their own ‘self-preservation’, individual capitals must
not only invest in the application of the best available technology,
but they must attempt to develop even more advanced technologies
to gain an advantage over their rivals. That such behaviour is contra-
dictory and ultimately self-defeating is certainly true. But is nonethe-
less unavoidable and compulsive.
Now that the process of automation has begun, no individual
capital can afford not to introduce these technologies. The pressure
of competition, especially intense because of the current crisis situa-
tion, will ensure that automation diffuses and spreads throughout
the productive sector and beyond.
Full automation undoubtedly means the end of capital. But to
freeze the development and spread of automation indefinitely is
hardly possible, given the nature of the system. Even if it were pos-
sible, it is tantamount to a spiralling process of decay and decompo-
sition which can only lead to the destruction of the system. This is
the living contradiction that must inevitably develop into the final
crisis of capital.

3. Production of Surplus Value and Automation

For the analysis of the implication of automation for the production

of surplus value we must assume that reproduction is entirely depen-
dent upon the activities and processes involved within the produc-
tive sector, leaving’ aside the (significant) role of the circulation
sphere and the non-productive sector.
For the self-expansion of social capital the crucial category is the
total quantity, or mass of surplus value (SV). As long as surplus value
continues to be increased, the social conditions of capital are being
reproduced with the self-realization of capital itself. Such an increase
already presupposes the positing of the means of production and
labour-power as moments of capital: i.e. the continuous establish-
ment and operation of capitalist production relations.
Expanded reproduction, or rather accumulation, and hence the
social reproduction of wage relations, is dependent not merely upon
the continuous production of more commodities, the mere physical
increase of output, but upon the continuous production of more
value, or surplus value. If surplus value is recognized as more value, it
already signifies that the increase of output can only result in
expanded reproduction, or accumulation of social capital, if it
embodies a greater value than had been invested in its production.
Thus surplus value must increase continuously.
The continuous production of surplus value already implies the
continuous growth of surplus value, and not simply the production
of the same quantity year after year. In principle, the mass of surplus
value cannot remain static, i.e. capital cannot continuously
 Productive Capital 105
reproduce the same mass of surplus value. A static surplus value is a
period of stagnation, which, given the nature of capital as self-
expanding value, cannot last for long without threatening the rule
of capital itself.
No matter how much the output increases with the establishment
of automation, the crucial factor for the reproduction of capitalist
relations is not the total value of this output in absolute terms, but
whether and by how much this value is greater than the total value
of all inputs. This quantitative difference determines whether
surplus value has increased and by how much, and thus determines
whether or not, and to what extent, social capital can expand itself.
For the increase in productivity due to the utilization of the
system of automation means a devaluation of the individual com-
modities produced. Each commodity now produced contains less
socially necessary labour-time. Increase of the mass of physical
output does not therefore necessarily entail an increase of the mass
of value. This depends on the time and intensity of effort put in by
the employed labour force. Thus, the production and hence increase
of surplus value is determined by the relation between necessary and
surplus labour-time. This is the most crucial relation for accumula-
tion of social capital and the reproduction of capitalist class
relations.
As surplus value is determined by the compound ratio between
the total number of productive workers exploited simultaneously by
the capitalist class and the degree of exploitation of each individual
productive worker, then the decrease of one factor can be compen-
sated for by the increase of the other.!° Thus, a decrease in variable
capital, for example, as a result of a reduction in the input of living
labour, can be compensated for by a proportionate rise in the rate of
surplus value, or an extension of the working day.
However, the compensation of a reduction in the input of living
labour by an extension of the working day, or a rise in the rate of
surplus value, ‘has impassable limits’.!! It appears at first sight that
because automation decreases necessary labour-time, then, since the
degree of exploitation is raised, it must therefore increase surplus
value. But in fact this is not the case. For automation substantially
reduces the total mass of productive workers employed.
We can take the case of the Japanese experimental factory - the
Methodology for Unmanned Metalworking plant - as an example. In
this case, it is claimed that the plant employs ten workers to produce
a total of 30 items per day, which, on the basis of mechanization,
would have required 700 workers to produce. Thus we have a dis-
placement of 690 workers: a reduction in the factor of the number of
workers by which the rate of surplus value is multiplied to obtain
SV.
If this case can be taken as representative of the potential effect of
automation on the factor of the numbers of employed productive
workers within the system as a whole, then neither the maximum
106 Automation and Capitalism
lengthening of the working day, nor the absolute raising of the rate
of surplus value, can compensate for such a reduction in total
labour-power. Even if these ten workers worked for 24 hours a day,
and even if the whole 24 hours is surplus labour-time (which is
clearly impossible), they cannot produce the same mass of surplus
value as 700 workers, even if these latter were to perform only a frac-
tion of the surplus labour-time put in by the former.
The significant point, however, is that this experimental factory is
not representative of the ‘ideal’ of automation. It is simply what is at
the moment taking place under the present economic conditions
and sociopolitical constraints. There are, however, even at this early
stage, assembly and manufacturing plants which operate with even
less input of direct labour. The famous Fujitsu Fanuc plant produc-
ing industrial robots is one example among some dozen or so in the
advanced centre which are not merely experimental. In this case,
while during the day shift 100 workers are employed (for political/
union reasons), the night shift operates with only an overseer and a
watchman. In fact, in economic and technical terms, the plant can
operate on both shifts with perhaps only four workers (two per
shift). In quite a few cases, some firms have managed a ten-fold
reduction of their work force.!2
Even in those industries where the production processes have
been rationalized - rather than as yet completely restructured — on
the basis of a mixing of technologies of automation with the old
system of mechanization, the increased productivity is made pos-
sible not by the relative but by the absolute diminishing of necessary
labour. The process of rationalization is certainly initiated because of
the current crisis situation. But as with all the previous major crises
(e.g. the late nineteenth century, and the 1930s) the rationalization
is in fact a way of enforcing a massive technological restructuring of
capital production.13
The shedding of labour in the current process of rationalization,
however, is not a temporary phenomenon. It is evident that even
with the formation of new productive capitals the employment (or
re-employment) of living labour will be minimal, since the technical
structure of the new processes is invariably based on the now
cheaper and more efficient technologies of automation.
Thus, as this admixture of mechanized and automation technolo-
gies diffuses, productivity increases by the diminishing of necessary
labour-time. However, the smaller necessary labour-time is as a frac-
tional part of the total labour-time, the smaller will be the increase of
surplus value. As Marx wrote: ‘surplus value rises, but in an ever
smaller relation to the development of the productive force.’14
Thus, precisely because productivity is being increased today, pro-
ductive capital will be compelled in the next few decades to develop
further its technical conditions simply in order to continue to realize
itself: but this only to an ever smaller extent. Because the increase in
surplus value would be smaller with every round of increase in
 Productive Capital 107
productiveness, and because this makes self-realization of capital
that much more precarious, the pressure towards the establishment
of automation as the technological system of capital production will
intensify.
Moreover, although the technologies of automation are flexible
enough to be incorporated into the existing system of mechaniza-
tion, they are essentially antithetical to it; the admixture that exists
in many industries today cannot last indefinitely. Since the system
of mechanization has its own corresponding set of techniques and
methods of organization and managerial strategy, with the incorpo-
ration of automation technologies — which demand a different set of
techniques - the old balance of technique and technology is
disturbed.
As Lojkine has observed, although the ‘dominant trend at present
is still neo-Taylorist as regards both the organization of tasks and the
division of functions’, the introduction of automation technologies
has brought on a ‘crisis affecting “traditional” capitalist manage-
ment’ and ‘here and there certain forms of task reconstitution are
timidly emerging which combine not only machine supervision,
programming and maintenance but also optimalization, interven-
tion in product design and workshop management.’15
Thus, it is certain that there will be, both on technical grounds
and the economics of capitalism itself, a more or less rapid move in
the next few decades towards a complete restructuring of capital’s
production process in the more advanced industrial centres. The
only factor that can (temporarily) halt this dynamic towards full
automation of the sphere of production in these centres is a radical
change in the political conditions of class struggle (or an inter-
Capitalist war).
Each individual productive capital is compelled to automate, sub-
stituting dead labour for living labour, increasing fixed capital (rela-
tive to variable capital) which as such does not produce surplus
value. As the process continues under the pressure of competition,
the decline in the number of productive workers reaches such a
point that it becomes impossible for capital to extract sufficient
surplus labour out of the minuscule number of workers employed, to
expand itself.

4. Automation and ‘Positive Profit’

Necessary labour-time is a barrier to capital’s self-realization process,

which it constantly attempts to overcome. But it is at the same time
the life-giving element without which value and capital would
vanish.!6 In the actuality of capitalism, however, the existence of
many capitals and their interaction (competition), and hence the
mode in which each capital shares in the mass of surplus value pro-
duced - i.e. the distribution of this mass as profit, interests and rent
108 Automation and Capitalism
through the workings of the price mechanism - mystifies the source
of surplus value. It appears that capital is that source, rather than the
part of it invested in human labour-power (i.e. variable capital).
Necessary labour-time thus appears for individual capitals as a
mere obstacle, as unnecessary. And because this appearance is con-
fused with the essential relations involved, the erroneous idea of
capitalist production without workers (i.e. full automation) becomes
for many not only a natural, but a perfectly feasible, and indeed
necessary, ideal to achieve.
In other words, social capital can now, with full automation,
‘make something out of nothing, make a plus out of a minus, make
a plus-surplus value out of a minus-surplus value or out of minus-
surplus labour-time, and that it possesses, therefore, a mystical well-
spring of value independent of the appropriation of alien labour’.17
Moreover the erroneous conceptualization of value and surplus
value in terms of physical output can easily lead to the mathematical
wizardry of obtaining ‘positive profit’ with negative surplus value.18
Certainly if we assume the various economic categories (e.g. variable,
constant capital, surplus value) as simply physical data for mathe-
matical calculations, or regard them as purely material entities, then
‘profit’ without exploitation appears a feasible proposition. But then
such a hypothetical, or rather mathematical, system is not
capitalism.
I hope it is not too arrogant to remind our mathematical wizards
that these categories are neither ‘data’ nor even mere ‘economic’ cate-
gories as such, but in every respect social categories. ‘V’, the variable
capital, which is placed in a mathematical formula refers to the
living labour-power being exploited. ‘SV’, ‘s’, ‘P’, or whatever symbol
is used, is far from being a mere ‘surplus product’; it is nothing but
unpaid labour.
It is hard to avoid quoting Marx on this question, though I accept
that quoting Marx is no proof: ‘It is every bit as important, for a
correct understanding of surplus value, to conceive it as a mere con-
gelation of surplus labour-time, as nothing but materialized surplus
labour, as it is, for a proper comprehension of value, to conceive it as
a mere congelation of so many hours of labour, as nothing but mate-
rialized labour,’!9
There are only two possible ways that there can be ‘positive profit’
with zero surplus value, i.e. with no living labour involved and no
exploitation.
The first way is to step outside the set of assumptions which are
derived from the reality of capitalist relations. Thus we have the fol-
lowing statement by Steedman: ‘It might be wondered whether the
above example [of an economy of ‘robotic’ production and no
labour-RR], with L = 0 [i.e. no living labour-RR], contradicts the well-
known “Fundamental Marxian Theorem” that profit is positive if
and only if surplus value is positive. It does not, for that theorem
was always based on the premiss that labour is used in production.
 Productive Capital 109
We have not contradicted the theorem here; we have simply stepped
outside its set of assumptions.’29
The ‘logic’ is simply impeccable. It reminds one of Bukharin’s witty
remark about Rosa Luxemburg’s The Accumulation of Capital; para-
phrased, it applies to Steedman’s logic also: ‘If one excludes’ capi-
talist social relations ‘at the beginning of a logical proof’, then ‘it is
naturally easy to make’ living labour and surplus value equal to zero,
and yet obtain at the end of the process of calculation (not the
process of capitalist production) a positive profit. It ‘is simply a ques-
tion of the simple’ calculation ‘of a simple logical error’ of stepping
outside capitalism.21
The second way that there can be ‘positive profit’ with no produc-
tion of surplus value (though this has nothing to do with
Steedman’s wizardry) is if we only look at the production processes
of certain capitals and not social capital as such. This is in fact a very
realistic and feasible proposition, without assuming away capitalist
relations.
There is no doubt that, in the main, the move towards full auto-
mation of material production is far more advanced for some indus-
tries and some capitals than others. These are overwhelmingly
located within the most advanced centres of the system (the US,
Japan and Western Europe). If we assume that this move is not dis-
turbed by political or social upheavals, then the likelihood is that a
relatively large number of productive capitals at the centre, within
the next few decades or so, will transform their processes from the
admixture of mechanization and elemental automation into a full
and proper system of automation.
With this transformation of their technical composition, direct
labour will be eliminated from their production processes. (I shall
shortly consider the role of indirect labour, but for now let us
assume that this too is eliminated.) In this case therefore there is no
input of labour and thus no output of surplus value. These indivi-
dual capitals, however, will still be able to gain positive profit, and in
fact a higher rate of profit than before. How it happens is very
simple, and is directly based on the law of value itself.
For all capitalists, total capital is advanced without regard to the
different roles played by its components (v and c) in the produc-
tion of surplus value. For our capitalist, that distinction has actually
vanished in reality; v = 0. The total capital advanced is merely
divided into fixed and circulating capital, with the latter excluding
‘wages’.
In the actuality of capitalism, the rate of any capitalist’s gain is not
determined by the rate of surplus value, but by its proportion to
total capital, by the rate of profit. So it is in reality for our capitalist
also. In actuality, or as Marx put it ‘in the world of phenomena’
,22
surplus value appears as an excess of the selling price of the output
over its cost price.
110 Automation and Capitalism
Our capitalist produces an output with the help of his/her robots
and computers. He/she calculates the cost price in the normal way,
but now it excludes wages. The price of the output thrown on to the
market is its cost price, plus a percentage of the average profit of a
year on the total capital invested (but not just the capital used up).
This is the output’s price of production.
In the case of our capitalist, he/she does not produce any surplus
value, but this does not mean that he/she does not make a profit.
For even the non-automated capitals do not secure the surplus value
which they produce by the exploitation of their own particular
labour-force. What each capitalist, including our own, secures is
only as much profit, ‘as falls, when uniformly distributed, to the
share of every aliquot part of the total social capital from the total
social surplus-value ... produced in a given time by the social capital
in all spheres of production’.23
Thus the differences in profit between the various capitalists is
merely determined by the amount of capital invested by each, and
not by whether or how much each has actually produced. When our
capitalist sells his/her output at its price of production, he/she
receives a sum of money which includes a share of the annual
average profit. In short, though labour and surplus value equal zero
in this case, nonetheless there is positive profit when and if the
entire output is sold.
There is, however, no mystery involved here, since all that our
capitalist has done is to take a share of the mass of surplus value
without contributing to it. This happens all the time, with mer-
chant, commercial, interest-bearing capitals. In effect our capitalist is
no longer a productive capitalist.
However, he/she can only be a non-productive capitalist (and this
applies to all non-productive capitals irrespective of how necessary
their role to the functioning of the system) and still as a capitalist
receive a profit, because there are productive capitals still operating
within the system. The automated capitals of the centre gain positive
profit at the expense of productive capitals of the periphery, and
only so long as the latter remain unautomated. It thus further acce-
lerates the massive centralization of capital internationally.
As automation advances further and individual automated capi-
tals grow larger, the mass of surplus value being produced becomes
increasingly inadequate to sustain all the existing capitals. The
number of capital units decreases, while parasitic growth becomes
dominant. Given the nature of the system and its mode of function-
ing, it is the larger, most advanced capitals of the centre that
become the nucleus of the international concentration of economic
and social power. Yet it is a concentration of power which, in the
age of automation and the elimination of wage labour, can neither
be sustained nor perpetuated by the changed conditions. of
production.
 Productive Capital 111
5. Software Production and Surplus Value

In an interesting study based on empirical evidence from mainly

Japanese innovations in automation, Tessa Morris-Suzuki24 has
argued that ‘high levels of automation in manufacturing can exist
within the framework’ of a capitalist economy.25 As she correctly
mentions, ‘such economies are not merely a theoretical possibility
but are actually appearing before our eyes’.26
Morris-Suzuki recognizes that such a development would, at some
point in time, result in the problems of value creation, as the
number of productive workers becomes drastically reduced.
However, the sphere of production comprises not merely the
direct material production process, but also the process of productive
conception. It is within and through this process that not only the
form and type of output, but the techniques required for its produc-
tion, the form and type of technology and in fact all operational
details involved in the capitalist production of commodities are
designed and planned.
The process of conception is strictly only a productive process if
its output is or can be used as input for further production. The capi-
tals involved in this process (often as part of larger capital units) are
productive capitals. What is often referred to as the process of pro-
duction of ‘knowledge’ and ‘information’ when appropriated to pro-
ductive processes, is a process of software production. In terms of the
production of surplus value and capital expansion, this is by far the
most important form of output produced by productive conception
workers in the age of automation. Although not all software produc-
tion necessarily involves the creation of surplus value, for the sake of
simplicity I use the term ‘software production’ here to refer only to
such productive (surplus-value producing) processes.
According to Morris-Suzuki, ‘automation causes the centre of
gravity of surplus value creation to shift away from the production
of goods and towards the production of innovation — that is, of new
knowledge for the making of goods’.27
In other words, though with automation surplus value is no
longer produced in the direct process of material production, capital
is still able to accumulate the surplus value ‘extracted from the
labour of workers who prepare software for an automated produc-
tion system’.28
As we have already seen, all technologies need the action of
human labour to bring them to life. This action takes both a direct
and an indirect form. And up till now both forms have been essen-
tial to set the process of production into motion.
With automation, however, this distinction is no longer valid. In
this case, it is in fact only the different forms of indirect labour that
are not only essential for the general functioning of the sphere of
production, but also for the immediate activation of the direct
process of production itself. Human intervention in the immediate
112 Automation and Capitalism
production process is mediated by the application of software
systems.
The now massive, and growing, use of microelectronic devices2?
requires software as the essential ingredient, without which none of
these devices can become incorporated into a system of technology.
Software is nothing but dead labour, it is a form of technology.
Since its production (and the production of productive knowledge as
such) requires an input of living labour (e.g. programmers and engi-
neers) then, assuming full automation of manufacturing, surplus
value can now only be produced in the process of software produc-
tion. Therefore, although in the previous sections it was assumed
that with automation there would be no surplus value production,
the assumption is only valid if, and only if, software production is
also fully automated, but not otherwise.
For capital it makes no difference where or in what branch of pro-
duction surplus value is created. Once surplus value is produced, it is
then distributed according to the law of the equalization of the rate
of profit, or the adjustment of values into prices of production.
Through this process, the surplus value produced in the branch of
software production is distributed in such a way that within each
different sphere a given quantity of capital receives its share as
profit.
In a very simplified way, capitalists involved in software produc-
tion put living labour to work (with the necessary means of produc-
tion), producing a product in the form of software. The surplus
labour extracted is appropriated as surplus value. But as with all pro-
ductive capitals, only a portion of this surplus value goes to the capi-
talist software producers themselves. Given the capitalist mode of
distribution of surplus value, although software producers are now
(according to our assumption) the only producers of surplus value,
they necessarily, and without being aware of it, share this with all
other capitalists.
This is, however, not only an over-simplification of the state of
affairs in the sphere of production today, which is still heavily
dependent on the input of direct living labour, but also an over-
simplification of the future implications of the automation of the
direct process of production. For it is extremely problematic that the
production of software in itself can actually yield an adequate supply
of surplus value - given the enormous size of the total capital
invested in all spheres and branches of the world economy - for a
year after year growth of social capital. Whatever the actual number
of productive conception workers at present involved in software
production, the factor of numbers in itself would prove insufficient
for a constant increase of surplus value and thus systematic and con-
tinuous accumulation.
But perhaps even more importantly, it would be a gross misunder-
standing of the dynamics of capitalism to think that while almost all
other sectors of the economy are going through a restructuring
 Productive Capital 113
process on the basis of automation technologies, the software sector
can remain unaffected. Indeed, there is ample evidence to show that
the contrary is true. Software production, a costly and labour-
intensive process, has become a major concern for thorough restruc-
turing. For both economic and technical reasons, the so-called soft-
ware bottleneck is proving an increasingly significant constraint for
the greater expansion of automation, not only as a system of tech-
nology but also in terms of the application and diffusion of its
elements.
Paradoxically, the problem is a shortage of skilled personnel and
the labour-intensity of software production itself. Thus, according to
one survey, the rate of growth of systems and application software
(estimated at 18 per cent per year) has been much slower than the
rate of the installation of computers.3° Both shortage of program-
mers and low productivity is blamed for this situation. In 1980 the
US demand for software specialists was 50,000 more than the
supply.3! Improvements in training and recruitment have been slow
even with the evidence of the brain drain of software specialists from
the Third World to the OECD countries.32 The recent Policy Studies
Institute survey finds the main reason for Britain’s relatively slow
application of microelectronics to industry to be the shortage of
skilled persons, especially engineers and designers.33
Given this situation, there is increasing pressure to raise the pro-
ductivity of software specialists. And, ironically, the main path to
the raising of efficiency here lies in the development of new software
packages as replacement for the skilled labour involved in software
production itself. As Ernst has put it: ‘Software packages are systems
which have been developed to overcome the shortage of skilled
manpower, especially programmers.’34
In other words, the process of objectification of indirect labour is
already well advanced and well funded. The growing evidence of
huge investment in R & D concerned with ‘expert systems’ and
Artificial Intelligence must be taken very seriously and not as mere
science fiction. The essence of automation as a fully operational
technological system rests ultimately on the objectification of direct
and indirect labour. In the meanwhile, however, there is, for techni-
cal and economic reasons, great unevenness in the rate of develop-
ment of the different aspects of automation, as well as in the
application of such devices to the various sectors and different
regions of the world economy.
Be that as it may, even if we assume that for a time the software
sector is able to provide an adequate yield of surplus value for accu-
mulation to continue, the system would nonetheless face increasing
problems of the realization of the value embodied in fixed means of
production, including and especially that of the software. But, before
I look at this problem, it would be interesting to follow briefly the
argument that with the full automation of material production,
accumulation and growth become entirely dependent on the
114 Automation and Capitalism
systematic and perpetual output of ‘productive’ information and
knowledge concerned with new processes and products; that is, the
rise of a ‘perpetual innovation economy’.

6. Perpetual Innovation and Surplus-Value Creation

In a certain sense the idea of perpetual innovation is nothing new. It

is, in fact, a hallmark of the capitalist mode of production.
However, the case for perpetual innovation is fundamentally
based on the postulate of a radical shift in the core activities of
surplus extraction. It is argued that the spread of automation
throughout the sphere of material production, ‘by sundering the
labour process and squeezing out surplus value from the production
of material objects, forces capitalist enterprises and capitalist econo-
mies to become perpetual innovators’ .35
Before I proceed to a discussion of this idea, it is important to state
here that the trend towards perpetual innovation and the increasing
emphasis placed on the role of information, production of software
or productive knowledge, which is certainly visible, especially in the
advanced economies today, rather than being the result of automa-
tion, is in fact a necessary aspect of the developmental process of
automation. In other words, it is not a case of automation causing a
shift towards software (or information) production as against mate-
rial goods, but that software and productive information are essen-
tial ingredients of the process of automation itself.
Moreover, it is accumulation and the compulsion to grow which is
the essential driving force behind perpetual innovation and hence
the great push towards the further development of automation tech-
nologies (including software as a component). With the develop-
ment and diffusion of automation, this trend will accelerate, and the
need for increasing the scope and frequency of innovation will
become even more intenscly felt by all capitals.
With the automation of manufacture it is only through the pro-
duction process of software that value and surplus value can be
created. Whether software actually enters the process of production
directly or indirectly by means of actual exchange (i.e. purchased on
the market, or produced by a particular department of a manufactur-
ing firm), its full value (and hence the surplus value contained in it)
can only ultimately be recovered if and when it is combined with
the hardware or incorporated into the production process, to
produce a given output: and, further, when this output is sold. It is
only through the transfer of its value to an output that the value of
software can be appropriated. Software, like any technology, is
useless unless it is used or productively consumed: failing this, the
value embodied in it cannot be transmitted.
However, software (or any kind of objectified information or
knowledge) has the peculiar characteristic which is fundamentally
 Productive Capital 115
distinct from any other commodity or technology: it can never wear
out. Certainly a computer disc may get damaged and need replacing,
but this only requires the duplication and copying of the original
software or information. The actual set of instructions and rules, or
the program, does not wear out with its use. Just as any idea set
down on paper or in whatever form - as it becomes objectified and
can therefore become potentially useful —- cannot wear out no matter
how often it is used. But it can, and often does, become socially obso-
lete, no longer of use, or outmoded. So it is with software, which can
only lose its value through social obsolescence.
Since now (given our assumption) no manufacturing, or direct
production process, can function without the input of software, for
individual capitals to obtain their profit it is not only necessary to
purchase hardware (machinery) and raw and auxiliary materials, but
also it is essential either to produce or purchase the relevant set of
software. And since it is now the software as distinct from the hard-
ware that has gained the determining role — the actual activation of
machinery, the mode of its control, also the form and type of
product produced is incorporated within the package of software, in
short what used to be the function of collective labour-power with
all its blends of skills, manual and intellectual capabilities and dex-
terity is now objectified in a particular software — the entire existence
of a manufacturing capital becomes dependent on the continuous,
systematic production of software.
Just as once living labour was the life-giving substance of such
processes, now software has taken its place. Thus, unless software is
repeatedly produced and incorporated in a production process, no
individual capital is able to produce a commodity and thus gain a
profit.
Given the competitive nature of capitalism, the software produced
for or purchased by a manufacturer can only have a limited life
span, even if it is absolutely protected by the firm’s total monopoly
over it. Every other capitalist firm within the same line of produc-
tion will do its utmost to produce or purchase a software package
which is more efficient, or which enables the production of a better
quality of products than its rivals.
The process becomes perpetual simply because of the classic role
of competition. There is nothing new in this at all, except the fact
that with the ageing of the system, and the enormous growth of
total capital, competition inevitably intensifies towards its extreme
limits. With this, there will be even greater pressure towards a more
systematic and continuous introduction of new products than in the
past.
This need for perpetual innovation, however, does not mean that
individual capitals, or national economies, recognize that the source
of their profits lies in the exploitation of conception workers. Their
concern is, as always, with that of relative growth, and hence with
the rate of profit. It is this that forces them to become perpetual
116 Automation and Capitalism
develop-
innovators, just as the same compulsion drove them to the
ment and introduction of automa tion in the first place.
all
However, the specific peculiarity of this situation, in contrast to
that now it is only in the body of
previous situations, lies in the fact
surplus value created is dormant , there are no
software that the
a
other sources of surplus value (according to our assumption). Once
by a given manufac turer is outmod ed
particular software being used
by a better software used by a rival, it negatively affects the transfer
of the value of the old software; it cannot be converted into money
form. With this, rapid devaluation ensures that the surplus value
cannot be fully recovered or it is soon lost, and profit will sink to
nothing.
Thus, it is argued that the ‘only solution to this problem from the
point of view of the managers, is to pour increasing amounts of
capital and labour into the development of better software, new
techniques, different products’.36 And that this process must be con-
stantly and systematically repeated so that sufficient surplus value is
produced. This, it is argued, would enable the accumulation of
capital to take place ‘over a fairly extended period of time’ with
‘high levels of automation’.?”
However, such a situation can only last for a short period because,
even if we assume that there are no other economic or social prob-
lems arising out of the massive displacement of labour which auto-
mation clearly entails, there is also the very important problem
associated with the realization of the value embodied in the
software.
Thus, as I shall argue below, even during this period (whatever its
actual duration), in practice capital will face increasing problems
related to the very nature of software which will result in a contra-
diction between the realization of its value (and, of course, the value
of hardware associated with it) and its replacement as use-value.

7. The Problem of the Realization of the Value of Software

The process of conception transforms specialized and standardized

human productive knowledge, detailed (limited) skills and expe-
rience into a kind of technology — ‘soft’ technology.
The software producers thus create a force of production which is
used to give the first impulse for the particular technological system
to undergo the intended operations without any further assistance
of living labour, or at least with only a very negligible and limited
attendance. This removes the hitherto essential mediation of direct
labour in setting the production process into motion. The process
now is activated indirectly by the use of specifically designed
programmes.
We know that the only source of surplus value is living labour. It
is also assumed that, as a result of the full automation of material
 Productive Capital 117
production, the exploitation of living labour is now confined to the
process of software production. The capitalist involved in software
production, therefore, invests a sum of money in the purchase of
labour-power of a number of software specialists, and in the neces-
Sary equipment and materials required for the production of soft-
ware. Because of his/her control over this process of production, the
capitalist extracts more labour from the software specialists than has
been paid for. At the end of the process, new value is produced in
the materialized form of a specific use-value, eg. a computer
program, a complete package of manufacturing software or a new
design system. The value and surplus value of the capitalist is there-
fore now locked in the use-value form of a software product.
There are only two ways of realizing this value, which correspond
to the kind of software product actually produced. If the software is
only produced for direct non-productive consumption - for
example, as in the case of a program sold by software publishers to
be used by private or personal computer users - then it is just like
any other commodity, mass produced through duplication for the
market; the value embodied in the total output is realized through
the sale of that output. However, if software is produced for use as
an element of fixed means of production - that is, say, for use within
the direct process of production, in which case it is far more
complex and incorporates much more labour-time — then the realiza-
tion of this value is not as straightforward as that mentioned above.
In this case it is a specific form of means of production; it must
therefore enter the production process by being combined with the
network of hardware in use. Only through that process can its value
have the potentiality of being realized, as an output is produced and
eventually sold.
This is the form of software that is often referred to as ‘productive’
knowledge and information. It is this form — which is in fact a gene-
ralized reference to a wide varicty of different types of programmes,
software packages and expert systems - that is crucial to capital accu-
mulation as the process of automation of manufacturing industries
gathers pace.
Software as a means of production has a peculiar characteristic: it
can never wear out. It is also peculiar in another respect which needs
to be considered in relation to value transfer. It is certainly an instru-
ment of production, for without its incorporation into the particular
hardware none of the automation technologies can be activated. Yet
it is clearly distinct from any other traditional instrument since it
cannot be used unless it is combined with a particular hardware.
This is, in fact, the peculiar characteristic of all automation tech-
nologies in the strict sense, as best illustrated by the computer. There
is no way that we can use computer hardware to produce anything
without the right software package. With a mechanical device, just
to take a simple example of a typewriter, I can write a letter as long
as I am able to use the keys and to spell. The program is partly
118 Automation and Capitalism
physically fixed in the mechanical arrangements of the technical
structure of the typewriter, and mainly in my head. Obviously there
are limits to what I can produce on the mechanical typewriter. But
to write a simple letter all I need is the machine, ribbon, paper, my
hands and eyes and (limited) skill.
However, with the word processor I cannot even produce a simple
letter unless I have a program which instructs the hardware to func-
tion for this particular purpose. It is no exaggeration to generalize
this condition for all automation technologies. Both the hardware
and the software are, in separation from each other, totally useless
for even the simplest of applications.
Thus, as a peculiar instrument of production, software behaves in
a special way with regard to the manner of circulation of its value.
Its value is not released unless it is combined with the hardware, and
then the transfer of value to the articles produced is determined not
by the average durability of software (which never wears out) but
that of hardware.
The combination of software (both system and application soft-
ware) and hardware, now in the process of production acting as a
single entity, are the most important elements of fixed constant
capital. In this form of combined dead labour, value is ‘condemned
to an existence within the confines of a specific use value’.38
According to our assumption, the capitalist’s value and surplus value
are now locked in this form. The release of this value is thus abso-
lutely crucial to accumulation and hence to the rule of capital itself.
The value fixed in this way decreases with the wearing out of the
hardware, and, on the basis of the average durability of the hard-
ware, it is gradually, over repeated cycles of production, transferred
to the mass of products produced. But if in this sense there appears
nothing specifically different between automation and the previous
system of technology, for surplus value production there is a funda-
mental distinction which becomes critical to the full realization of
the constant capital-value fixed in the automated technological
system of production.
If we assume that the hardware component has a ten year life
span, then, as the value of software (and thus the surplus value con-
tained in the latter) is tied to it, it will take the capitalist ten years
fully to recover that value and the surplus value. But the life span of
software cannot be determined by its average durability, since it can
never physically wear out — its use-form does not deteriorate through
wear and tear. Its life is entirely dependent upon the rate of
innovation.
If by innovation we mean the development and application of new
forms of software incorporating new design and/or other ‘productive’
information inputs, then this can only mean that those existing and
already functioning software systems are being rendered obsolete.
Let us be clear as to how this comes about. The introduction of a
new form of software in the process of car manufacturing for
 Productive Capital 119
example, has no impact on the actual usefulness of the existing
hardware or the older form of software. Neither the capacity and
capability of the old software, nor the existing hardware, has deterio-
rated or been exhausted. The old software can function with the
existing hardware to set in motion the production of cars as before.
What has happened with the introduction of the new form of soft-
ware — say, in order to produce a new car - is that the old software is
rendered socially obsolete before the physical or material exhaustion
of the hardware.
Since the value embodied in the software is only released when it
is combined with the hardware, and since this value can now only
be transferred in proportion to the calculated average wear and tear
of the hardware, as the latter is not physically exhausted when a
new software is introduced, what Marx called the ‘moral deprecia-
tion’ of fixed capital occurs.
Software, as a form of fixed capital, parts with only a portion of its
value: the value is transmitted incrementally. As long as the hard-
ware for which it was made is not materially exhausted, a portion of
the value remains with the package. Competition and ‘perpetual’
innovations continually shorten the social life of the software. This
social obsolescence makes impossible the realization of a portion of
the value of software.
Of course, this has always occurred, to a greater or lesser extent. It
is an inherent feature of the accumulation process itself. But, given
the assumption of a highly automated perpetual innovation
economy, the problem becomes extreme. For now it is not merely
the transfer of the value of fixed constant capital which is threat-
ened, but also the surplus-value embodied in the use-value form of
software. With social obsolescence, as a result of perpetual innova-
tion, more and more surplus-value produced is lost. Each capitalist is
confronted with the insoluble problem of attempting to realize the
value (and surplus value) embodied in software — which has either
already been paid for or as a loan it must be paid off in the future —
in a situation whereby every new form of software renders the old
forms socially useless and by doing so renders the portion of value
not as yet transmitted unrealizable - and along with it a portion of
the surplus-value created in the processes of software production.
Thus perpetual innovation, as a ‘solution’ to the problem of
surplus value production, generates increasing problems of value
realization. It actually causes the destruction of value and surplus-
value embodied in the old forms of software. This would be less
drastic if surplus value is continuously pumped out of the processes
of material production in sufficient quantity. But this cannot be the
case with the full automation of manufacturing, and the destruction
of value must be offset — as far as accumulation of total social capital
is concerned - only by the magnitude of surplus value produced in
software production. If this magnitude is less than the loss due to
social or ‘moral’ depreciation, accumulation of social capital
120 Automation and Capitalism
becomes impossible, as more than what is gained from one source is
lost by another.
Such depreciation is generally accompanied by crisis, during
which socially obsolete means of production are physically discarded
or forced to Circulate and be sold off in order to meet credit obliga-
tions. This depreciation of existing capital would then momentarily
resolve the contradiction in the process of value formation; eventu-
ally the profit rate rises and accumulation is renewed. But this occurs
because at each time new value emerges to determine exchange and
the rate of surplus value rises. Now, given the assumption of the full
automation of material production, the rise in the rate of surplus
value is taking place (and can do so) only in the realm of software
production.
As the process of conception and software production becomes
increasingly subject to rationalization and restructuring, as produc-
tivity is raised here with the increasing objectification of indirect
labour (i.e. the raising of the rate of surplus-value), a point is reached
when not even sufficient surplus value can be produced in the pro-
duction process of software itself. For such a process necessarily
entails the progressive ousting of living labour (the only source of
value and surplus-value) from the production process of software.
But even before this point is reached, the combination of automa-
tion of material production and perpetual innovation, cannot but
generate such closely integrated ‘cycles’ of crises that in effect it can
only be considered as a situation of permanent crisis. For the more
perpetual innovation happens, the more value and surplus-value is
lost as a result of social obsolescence, the greater pressure to develop
new software, and so on.
However, since automation has definite advantages (for capital) in
respect of the reduction in production and circulation times, which
can result in the increase of actual labour-time, it could be argued
that these advantages could counteract the problems stated above.
Let us therefore look at these advantages to see whether or not they
can compensate for the loss of value, and whether there are other
implications that need to be considered.

8. Automation and Production Time

The period of time during which capital remains within the sphere
of production is its time of production. This includes the actual time
taken by the process of production, but is always a longer period
than the latter duration. For it includes not only the interruptions
that occur periodically, when capital stocks lie ‘fallow’,39 but also the
time during which the fixed means of production remain as such in
the sphere of production, but do not, for short periods, function in
the process of production (e.g. in between shifts). Some such fallow
period may be unavoidable and essential for the continuous flow of
 Productive Capital 121
the production process. But the less time capital or part of it remains
fallow, the less time is wasted in terms of value creation.
In the case of the fixed means of production, the duration of its
idleness is important for it loses value both when it functions and
when it does not.4° But because the value of this part of capital is
transferred on the basis of its average durability, as long as the inter-
ruptions of its use are no longer than that designated by the average
normal conditions of social production, then the value that it loses
when idle is still added to the output. But any time more than the
normal becomes a total loss.4!
Moreover, time lapses and gaps during the working day itself are
naturally a wastage of time in terms of surplus creation. During the
production process there are interruptions in the continuity of
labour-time, due to the existing technical and organizational
arrangements, as well as because of necessary breaks for workers.
So there are two basic time gaps to consider: on the one hand,
those interruptions that occur during the period of the working day
itself, and on the other, the time lapses that occur between the dif-
ferent processes involved in the overall production period of a given
output. The reduction of both are crucial for the extension of labour-
time.
For example, if tea breaks can be cut in a given working day, then
obviously labour-time is proportionately increased. Also, if the lapse
of time between, say, the design of a new product and its actual
manufacture is reduced, then production time becomes that much
closer to labour-time. Or, if the time lapse between the production of
components and their transfer for assembly into a final product can
be cut, then part of capital remains less fallow and thus becomes
more productive.
In short, in all the cases whereby interruptions and delays cause
capital or a part of it to remain fallow, though this fallowness may
not constitute a total or partial loss of value, it does mean that no
surplus labour can be extracted during that period, and thus no
surplus value is created. The vital point is that it is not the value
transfer which is essential for social capital but surplus value crea-
tion, so the less time machinery or components remain idle, the
better for this creation and hence for accumulation.
It is therefore obviously important for capital to cut the time of
production to as close as is possible to that of labour-time. As Marx
observed: ‘It is plain that the more the production time and labour-
time cover each other the greater is the productivity and self-
expansion of a given productive capital in a given space of time.
Hence the tendency of capitalist production to reduce the excess of
the production time over labour-time as much as possible.’42
Thus we have the development and introduction of technologies
and techniques to reduce the time that capital or part of it remains
fallow. The development of mechanization, from the factory level to
transportation and storage have been crucial in reducing this time,
122 Automation and Capitalism
as has the development of techniques and methods of organization
(e.g. Taylorism) accompanying mechanization.
It is already evident that lapses of time between operations and
processes, and the time gaps during the working day, can be, and are
being, reduced considerably by the application of techniques such as
the Just-in-Time and Modular systems. It is also already evident that
the use of even the available automation technologies in the diffe-
rent processes involved in the sphere of production can greatly
reduce the excess of production time over labour-time.
Thus in the first stage of the process of automation it would
appear there is an increase in the production of surplus value, simply
by the elimination of wastages of time, and the reduction of the
period of time during which fixed capital as well as a part of circulat-
ing capital (in the form of stocks of raw materials and components)
remain inactive.
However, while with increasing automation individual capitalists
gain from the reduction in the wastages of time and that of the fal-
lowness of capital during the production time, the expansion of
social capital is limited because of the considerable reduction of
living labour-time.
What is crucial about the reduction of the excess of production
time over labour-time by the increased application of automation, is
the effect it has on the productivity of individual capitals and in
terms of their competitive position. If Japanese car manufacturers,
for example, are able to produce a complete car in 17 hours, as
against 36 hours for their European rivals, then there is immense
pressure on the European manufacturers to adopt the techniques
and technology which are prevalent in Japan. With the increased
application of the already-existing automation technologies, Japan
can reduce this time to say 8.5 hours per completed car with relative
ease. Putting aside the problems of realization, there is no way in
which European and US car industries can ignore such a potential
rise in productivity.
But the Japanese capitals are fully aware of the effect of this com-
petitive struggle, and are already anticipating it by investing heavily
in the development of even more advanced automation technolo-
gies. So are the European and US capitals. If we take into account the
qualitative character of automation technologies, as against ‘mecha-
nical’ technologies, then the outcome of this competitive process is
not merely that the excess of production time over labour-time is
considerably reduced, but that labour-time itself, as the positing of
necessary labour, will be reduced to such an extent that the very
extraction of surplus labour in these processes becomes irrelevant to
the increase of the mass of surplus value produced within the system.
In so far as the production of the mass of surplus value is con-
cerned, the gains achieved in the reduction of time wastages will be
offset by the increasing use of automation technologies which will
dramatically reduce the living labour employed.
 Productive Capital 123
In effect, even if many of the processes of production of the major
industrial nations are automated, for these capitals the differenc
e of
time between production time and labour-time becomes irrelevant
in terms of surplus value creation, for no surplus value is created
through such highly automated processes in any Case. But it is of the
utmost relevance to their share of the mass of surplus value being
created through the still non- or semi-automated production pro-
cesses within the system as a whole.
The increased output, and the reduction in the price of produc-
tion brought about.by automation, enables these capitals to appro-
priate a massive proportion of the mass of surplus value as profit,
without contributing to the increase of this mass. For the non- or
semi-automated capitals, and this especially concerns the domestic
Capitals of the Third World and the Eastern bloc, either they must
automate (which is not as simple as it sounds), or their profits will
shrink to nothing. And this despite, or precisely because of, the fact
that they are the real producers of surplus value.
For individual domestic capitals in these countries, it means either
bankruptcy, or, especially for the larger ones, mergers and greater
centralization. But this in itself does not solve the problem of profit-
ability. For national capitals of the Third World, the question of
automation becomes even more urgent. For even if they could resort
to a policy of autarchy, of insulating their domestic markets from
the penetrating force of the automated and international Capitals,
this can only be temporary and at the expense of severe internal
socioeconomic and political crisis.
Nor would the international and national capitals of the centre be
able to continue to grow if more and more backward national capi-
tals resort either to autarchy or become increasingly entangled in the
web of social and political crisis. Whatever the actual complexity of
the concrete situation — the severity of which becomes visible in the
growth of the existing levels of mass poverty, starvation, and the
increased scale of localized wars — short of a fundamental change of
the system itself, there is nothing that national capitals can do to
rescue themselves from the explosive crisis of their own collective
making. The situation is nothing but a situation of permanent crisis
for the system as a whole.
To sum up: the effect of the ongoing process of automation on
production time can only be highly beneficial for the larger more
advanced capitals, and only in the short term. It is precisely because
it can be so highly beneficial in terms of increased productivity that
by increasing the intensity of competition, it pushes forward the
further development and diffusion of automation. Thus, by aggra-
vating and spreading the difficulties of surplus value production,
because of the very nature of the capitalist system, the process of
automation of production can result in a change to the hitherto
cyclical characteristic of crises into one of permanent crisis.
124 Automation and Capitalism
9. Automation and Circulation Time

time of
However, on the face of it, the effect of automation on the
circulation seems to have certain advantages which could offset the
severity of the problems of surplus value production, at least
temporarily.
The time of circulation is the period during which neither com-
modities nor surplus value is produced. The duration of this period
is important because it determines when and how quickly the pro-
duction process is renewed. The time of circulation limits capital’s
time of production. The more the former approaches zero, the more
surplus value can be produced, the greater the self-expansion of
capital-value.
Circulation time is to some extent limited by the nature of the
product in circulation, by the form of its use-value. Strawberries
need to be sold more rapidly than cars; to some extent this time
factor limits the movement of commodity-capital and its market
location.
Whether it is strawberries or cars, the time spent in selling them -
and thus the now enormous institutional structures, the labour and
the immense fixed capital investments (buildings, shops and
machinery) - is as unproductive as it is necessary. Not one iota of
value is created during the time of circulation. The exception to this
rule is industrial storage and transportation, which, strictly speaking,
belong to the sphere of production.
The time and costs involved in circulation are necessary for the
changing of the form of value;43 they are necessary for the realiza-
tion of surplus value. But from the point of view of production of
surplus value and therefore self-expansion of capital, this time con-
sumed constitutes costs and expenditure of surplus value already
created. Thus the less time used up in circulation, not only the more
time is set free for production, but the less the expenditure of the
value already created. As a necessary moment of reproduction, circu-
lation time is nonetheless a great burden upon accumulation.
We already know that the process of accumulation necessarily
involves the development of the productive powers of labour which
manifests itself in the constant growth of the output and range of
commodities produced. The process also involves the reduction of
the value of individual products as new technologies and techniques
are introduced and productivity increases. This was the case with the
development of mechanization whereby individual value was
lowered by the increase of output per worker. Mass production was a
necessary feature of the advance of mechanization, especially from
the early part of the twentieth century which demanded mass con-
sumption and hence mass circulation and sales.
It is clear, therefore, that as the scale of production developed
with the advance of mechanization, the commercial and service
activities required for the transaction, promotion and the general
 Productive Capital 125
operations involved in the process of distribution and sharing of the
mass of surplus value, also had to expand.
The continuous growth of productive capital demands a continu-
ous growth of unproductive expenditure of the value created. Even
the operation of productive capital becomes increasingly infested
with functions which have nothing to do with the creation of value
and surplus value, but merely with the expenditure of surplus value
for promotional purposes and fighting the battles of competition.
The vast armies of unproductive labour involved in activities
ranging from book-keeping and accountancy to advertising, not
only remove a huge chunk of the value accumulated, but also a large
portion of the mass of surplus value being created as profit for those
non-productive capitals in the service, commercial and financial
sectors.
This characteristic becomes even more pronounced with the diffu-
sion of automation. The growth of the service and commercial
sector, though a sign of the growing difficulties of the conversion of
commodities into money, is essentially an expression of the increas-
ing difficulties of the self-realization of capital.
The development of automation and its application has a twofold
effect on the sphere of circulation; on the one hand, as its use in the
productive sector results in the ever-increasing levels of productivity,
it thereby generates the conditions which necessitate the constant
widening and expansion of the circulation sphere. On the other, it
facilitates a degree of efficiency in time which had never before
existed in this sphere.
Indeed, the apparent attraction of automation technologies to
firms involved in the commercial, service and financial sectors is pre-
cisely this: that it appears to reduce considerably the ever-growing
costs of circulation. Since the process of circulation is heavily depen-
dent upon the gathering, processing and manipulation of informa-
tion, it is clearly extremely well suited to a process of
computerization. As the major costs involved are concerned with
what amounts to office work and the employment of white-collar
workers, the automation of the office, by displacing a large number
of office jobs, reduces costs and enhances the efficiency of informa-
tion processing activities. And this with the added bonus of consi-
derably reduced equipment costs, as office automation technologies
themselves become increasingly cheaper.
Nevertheless, it is worth noting that the reduction in the cost of
office equipment should in no way be confused with the simply
enormous fixed capital investments now required in the fields of
mass communications. While individual items and relatively minor
(though important) devices are becoming cheaper and more effi-
cient, technological systems, particularly in the communication field,
require such large capital investments that they can only be under-
taken by the giant corporations or by national state institutions. In
these spheres there is a definite trend towards greater concentration
126 Automation and Capitalism
and centralization of capital and a massive increase in the ratio of
constant to variable capital.
The enormous reduction of time in the processing and retrieval of
information achieved by computerization and the new technologies
of communications and information will certainly be of great advan-
tage to individual capitals for assessing market conditions and sales,
which would enable them to respond to changing conditions far
quicker than they were able to before automation. However, it
would be a mistake to imagine that the use of these technologies can
overcome the problem of overproduction of commodities, since this
problem is essentially a problem of capital production, and not one of
supply and demand.
The application of automation also speeds up the processes of
transaction, registration and transfer of money, deeds and loans,
reducing the time during which part of capital remains as money in
the commercial and/or financial sectors. The increasing automation
of transportation and storage also cuts circulation time.
Initially, during the transitional phase, the application of automa-
tion to the circulation process reduces the turnover time of circulat-
ing productive capital. This, together with the tremendous reduction
in costs which is potentially possible, means a reduction of unpro-
ductive expenditure related to the circulation sphere and also an
increase in the mass of surplus value due to the reduction of turn-
over time.
It thus appears at first sight that the use of automation in the cir-
culation process may counteract its negative effects (on value crea-
tion) in the production process, and hence result in a stable period
of growth and accumulation. There are, however, a number of
factors which counteract such a possible stable condition of
accumulation.
As the introduction of automation technologies increases the
existing levels of productivity, so the value of individual commodi-
ties decreases, while the mass of use-values increases. Thus propor-
tionately more commodities need to be sold in order for individual
capitals to obtain an adequate rate of profit. Growth depends upon
even greater mass sales, expansion of market demand, growth of
market research, consumer credit, advertising and backup services.
However, the problem is that with the expansion of the process of
automation, relative surplus labour time increases at the expense of
decreasing necessary labour-time, which can mean a decrease of the
working-class exchange capacity.44 Moreover, as the efficiency of
commercial and financial capitals is improved with the use of auto-
mation and information technologies, although their share of the
mass of surplus value also increases (which thus progressively further
strengthens the function and role of finance capital), at the same
time it means a reduction in the number of wage-workers being
employed in the circulation process, which in turn means a further
decrease of workers exchange capacity (through unemployment).
 Productive Capital 127
Even if this problem is solved by the absolute expansion of circula-
tion sphere (or that of the public and state institutions) and thus a
relative increase of circulation workers is created (and workers
involved in the state non-productive sector), the old problem of con-
stantly increasing unproductive expenditure once again asserts itself.
Under the condition of declining production of surplus value
because of the increasing automation of productive capital, this
means less and less surplus value for productive investment.
With the progress of automation this twofold problem manifests
itself time and again as a glut on the commodity market, as overpro-
duction of commodities. For individual capitals the problem appears
as a lack of demand for their commodities. In reality, it is the lack of
surplus value production relative to the prevailing needs of accumu-
lation which is the essential problem.
Thus, neither the reduction in production time, nor that of circu-
lation time, can, except for a short period, counteract the problem of
surplus value production as a result of the spread of automation in
the productive sector. Indeed, the automation of activities within
the circulation process substantially enhances the negative social
effects of automation. No matter what the saving in time wastages,
capital as self-expanding value is entirely dependent on living
labour-time. The advance of automation, both in the circulation and
in the production processes, can only mean a massive displacement
of living labour. For the system as a whole it is this growing problem
which will prove to be unresolvable and ultimately destructive.

With the advance of automation, particularly affecting productive

capital, the very foundations of the capitalist system become increas-
ingly unstable. As a result of the automation of the productive
sector, the mass of surplus value becomes so perceptibly diminished
that the self-expansion of social capital becomes impossible.
Accumulation, or progressive growth, therefore, is transformed into
parasitic growth through centralization, constantly enhancing the
role and position of finance capital. The inherent contradictions of
capital as self-expanding value become greatly intensified, resulting
in structural modifications of social control and domination. Class
rule can now, in the age of automation and permanent crisis, be pre-
served and sustained by the increasing use of direct force and
repression.
For the system as a whole (for even the most advanced capitalist
countries at the centre) the progressive decay of capital’s rule comes
to be expressed not merely in terms of mass unemployment, but in a
substantial increase in pauperization. In the periphery of the system,
especially in the countries of the Third World, the problem mani-
fests itself not simply in even more substantial and higher levels of
poverty, but in the increasing annihilation of ‘unwanted’ humanity
by means of famine (the cheapest method of reducing the
128 Automation and Capitalism
superfluous population). What we have seen with increasing fre-
quency since the beginnings of the current crisis, since the late
1960s and early 1970s, will become dwarfed in quantity, frequency
and scale with the further advance of automation, as this begins to
generate the most massive concentrations of superfluous humanity
history has ever known.
Thus, the most important social manifestation of the crisis of
surplus value production, in the age of automation, is not simply the
enormous growth of mass unemployment as such, but that of the
new phenomenon of unemployability: a mass of unwanted human-
ity. In the next chapter I shall attempt to examine this problem and
the effect of automation on the composition of the working class.
2

Automation and the Working

Class

The changes in the composition of the proletariat reflect the changes

in the objective conditions of the constant reproduction of capital/
wage-labour relations. The proletariat therefore shapes and re-shapes
itself, as it produces the accumulation of capital; it produces changes
in its own composition as it constantly produces changes in the
objective conditions of its own servitude through the development
of the material forces of production (e.g. with automation techno-
logy). Our conception of the class of direct producers under capital-
ism cannot therefore remain static while that class changes itself
through the ongoing struggle with capital.
If, so far, I have mostly referred to the ‘working’ class, ‘wage-
labour’, and the ‘labouring’ population, it is now important that our
conception of the ‘working class’ should reflect the changes in the
structure of the world economy as the process of automation further
develops.
According to Hal Draper, Marx distinguished between the concept
of the ‘working class’ and that of the ‘proletariat’, assigning a much
narrower scope to the latter based on the economic definition of
wage labour involved in the production of surplus value.45 If we
accept this distinction, then the ‘proletariat’ is synonymous with
‘productive labour’, i.e. surplus-value producing wage-labour
(manual and mental). And certainly in the early periods of private
capitalism the proletariat defined itself through its involvement to a
great extent in the productive sector.
However, the concept of ‘proletariat’ refers to the social collec-
tivity peculiar to capitalism which is separated from all property in the
means of production and subsistence. The proletariat in fact refers to
that class which has nothing but its labour-power to sell and which has
no decision-making control over either operational or allocative use of the
material productive forces and the labour of itself. It cannot in any way
be restricted to surplus-value producing workers.
I would also argue that we must make a distinction between the
concept of ‘wage-labour’ and the proletariat. Although a proletarian
needs to sell his/her labour-power, this necessity does not mean that
such a sale has actually taken place. Wage labour, however,

129
130 Automation and Capitalism
necessarily means that labour-power has been sold as a commodity.
Thus, while an unemployed person and a pauper are by definition
members of the proletariat, they are not strictly speaking wage
labourers, but only potentially so.
On this basis, moreover, we can make a distinction between the
proletariat and the working class. The working class under capitalism
necessarily includes all those members of society who are actually
receiving a wage for the sale of their labour-power, they are wage labour-
ers, be they productive or unproductive, intellectual or manual, afflu-
ent or poorly paid.
The proletariat is a concept which is expressive of the life situation
of a class of people who no longer have any organic link with the
conditions of production.
It is this objective condition which determines the essential cha-
racteristic of class relationships under capitalism. Thus, on this basis,
the social role (as indeed, the revolutionary role) of the proletariat is
not rooted in it being productive or unproductive, but in the objec-
tive relations that condition its existence as a class which has
nothing to sell but its labour-power and has no control over the
labour of itself and over the use of the material productive forces.
If the proletariat is made synonymous with ‘productive labour’ -
i.e the ‘collective labourer’ actually involved in the production of
surplus value — then that large and ever-growing mass of surplus
population created by the advance of accumulation cannot be con-
sidered in any way a part of the proletariat. Nor can we therefore
include among the proletariat the massive active army of labour
involved in the public sector and the circulation sphere. This is
neither in accordance with the reality of existing conditions, nor
with Marx’s theory.

1. The Changing Composition of the Proletariat

The distinction between the concepts of the ‘working class’ and the
‘proletariat’ becomes of crucial importance with regard to the effect
of the development and diffusion of automation. It is clear from our
previous discussions on the effect of automation on the production
of surplus value, that automation drastically reduces the input of
living labour. Thus as a system of technology it will radically alter
not merely the composition of the working class, but will also trans-
form the working class from being the majority of the ‘active popu-
lation’ into an ever-decreasing minority.
This distinction between the two concepts may appear as a mere
semantic exercise, a play on words. It is, however, more than that.
With the advance of automation and the changes which such an
advance implies, we need a concept which expresses both the sys-
temic and the phenomenal features of a class which is in every
respect tied to capitalist relations and constantly reproduced as such a
 Working Class 131
class by the process of capital accumulation. That is, the concept
must not only incorporate in its meaning the fact of wage labour and
therefore the working section of the direct producing class, but also
that section of the same class which is not simply unemployed but
increasingly becoming unemployable. No other concept can more
accurately express the objective relationship which involves both
the labouring and the unemployable population, than the
proletariat.
In this sense, therefore, the decline in the size of the working
section of the class, and its eventual reduction to a dramatically
small force, does not in any way mean the decline or the end of the
proletariat. On the contrary, the number of proletarians increases in
spite of the advance in the application of automation.
However, what needs to be confronted seriously is the potentially
enormous increase in the number not merely of the unemployed
(the ‘reserve’ army), but of the unemployable proletarians. In the
past (pre-automation era) mass unemployment, at least for a large
number of proletarians, was a temporary condition. The reserve
army always existed and grew, but there was (and to some extent
still is) a large degree of mobility in and out of it, even as it has con-
sistently increased on a world scale. There is, in a sense, a turnover
of individuals within it; but with the advance of automation, this
mobility and turnover begins to decrease rapidly.
Certainly so long as capitalism exists, there will always be seasonal
or occasional employment: some degree of turnover and mobility,
whereby individuals move in and out of work, some becoming self-
employed for shorter or longer periods, some others finding short-
term jobs, home work or becoming involved in the black or under-
ground economy. And there will always be, under this system, the
sub-economy of crime to which belong the lumpen proletariat (not
to be confused with either the reserve army or the permanently
unemployable sections of the proletariat).
For many individual proletarians, however, whether expelled from
the work process or even originally barred from entering it (e.g. the
many school leavers), the reserve army becomes a permanent home.
It is no longer a question of one, two, five or ten years on the dole,
but a life time. The very nature of unemployment is beginning to
change.
What is also of fundamental importance is that such a life time of
unemployment effects not merely the older proletarians, but increas-
ingly an ever-growing number of the younger generation of prole-
tarians, who become superfluous even before they have tasted the
bitter, brutal experience of capitalist exploitation.4
As the application of automation accelerates and a greater number
of proletarians become permanently superfluous, we shall have the
creation of a new generation of unemployable population, massive
in number on a world scale and concentrated mostly in urban
ghettos, whose alienation goes well beyond that which is specific to
132 Automation and Capitalism
wage labour. The unemployable person is propertyless in the
extreme, in that he/she cannot even sell his/her labour-power. It is
not the question of wanting or not wanting to sell oneself; it is the
objective condition of not being wanted at all. Over and above its wider
economic effects, this has extremely radical psychological and
behavioural ramifications.
In capitalist society the labour market is one of the most crucial
aspects of what is referred to as the process of socialization. Labour
as a source of income is at the same time the main source of social
respect and development or realization of personal identity. Even
with high unemployment, since the prospect of work still exists
(even if at some remote time in the future), the socializing aspect of
the labour market remains important for the integration of indivi-
duals into capitalist society. Unemployability, as against unemploy-
ment, however, radically alters this important aspect of the capitalist
process of socialization; both integration and the internalization of
the dominant social values become increasingly difficult and ulti-
mately impossible.
At the opposite extreme, the increased application of automation
narrows down the productive (i.e. the surplus-value producing)
section of the proletariat into an absolutely small collective force of
highly specialized, chiefly intellectual labour. A productive work-
force exists, created out of the mass discharge of the traditional
industrial labouring army, and formed out of the collectivity of con-
ception workers who laboured, in the service of capital and for the
sole purpose of the latter’s self-expansion, to produce the objective
technical means of their own decimation.
In the US, for example, between 1980 and 1985, some 2.3 million
manufacturing jobs disappeared, ‘some 90 per cent of them probably
permanently, and most of these were in high-wage, organized heavy
industry’.47 As Kolko has shown, union concessions on wages and
benefits in the US ‘did not diminish layoffs’. In fact, often ‘the
savings gained by union concessions intended to maintain employ-
ment and production were spent by management on more automa-
tion or financial speculation’.48
The formation of a small productive section of the proletariat is
important, however, for it has far-reaching effects on class organiza-
tion, consciousness and the dynamics of class struggle. For with the
greater diffusion of automation it is this section, more than any
other, which occupies the strategic heights of operational power
within the structure of material production.
This productive working section of the proletariat becomes
increasingly restricted to a small layer, separated from the rest of the
class by its now considerably improved privileged social position. It
is itself fragmented and sub-divided into isolated groups of indivi-
duals, with an internally structured hierarchy of occupational and
skill levels, and hence also that of differential incomes. Individuals
within this section come to occupy, at best, a contradictory class
 Working Class 133
position, and, perhaps even more important, a quasi managerial and
elitist status.
Thus, as this section is being formed (or rather as it forms itself)
and progressively separates itself from the main body of the proleta-
riat, and moves, along with the process of automation, towards a
merger with the heights of management, so progressively it also
becomes extremely reluctant to engage in any struggles which might
jeopardize its existing and future career structure, social position and
economic privileges.
This is not the creation of an ‘aristocracy of labour’; nor is it the
creation of a ‘new middle class’ or a ‘professional-managerial class’.
This is the formation of a new stratum on the basis of the decima-
tion of the old productive section of the proletariat, but more specifi-
cally formed from the remnant of the _ technical-intellectual
conception workers (software workers, such as engineers and
designers).
What distinguishes this particular stratum from all other intellec-
tual-professional specialists churned out by the development of capi-
talist production (i.e. from that elite, as Gramsci calls them, of
‘officials’ which ‘the capitalist entrepreneur creates with himself ... ’49)
is that it is an elite born of the final and complete separation of pro-
ductive knowledge from labour, as the ‘former confronts the latter as
capital ... ’5°
But precisely as an elite it is nothing but a sum of individual social
elements; not a class (either in itself or for itself), nor a ‘caste’, but a
collection of individuals as individuals, whose common characteristic
stems from their possession of productive knowledge. Their indivi-
dualism is a reflection of their extreme and narrow specialization.
For that very reason this elite of individuals has, and can have, no
proprietorial control over productive knowledge. The individual is
only a possessor of specific ‘bits’ of productive knowledge, which
provides him/her with access only to very limited operational
control of the material productive forces.
Once the automation of the sphere of material production is com-
pleted, the objectification of indirect work itself is then carried to its
limits of ‘pure’ management. Productive knowledge as capital is pre-
cisely the ultimate outcome of such an objectification, which thus
transfers the once productive conception workers into the realm of
capitalist management. As an elite, they now come to perform the
‘function of capital’ and their social position and income now
reflects not simply the cost of reproduction of the value of labour-
power, but that of their functional role as elements involved in the
collective personification of capital.
This is an elite which in fact merges into an already existing elite
of bureaucratic-managerial functionaries and officers of capital, who
have long acted as the personification of capital. Its formation as an
elite is thus effectively the end of its productive role. From being
productive, it is transformed by the complete automation of material
134 Automation and Capitalism
production into an element of the actually functioning capitalist. As
this transformation begins to be effected, so also begins the perma-
nent crisis of surplus value production.
Whether or not the newly created social stratum itself will
become, in time, the main subject of the advance of automation will
be an irrelevant issue at such a historical juncture. For long before
such a process is effected, the crisis of capitalism has reached the
point when the question of capital production, of productivity and
accumulation, become themselves irrelevant.
Then there are the ‘intermediary’ sections of the proletariat — i.e.
the necessary but unproductive workers. These sections also become
affected by the changing objective conditions of capital production
and accumulation. Thus, for example, although employment in
banking had doubled between 1968 and 1983, the application of
certain automation technologies has helped actually to halt or
reverse that trend.5! Even before the post-1979 depression, employ-
ment in British insurance, banking and financial services, for
instance, showed clear signs of levelling off.52 But the application of
automation technologies, particularly evident since the early 1980s,
will have a major effect on employment within such service indus-
tries.53 According to Kolko, since 1979, white-collar work has
declined ‘40 per cent in the steel industry, and 15 per cent in the
auto industry, totalling one million lost jobs’. Other industries, ‘such
as oil, were also rapidly automating clerical jobs in the mid-1980s’.54
The diffusion of automation will inevitably displace a large
number of workers within the commercial and service branches
(public and private), as well as in public (state) and private adminis-
tration and co-ordination - initially having a greater effect on
manual service jobs (e.g. messengers, shop-assistants, cashiers and
check-out operatives) and routine white-collar jobs (e.g. clerks, secre-
taries and other non-manual but low-level employees). It will, para-
doxically, necessitate the maintenance, and in some cases the
enlargement, of certain forms of unproductive employment, particu-
larly though not exclusively in those fields which are fundamentally
related to the maintenance and servicing of class rule.
For as unemployment and the threat and actuality of unemploy-
ability increase with the advance of automation, capital needs to
strengthen and enlarge those institutional activities and processes
which are concerned in essence with promoting its class hegemony.
A section of the proletariat has always been employed in fields of
activities which, both directly and indirectly, support, maintain and
promote the class rule and social order of capital. The use of automa-
tion technology will certainly improve the organizational efficiency
of such processes. But while exploitative work processes can be auto-
mated to a large extent, processes and activities which are specifi-
cally concerned with ‘extra-economic’ coercion are by their very
nature far less suited to complete automatization. This is not because
of the lack of adequately developed technological means of social
 Working Class 135
control, but because class rule as such involves a complex of rela-
tionships (political, ideological, legal and cultural institutions)
which demand far greater direct and indirect use of living labour
than hard technologies.
The change is important for the social role of the group of workers
involved in these institutions. As the crisis of surplus value produc-
tion deepens with the advance of automation, so also the political
and ideological institutions of capitalist rule increasingly tend to
manifest their antagonistic and repressive nature more openly. For
that reason, the workers servicing the general needs of social control
tend to grow in numbers relative to the rest of the working section of
the proletariat and gain a greater strategic role within the social
system.
With the advance of automation, therefore, the composition of
the proletariat changes radically. At one extreme there is the ever-
expanding unemployable population; at the other, the formation of
an elite of technical-intellectual productive workers who begin to
negate their productive role as they become incorporated into the
capitalist management. In between these two extremes, the advance
of automation necessitates the re-arrangement of the remaining
unproductive sections of the working class for the maintenance and
servicing of capital’s class rule, and for the servicing of the competi-
tive struggle among the still-remaining capitals.
It is of critical importance to emphasise that while the advance of
the process of automation will undoubtedly reduce the size of the
working section of the proletariat, and in particular its productive
section, this does not in any way mean either the so-called disap-
pearance of the proletariat, or, and this is crucial, that such a dra-
matic reduction has already taken place.
The process of automation (and it is vital to note that it is a
process) is tied to the advance of accumulation. How rapidly it deve-
lops is conditioned by the dynamics of accumulation, or, in the final
analysis, that of the class struggle between the proletariat and the
capitalist class.
Although there have been some major changes in the composi-
tion of the proletariat, not only since the Second World War but
more recently since the world economic crisis of the 1970s, neither
the traditional section of the proletariat (the core industrial section)
nor the class as a whole has in any sense declined either in numbers
or in strength or potential power; that is if we take into considera-
tion not this or that individual national economy (particularly the
more advanced Western economies), but the system as a whole.55
Indeed, contrary to the views of those who have proclaimed the
‘disappearance’ of the proletariat (e.g. Gorz, Bell and Hobsbawm), in
fact there has been a dramatic increase in its number, especially
since the Second World War, as a result of the internationalization
of capital. As Mandel remarks: ‘Empirically, the basic trend which is
statistically verifiable is that of the growth of wage labour on a world
136 Automation and Capitalism
scale, and on all continents, and not that of its absolute or relative
decline’.5® Today the total size of the world proletariat, according to
Mandel, would be at least around 1 billion individuals.57
As for the traditional industrial proletariat, there is no doubt that
its number has grown remarkably throughout most of the Third
World, and in particular in the so-called Newly Industrializing
Countries (NICs). In South Korea, for example, 8.7 per cent of the
work force was employed in manufacturing in 1963; in 1981, it has
been estimated that this reached 26.1 per cent. In 1952, 9.3 per cent
of Taiwan’s work force were in manufacturing; in 1977, it was 38.0
per cent. The same figures for Singapore were in 1967, 19.5 per cent,
rising to 27.3 per cent in 1977.58 Moreover, according to Kellogg:
‘The industrial working class in the 36 leading industrial countries
... between 1977 and 1982, increased its numbers from 173 million
to 183 million’.59 Although in relative terms in the 1980s, the cate-
gory of industrial proletariat forms less than half of all wage
workers.
However, while clearly it is important to dispense with the myth
of the disappearance of the proletariat, and the figures certainly dis-
prove any such claim, it is also crucial to remember that producing
such figures does not and cannot reveal the dynamics of the chang-
ing objective conditions; they only provide a still picture of an
ongoing process. What is also needed is the recognition of the fun-
damental trend towards the automation of material production in
particular, and other spheres in general. For it is in such a social
context that we should consider the relation between capital and
labour at a time when each year there will be an additional 60
million people entering the labour market in the Less-Developed
Countries (LDCs) alone.®!
The system is changing before our eyes, and automation is the key
to an understanding of this change. That we are still a long way
away from its full realization, even for the very advanced economies,
should not be taken to mean that it can never happen. Automation
is the ultimate and final weapon of capital: a technological system
that will revolutionize the relationship between the proletariat and
the capitalist class.

2. The Revolutionary Role of the Proletariat

In recent years there has been a renewed attack on the traditional

Marxist view of the proletariat, which has, moreover, received appa-
rent objective support by the development and increasing applica-
tion of automation technologies. Perhaps by far the most systematic
attack has come in Andre Gorz’s Farewell to the Working Class. Gorz
questions the revolutionary potential of the proletariat on two basic
grounds: on the one hand, on the ground that the productive forces
‘are functional solely to the rationality of capital’; on the other, on
 Working Class 137
the ground that as a class ‘called into being’ by capitalism, not only
the proletariat’s ‘interest, pe and skills are functional to the
existing productive forces’,6* but also that it necessarily identifies
itself with the ‘productivist’ logic of capital.
Thus, for Gorz, the proletariat in ‘its struggle with capital ... takes
on the identity capital itself has given it’.6 It cannot, therefore, have
as its objective the abolition of ‘work’, nor has it the ability to do so,
since its power has been drained by the very structure of the labour
process. For him the task of social transformation falls on a ‘non-
class of non-workers’ encompassing all those ‘who have been
expelled from production by the abolition of work’ as a result of
technological change. Gorz’s ‘non-class of non-workers’ are the
growing army of the unemployed and partly employed.®
The main problem with Gorz’s analysis is the lack of any organic
link between the process of accumulation and the change in the com-
position of the proletariat and its relation to capital. As with others
(e.g. Bahro and Bell) the conditions for social transformation are not
seen by Gorz as the result of the inherent contradictions of capital
accumulation itself.
Gorz’s ‘non-class of non-workers’ are, with perhaps very minor
exceptions, objectively proletarians in the strict sense. They are cer-
tainly no longer workers in the traditional sense (i.e. persons who
have actually sold their labour-power); but being ‘non-workers’ does
not necessarily mean that they are a ‘non-class’ of people. If a social
group is separated from the means of production and subsistence,
and thus has no effective control over the conditions of social pro-
duction, its class position as proletarian is already objectively
predetermined.
Now, because a section of this social group (class) is unable actu-
ally to sell itself, due to the particular conditions of the accumula-
tion process, this does not in any way alter the objective
determination of its position in society. How large or small that
unemployed and unemployable section is at any one time has
nothing to do with its class status: it is simply the direct outcome of
the advance of accumulation.
The unemployable section of the proletariat, like ‘official pauper-
ism’, forms, in the words of Marx, ‘a condition of capitalist produc-
tion, and of the capitalist development of wealth’.® If ‘official
pauperism’ is ‘that part of the working-class which has forfeited its
condition of existence (the sale of labour-power), and vegetates
upon public alms’,6” so the unemployable population is that part of
the proletariat which is barred from its condition of existence by the
advance of technology, and cannot sell itself whatever its
inclination.
It is not how we should or should not conceive the class position
of the unemployed; it is a question of the historical process of the
advance of accumulation (the developmental process of capital pro-
duction) which is increasingly placing a section of the proletariat in
138 Automation and Capitalism
an actual social context which they have not chosen for themselves,
and within which they are confined for as long as it takes for them
to assert their own agency.
The rise of the unemployable population is the result of capital’s
drive for self-expansion and the real concrete manifestation of the
heightening contradictions of that process. Precisely for that reason,
the unemployable proletarians have a contradictory relationship
both to the conditions of production and to the capitalist class.
The permanency of unemployment and the consequent poverty
and demoralization must have profound effects on individuals,
pushing some into the underworld of crime, into the lumpen prole-
tariat. Others fall into social isolation, accentuating the darkness of
despair and sense of failure which drives some towards suicide.
Suicide, not an uncommon act among the unemployed, shows not
only the effect of the unending misery of life but also the still power-
ful impact of capital’s ideology of the ‘work ethic’ upon the indivi-
dual, contrary to Gorz’s claim that the ‘non-class of non-workers’ are
rejecting this heavily internalized ideology. As Hyman points out,
‘there is by now extensive evidence that many unemployed experi-
ence guilt and psychic deprivation; that possession of even an
oppressive and damaging job is an essential part of their social iden-
tity and self-esteem’.68
But there is also the sense of association, of combination and
unity, which no power on earth, not even the juggernaut of capital,
can destroy: it is derived from that deeply felt and ever-present re-
cognition of them and us, a form of social consciousness born of the
objective life situation of being a proletarian. How and when this
feeling of us as against them, this social consciousness, becomes
translated into an actual association and unity of political purpose,
into political class consciousness, is dependent upon the concrete
unfolding of the process of accumulation and the intensification of
its inherent contradictions.
The advance of accumulation is not merely the systematic increas-
ing of the social power of capital, but also the ever-heightening
inherent contradictions of capital production. Thus, for example, if
the application of automation increases the power of capital, at the
same time it increasingly narrows down the basis upon which
surplus value is produced. In other words, the very source of Ccapital’s
power tends to contract. The increase of the unemployable section
of the proletariat may weaken the latter’s potential power, but such
a development also has far-reaching implications for capital.
Since capital and wage labour are inescapably tied together, there
is a definite limit to the expelling of labour beyond which capital
begins to erode its own source of power. The existence of Capital as
many capitals generates the competitive condition which pushes it
beyond that definite limit. For social capital, its only basis of self-
expansion is thereby constantly narrowed.
Greater centralization becomes increasingly evident with the
 Working Class 139
advance of automation. More specifically, there is a shift from
neutral centralization (by means of which the automated capitals
gain their profit at the expense of the still-remaining, but diminish-
ing, mechanized and semi-automated capitals) to negative centraliza-
tion whereby the drive for greater relative size forces either the
extinction of the mechanized and semi-automated capitals or their
restructuring in a take-over or merger. This leads directly to a decline
in the mass of surplus value produced within the system as a whole.
When capital ‘begins to sense itself and become conscious of itself
as a barrier to development’, as Marx had predicted, ‘it seeks refuge
in forms which, by restricting free competition, seem to make the
rule of capital more perfect’. The shift from positive to neutral and,
with increasing automation, to negative centralization, is just such a
process, seemingly indicating capital’s absolute rule, but actually a
process of its decay. Negative centralization is, in fact, capital’s final
form of behaviour through the harnessing of competition. It ‘heralds
... its dissolution and the dissolution of the mode of production
resting on it’.69
The growth of the unemployable population, as a consequence of
automation and the rise in the average organic composition of
(social) capital, is the visible evidence of the irreversible decline in
the mass of profit. With such a situation it is no longer the question
of a crisis of profitability, of a fall in the rate of profit, or a crisis of
the insufficient production of a mass of surplus value for the self-
expansion of total social capital as such, but a rapidly decreasing
mass of surplus value in absolute terms.
In this case, we shall be witnessing a permanent crisis of capital
production, which is to say that the ‘usual’ crisis mechanism no
longer works to restore the conditions for the expansion of the
economy. It is at such a point that the historical limit of capitalism
becomes clearly evident and observable, through the increase of the
frequency and intensity of social convulsions released by the ever-
deepening crisis.
The increase in the scope of the class struggle is dependent not
simply, or even primarily, upon the political will of individual prole-
tarians to overthrow capitalism, or even groups of them. That politi-
cal will, class consciousness itself, and the intensity of struggle, are
developmental features of the changing objective relationships and
the development of the material and technical conditions of the
accumulation process.
The revolutionary situation is generated by the change in the con-
ditions of capital production irrespective of the political will of indi-
viduals. The transformation of the revolutionary situation into an
actual social revolution against capital is, however, dependent upon
the proletariat’s (political) class consciousness; its victory depends
entirely upon its level and form of organization — its organizational
strength relative to that of capital.
In other words, the revolutionary situation - social crisis in the
140 Automation and Capitalism
reproduction of the conditions of exploitation and hence domina-
tion — is an inescapable outcome of the advance of automation, even
though the proletariat’s power and revolutionary will appear to have
been broken by capital. As Marx had once remarked: ‘One could
perhaps let a ship full of fools run before the wind for a good while;
but it would run into its destiny for the very reason that the fools do
not believe it. This destiny is the revolution that looms before us.’7°
The wide-spread diffusion of automation, as a result of the
advance of accumulation, brings to a head the ‘growing incom-
patibility between the productive development of society and its
hitherto existing relations of production’. This ‘expresses itself in
bitter contradictions, crises, spasms’ as the unemployable population
increases absolutely, or, what is the same, as the mass of surplus
value decreases absolutely.
However, what is absolutely significant is that the ‘violent destruc-
tion of capital’ is ‘not’ brought on ‘by relations external to it, but rather
as a condition of its self-preservation ...’71 In other words, the probing
force of revolutionary action to overthrow capital is an outcome of
the process of accumulation, of the way capital is constantly forced
to change the objective and subjective conditions of its own self-
preservation.
Class unity and class consciousness are not imported into the pro-
letariat, nor are they in any way connected and based upon the pre-
sumed existence of ‘the polyvalent skilled worker’(which Gorz so
wrongly reads into Marx’s theory);72 they arise, develop, out of that
very process of violent social convulsions, that prolonged process of
social struggle, which is released as the automation of production
increasingly casts off wage labour itself. But the casting off of wage
labour is nothing but the sublation of capital. And ‘this casting off
itself’, must never be forgotten, as Marx constantly warns: ‘it is the
result of the mode of production corresponding to capital’.73
For Marx the theory of the proletarian revolution was based not
on any simplistic notion of a ‘moral’ commitment to the cause of
the oppressed, or a ‘messianic’ vision, but upon the very dynamics of
the capitalist mode of production itself. His theory of the proletariat
as the agent of social revolutionary transformation of Capitalist
society is derived from his systematized theory of value and accumu-
lation of capital. Gorz seems incapable of understanding that the
demand for the ‘right to work’ at a time of automation and crisis is a
direct challenge to the logic of capital’s strategy of rationalization;
that the demand for the abolition of labour grows out of the struggle
for work, especially now that capital, more than ever before, is com-
pletely incapable of providing full employment. The self-
organization of the growing unemployable proletarians, and their
struggle for work, is a pre-condition of the self-education of this class
in the politics of abolishing labour.
Finally, Gorz is quite right when he says that the ‘realm of
freedom can never arise out of material processes ... 74 But then the
 Working Class 141
realm of freedom, the liberation from forced labour and the aboli-
tion of labour as such, can never arise at all without the full develop-
ment of material processes. Nor can freedom have any meaning
without work.75
If self-activity or work — that freedom that can only come with the
full development of free individuality for the whole of humanity -
has any meaning today, it is only because Gorz’s ‘obsolete’ proleta-
riat, by producing the accumulation of capital and hence also the
new technologies of automation, has produced the objective and
material conditions on the basis of which the realm of freedom, of
work as self-activity, can be realized. Its actual realization is nothing
but the self-emancipation of the proletariat, which is itself entirely
dependent upon a process of intense class struggle engulfing the
whole system. It is only when the production of material life no
longer depends on the exercise of forced labour (wage labour) that
the gods of its own creation will turn against capital.

3. Automation and the Negation of Abstract Labour

We already know that, with the development and advance of mecha-

nization, increasingly human labour has come to manifest itself as
labour which no longer appears to be an active agent of production,
but more and more the passive regulator of the process of produc-
tion. This trend towards the greater simplification and abstraction of
labour, which is a crucial aspect of the advance of accumulation, is
further heightened by the introduction of automation technologies -—
or rather their admixture with the existing system of mechanization.
Thus, the initial phase of advancing automation - during the stage
of transition from the system of mechanization to one of automa-
tion proper - only appears to bring forth the full realization of
abstract labour in practice. It is actually a move towards its negation.
Briefly the case for this is as follows.
The social reality of the reduction of concrete to abstract labour is
based and founded upon the exchange between capital and labour.
Capital requires an aggregate social work force which is of such a
quality that it can be transferred from one form of application to
another, with a minimum of training costs, in accordance with the
needs of accumulation. The fact that the capitalist must purchase a
particular kind and quality of labour-power which is able to produce
a particular use-value, is, from capital’s standpoint, an ‘unfortunate’
fact of life imposed by the given technical conditions of production.
The existence of many concrete labours of distinct qualities and
skills does not in any way contradict the reality of abstract labour in
practice. It is precisely the existence of a great mass of different kinds
of labour, and not their disappearance, which is the very basis for
the existence of abstract labour, since it is this that provides the
material basis for exchange.
 142 Automation and Capitalism
Labour is abstract labour only insofar as there continues to exist a
highly developed and detailed division of labour. The mobility of
capital, its movement from one industry to another, from one
branch of production to another, is the clearest confirmation and
verification of the existence of abstract labour (which is inseparably
tied to money as the universal equivalent form of value). Such a
mobility necessarily presupposes the indifference of capital to the
specificity of labour. And yet, at the same time, it asserts the exis-
tence of a whole variety of specific labours.
Moreover, the reduction of all labour to the expenditure of simple,
average labour-power (abstracting any special development) is
expressed in practice objectively as a standard of combined labour-
powers in time, i.e. quantitatively. And labour commensurable by
time is not specific labour of different skills and qualities. But, on
the contrary, the labour of individuals with different qualities and
skills rather appears as mere quantities of abstract labour-time as such.
Indeed, the specificity of labour and the qualitative differences are
a form of barrier to the production and increase of surplus value,
which capital constantly attempts to overcome by various means,
from the reorganization and rationalization of the mode of labour
under its command, to the development and application of increas-
ingly more advanced technologies.
Not only the particular stage of the development of the capitalist
mode of production, but also the degree of abstraction of labour in
practice, can be measured by the existing scope of the system of
technology as fixed capital - and, as Marx remarked, ‘not only by its
quantity, but just as much by its quality’.76 The development of the
scope of fixed capital takes the inverse form of the realization (in
practice) of the abstraction of labour. The more the technical condi-
tions of capital production advances, the larger and wider become
the variety of skills (extension of the division of labour), but only
because the more limited and narrow become the qualitative differ-
ences of skills.
With the development and increasing application of automation
technologies, this process is reversed. Now the more automation
technology develops and diffuses, the narrower becomes the range
and variety of different concrete labour-powers.
Two factors are important here: First, the qualitative character of
automation technology must be taken as of profound significance
and fundamentally distinct from all previous forms of technology.
This distinctive quality is, to state the obvious, not something natu-
rally evolved. It is, in fact, a direct reflection of the quality of experi-
ence, knowledge and various skills expropriated by capital from
the
generations of collective labour, and incorporated into determi
nant
forms of technologies.
The simple example of the robot that welds, Spray-paints; of
the
numerically controlled lathe; of the computer-aided design
system,
all point to the drain of skills once possessed by workers
and
 Working Class 143
incorporated into these various forms of technology (dead labour).
The software that activates and controls the functioning of a device
is not a form of technology which results in the ‘degradation of
work’ (‘de-skilling’); it actually removes and replaces a range of skills.
Certainly there is a re-skilling process conditioned by the techni-
cal requirements of the new technology, e.g. operative skills, the dif-
ferent aspects of programming, design and engineering. But insofar
as collective labour is concerned, the division of labour, the variety
of different kinds of concrete labour, and hence the range of skills
tends to become increasingly more limited. This is no longer the
result of the process of simplification of labour (or the increase utili-
zation of unskilled labour): it is simply a trend towards the complete
removal of a whole range of concrete labour.
Secondly, as the process of automation advances, broad categories
of concrete labour are displaced by new forms of technologies. While
one of the main characteristics of mechanization was the simplifica-
tion of labour, with automation, once the system is developed, the
fundamental characteristic is the large-scale displacement of labour.
Under such an objective condition, as the size of the ‘collective
labourer’ — the size of the working wage-earners — drastically begins to
shrink, and as the composition of the collective labourer becomes
transformed into a concrete aggregate of a very narrow range of
highly specialized, chiefly conceptual, compound of elite workers,
we are no longer witnessing a trend towards the realization (in prac-
tice) of abstract labour, but a tendency towards its negation.
The first effect of the application of microelectronic automation
appears to be the acceleration of the process of simplification and
abstraction of labour. This, however, is merely the result of the
initial process of transformation of the technical composition of
working processes, which is always contradictory, uneven and piece-
meal. If we look behind this appearance, what is unquestionable is
not the de-skilling of labour, but the complete displacement of
various forms of concrete labour.
Automation begins to negate the dual characteristic of labour as
useful and abstract. The distinctions and differences of labour as
concrete labour become not merely immaterial, but dissolved and
removed altogether. The speed at which this becomes realized in
practice depends, of course, upon two factors: on the one hand, the
extent and technical ability of the transposition of human produc-
tive qualities to technology, and hence the degree of displacement of
living labour; and, on the other, on the response of the working
class, the degree, extent and intensity of its collective actions and
struggle to defend its position.
The struggle of the working class is of particular significance to
the advance of automation. But, as is evident from the history of
the development of the capitalist mode of production, because of
the competition among its members and the division that this
creates, the struggle of workers has actually resulted in the accele-
144 Automation and Capitalism
ration of capital’s development and the introduction of ever more
advanced technologies.”7
The struggle of the working class can only halt the ‘automaton’ as
capital78 by a revolutionary transformation of capitalist relations
themselves. Short of this, it can at best modify its consequences tem-
porarily. For to free itself from technical and human obstructions in
its path for constant self-expansion, capital is forced to expropriate
to the maximum the various qualities and skills of different concrete
labours, and incorporate these into a system of automation. With
this system, once established, the process of negation of concrete
labour through its simplification and the realization of abstract
labour in practice?? becomes transformed into the negation of
abstract labour itself.
The social reality of abstract labour, which already implies the
negation of the worker’s social existence as a human being - i.e. as
alienated wage labour, as ‘labour sans phrase®° — becomes, with the
establishment of the system of automation, the absolute negativity
of the worker as a worker. The process of automation carried out by
capital, and because it is based on capital, means the increasing dis-
solution of labour into permanent pauperization. Human labour, the
very substance and essence of the growth of social wealth as capital,
has incorporated its own essential force into technology, which
gains a new social quality.
With the negation of abstract labour, capital ‘encounters barriers
in its own nature,’ which will, at a certain stage in the advance and
diffusion of automation, ‘allow it to be recognized as being itself the
greatest barrier ... 81 The dissolution of wage-labour through its dis-
placement cannot but ‘lead to’ capital’s ‘breakdown’
.82
3

State, Ideology and Automation

1. Crisis of Ideological Hegemony

As the advance of automation begins radically to transform the rela-

tionship between labour and capital, the superstructural relations
and the hegemonic principles which have hitherto buttressed
capital’s social order - relationships, organizing principles and the
entire system of values, attitudes and morality which integrate the
processes of making a living with that of living in capitalist society —
increasingly tend to become loose and unstable. Since the automa-
tion of production drastically increases unemployment and for the
first time in the history of humanity creates the new phenomenon
of unemployability, both the general conceptions of life and the
relations and institutions of capitalist hegemony cannot survive
unchanged.
The force of economic compulsion - the quintessential expression
of which rests on money and monetary relations — while still as coer-
cively powerful as ever before, becomes, with greater automation,
baseless and superfluous. Once a large section of the population
becomes unemployable its dependence upon capital can no longer
be ‘guaranteed in perpetuity by the conditions of production
themselves’ .83
If, previously, the organization of capitalist process of production
provided access to means of life and thus gave a real material sub-
stance to the ideology of the work ethic with automation, while ini-
tially this internalized ideology still remains fully active, it can no
longer be objectively substantiated and realized in practice. As the
crisis of surplus-value production deepens, and since state capitals
cannot cast out their now ‘superfluous’ proletarian population, it
becomes increasingly difficult to maintain their panoplies of welfare
services (at least where such services exist), which thus also tends to
debase the ideological force of ‘consumerism’ and further under-
mines the (necessary) illusion of state or public ‘social security’.
The contradictions of capital production in the age of automation
thus begin to manifest themselves in the realm of general social con-
sciousness and superstructural relations. The advance of automation
generates a crisis within the entire superstructural relations, as it
increasingly tends to negate the single most essential practical

145
146 Automation and Capitalism
relation which supports capitalist hegemony — wage labour.
For the vast majority of the proletariat, unemployment has a pro-
foundly disturbing social and psychological effect. The effect of
unemployment is particularly disturbing in conditions where the
unemployed are isolated or in a minority. The darkness of despair,
however, can change radically as the number of the unemployable
proletarians increases with the advance of automation, as the ma-
jority of individuals in each hitherto working-class community
becomes a part of the unemployable population.
It is no longer a question of isolated individuals who live in condi-
tions which daily reproduce their isolation. Unemployability, unlike
unemployment, has the effect of negating the competition which
separates individuals from one another (i.e. the competition over
jobs). The commonality of interest which has always been recog-
nized by that specifically proletarian (as distinct from socialist) con-
sciousness exemplified by the notion of ‘them and us’ - formed
through centuries of living and struggling under conditions of pro-
pertyless wage-slavery, yet always distorted by the divisions inside
the class and the competition between its individual members for
jobs - can now, with the changing objective conditions, mature into
a collective consciousness.
It is then that this great mass of proletarians can become detached
from the ideology of work, and can no longer believe what they, or
their previous generations, used to believe. As the material, objective
basis for the ideology of the work ethic is removed, not merely for
isolated groups of individuals, but for a concentrated mass of indi-
viduals the ruling order is thus stripped of one of its basic ideological
supports. It is then that a ‘counter-hegemony’ can break the ideolo-
gical bond between the ruling order and the unemployable masses.
Certainly the new technologies of information and communica-
tion, designed, produced and controlled as they are by giant interna-
tional corporations, do provide the technical means of transmitting
controlled, ‘rationalized’ and processed information, which increases
the capacity of the dominant elites to manipulate attitudes, values,
cultural patterns and lifestyles.
Information and the new means of its appropriation and commu-
nication are powerful instruments for political mobilization. In
appearance the advance of information technology, which facilitates
a tremendous expansion not only of distribution, but also of ‘inter-
active’ communication of information, suggests a far wider, less
restrictive distribution of power. As the use of the new technologies
spreads, because of both the reduction in costs of devices and their
simplification (becoming more and more user friendly), there
appears a propensity for decentralization of power as more people
are able to draw on information pools in different ways. On this
basis, it is often argued, the greater development and use of informa-
tion technology can bring about an enormous extension of formal
democracy.
 State, Ideology and Automation 147
In fact, however, the new information technological systems tend
to promote and strengthen the fragmentation, atomization and iso-
lation of individuals further, greatly reducing active participation in
social and political processes. It makes participation in such pro-
cesses a function of technology, a device placed in the home
through which information is received and decisions based on that
information are transmitted. The distribution and communication
of information is entirely dependent upon the appropriation (i.e. the
gathering, collection and processing) of information. The latter
process depends on who decides what information should be col-
lected, how it is processed and even to what extent such processed
information should be available to be drawn upon. Even if a large
number of people own simplified devices of interactive communica-
tion, the problem still remains that each individual is dependent on
an already processed pool of information. Individuals are informed,
rather than being able to inform themselves.
But this increased technical capability does not in itself guarantee
that attempts at manipulation, or the promotion of passivity and
isolation, can be effective. That depends on the prevailing objective
social conditions. Thus, while the new technologies of information
and communication may promote atomization and isolation, the
deteriorating socioeconomic conditions of capitalist automated pro-
duction counteract such a promotion by raising the level and inten-
sity of proletarian struggle.
If the ideological hegemony of capital - the wide range of ideolo-
gical forces ranging from technological determinism, the work ethic,
religion — has been overwhelmingly effective, it has been because in
the actual social processes of life, of living and making a living under
capitalism, there is some agreement and congruence between the
ruling ideas and values and the life-process structured by the mode
of production.
The ideological hegemony of capital is a product of centuries of
class struggle through which ruling ideas and values are not only
developed and modified in line with the perpetual reproduction of
wage relations, but the elements of the subordinate values and ideas
also develop into a new force. The dissolution of ruling ideas,
however, is inextricably connected with the dissolution of the domi-
nant objective material conditions of existence.
Thus, for example, if the ideology of technological determinism,
of technological ‘rationality’ and ‘progress’, is so supremely effective,
it is not because of manipulation, of simple imposition of such a
belief, but because in the reality of capital’s inverted world, techno-
logy has been produced to play such a deterministic role.
But as the advance of automation carries the practical and mate-
rial premises of this belief in technology to its absolute extreme -
when human labour is ousted from the processes of material produc-
tion, and technology takes on its final god-like character - the very
conditions of such an advance of technology - the massive
148 Automation and Capitalism
accumulation of misery as the result of a progressively decreasing
rate of capital accumulation - actually begin to undermine and in
fact negate the popular belief in the omnipotence of technology.
Capitalist ideological hegemony, although extremely complex in
practice, can be effective only as long as capital, through its process
of self-expansion and as a necessary condition of it, is able to incor-
porate a large section of human population within the bounds of
commodity and money relations. While it is able to do this, it will
retain the degree of support sufficient for its defence. The advance of
automation is, however, of critical importance precisely because it
ultimately undermines such incorporation: by displacing living
labour from material production and other work processes, it
thereby increasingly restricts and limits the perpetual reproduction
of wage relations.
The explosive contradiction lies in this, that while the system
depends upon the continuity of a set of social values and norms, and
while these, through centuries of capitalist domination, have
become an accepted part of the general social consciousness as
‘natural’ ideological edifices constantly and perpetually reinforced
by the very mechanisms of the mode of production itself, the chang-
ing relations within the processes of social production, as a result of
automation, generate a rupture, a breach of concord, between the
socialized mode of consciousness and their structuring economic
foundations.
In other words, while for the most part the individual’s attitude is
still guided by a whole range of social values born of the practice
and experience of wage labour, of not only having to sell labour-
power, but generally perceiving such a sale as something ‘natural’,
the new conditions of production make the transformation of
labour-power into labour increasingly impossible for an_ ever-
growing number of individuals. Under such a condition, the sale of
labour-power is no longer natural, although it is still perceived as
such. This incongruity between socialized values and social existence
cannot but contradict the exercise of capital’s hegemony. Capital
thus loses its ‘consensus’; it is dominant, but, in the words of
Gramsci, ‘no longer “leading”’.84
Thus, given the nature of the capitalist system, automation gene-
rates a crisis of authority. No amount of manipulation can transform
a baseless ideology into an hegemonic one. And since automation
greatly heightens the basic contradictions of the capitalist mode of
production, all the ideological weapons, all the means of education,
of persuasion, all the gods of its creation will finally present them-
selves in appearance, as they have always been in reality, as nothing
but weapons of capital’s class rule. The realization of this is,
however, at once the result and the manifestation of intense system-
wide class struggles.
But it is also then that, as the capitalist class comes to realize, it is
losing its basic ideological hegemony; that the exercise of direct
 State, Ideology and Automation 149
coercive force becomes the norm even in those countries where tra-
ditionally it has been the exception. Just as in the formative years of
Capitalism the exercise of direct force was the norm,85 so in its dying
years the capitalist class uses the power of the state, its direct force of
repression, to extend the final years of its domination. With automa-
tion, direct state control becomes the norm as the focus of control
shifts from the workplace and factories to the streets and communi-
ties where the mass of the unemployable proletarians are now
concentrated.

2. The Changing Role of Nation-States

It is crucial to recognize, historically and theoretically (i.e. from the

very concept of capital itself), the formation of a world market — an
economic system which though initially not global in geographical
terms, but nonetheless encompassing, territorially, a multiplicity of
social formations — as the starting point for an understanding of the
nature, role and function of capitalist nation-states. Capital was
neither born nor could it establish, consolidate and propagate its
mode of production, within the confines of a single society
(country). It was from its very birth a ‘world-system’
.86
From this perspective, the homogeneous space of value must
involve — and historically has always involved - a territorial arena far
larger than anything that nationally formed states have control over.
Capital as ‘many capitals’ refers precisely to this space, and not
merely to the fragmentation of autonomous capital units which
exist and function within each particular historically-formed politi-
cal entity within this space. It would be a gross mistake to view the
existence of capital as ‘many capitals’ in Britain, France and the US
and forget that each one of these political entities is - and must be,
if value is to have any real meaning at all — a definite social configu-
ration of fragmented units within the global space of value. The
British economic unit is made up of many individual competing
capital units, which are capital units precisely because the British
economy is indissolubly integrated within a world of ‘many capi-
tals’. Capital as ‘many capitals’ is in the first place, as a presupposi-
tion, the fragmented existence of ‘many’ national capitals.
It is only within the world system, within the functioning of the
world market (the homogeneous space of value) that nation-states
have no overriding authority. But, on the contrary, within the his-
torically formed social and political entities (the various capitalist
nations or countries) the state has always been an extremely active
and powerful economic force neither autonomous nor even rela-
tively autonomous of each nationally-based capitalist class.
It is important here to distinguish between the state as the politi-
cal organization of a nationally based class of capitalists, and govern-
ments as the executive committees for the management of each
150 Automation and Capitalism
nation-state. It is crucial not to confuse the concept of government
with that of the state. The state is the systemic institution of class
force. Governments are committees for managing the application of
force. Thus, while the state can never be autonomous from each
national capitalist class, governments may appear as autonomous if
objective economic conditions allow and require such an autono-
mous appearance for the management of the national economy.
Capitalists’ policies, however, shift over time as a result of the
process of accumulation, and with them so does the type of govern-
ment and its particular policies which can thus partially influence
the role of the state. But the essential form of the capitalist nation-
state, whether authoritarian or democratic, is determined by the
needs of capital accumulation and the blind, unconcerted compul-
sion to grow; and hence by the level and intensity of struggle being
waged domestically with labour over the extraction of surplus labour
(the drive to increase national productivity), as well as that waged
among capitalists in the world market over the appropriation of
surplus value as profit.
The negative effects of the advance of automation on the process
of accumulation, by intensifying the international and national
competition over the appropriation of ever-shrinking surplus value,
necessitates a far more rigid state control over each national
economy, and a much more visibly coercive support for capital, and
hence a more openly repressive and authoritarian form of social
control.
Insofar as the changing role of the state is concerned, therefore, it
is important to recognize two distinct, though clearly interrelated,
points with regards to the application of the new microelectronic-
based technological systems: (a) the use of these technologies by the
state; and (b) the consequence of the process of automation of pro-
duction with regards to the role and function of the state.
(a) The practice of social control under the rule of capital takes
place within the framework of bureaucratically organized institu-
tions which function to regulate social relations. The bureaucratic
form of organization is therefore essentially a mechanism of control,
both of those involved in, and of those who remain outside, the
organization. The organization and institutions of the state are the
most visible and powerful manifestation of the phenomenon of
bureaucratism in all capitalist socicties.
The advance of automation technologies, in particular the now
rapid move towards the integration of computers and other micro-
electronic-based devices, with the technologies of (satellite) telecom-
munications, will have a significant effect on the structure and
functioning of the state as the supreme agency of (national) social
control. The use of these technologies enables a radical rationaliza-
tion and restructuring of bureaucratically organized institutions: a
restructuring process which accentuates the centralization of deci-
sion-making, control and power. Indeed, once these technologies
 State, Ideology and Automation 151
and the principles of automation are fully utilized, the hitherto domi-
nant form of (the so-called ‘rational’) bureaucratic organization
becomes in principle unnecessary for the purpose of gathering and
processing of information, so vital for the administration and
enforcement of social control.
Bureaucratic organization becomes in principle unnecessary
because in fact the effects of the changing social conditions, of the
increasing threat and actuality of social unrest as the manifestation
of the surfacing of the heightened contradictions of capitalist pro-
duction, necessitates the maintenance and continuation of the
bureaucratic form of organization for the purposes of (military and
police) repression, surveillance and other forms of state security and
anti-subversive activities. However sophisticated the state’s techno-
logical systems, insofar as repression is concerned, these systems
cannot replace the use of human agents and therefore the bureau-
cratic mode of their organization.
It is certainly the case that the use of automation and information
technologies radically improves the efficiency of institutions in
terms of collection, processing and storage of information. The
newly-structured institutions will not only be able to extend consi-
derably the range, type and quantity of information they possess
individually, but they will also technically be able to have fast, effi-
cient access to a wide variety of stored information in each of the
particular individual departments of the state.
Thus even today, for example, in Britain, according to Campbell
and Conner, state institutions and agencies ‘hold one and a half
billion personal computer records’. And they further estimate that by
‘the year 2000, public sector databanks will probably store more
than 600 gigabytes (about one hundred thousand million words) of
personal information, accessible from 100,000 computer terminals;
no one will be excluded’. Moreover, there is already evidence of an
expanding progress towards the linkage and interconnection of
state-installed computerized systems. This is particularly the case,
sinister in its implication, as regards police and security agencies:
‘Linkages between different computer databanks already exist ...
Computer systems such as those run by the police or MIS now have
both the technological potential and the legal authority to extract
personal information from all other official databanks.’87
The possesion of this mass of information, however, does not in
itself mean a greater augmentation of state power. Rather it is the
control over the technological means of appropriation and transmis-
sion of information which enhances state power. It is, moreover, the
particular quality of these technological systems being utilized by
the state that increases its power of social control. It is the quality of
these systems that determines their potential effectiveness both for
appropriation and transmission of information. On this score no
method of (human) organization (bureaucratic or otherwise) can
match the new automation and information technologies.
152 Automation and Capitalism
The characteristic and quality of these new technologies cannot
but have enormous consequences for the application of force and
political power. But it only provides a technological capacity for
greater and more centralized means of social control by making the
practice of surveillance easier and far more comprehensive. The
actual enhancement of the role of the state, i.e. its more direct and
overt political role in society for the purpose of social control is,
however, a consequence of the deteriorating socioeconomic condi-
tions of mass and increasing unemployability — as a result of spread-
ing automation of production - and the potential and actual threat
this poses to the social order of capital.
This does not mean, as is often claimed, that information techno-
logy is ‘neutral’ in this case, or in any other. Computers, telecommu-
nication systems and the whole process of their integration into the
vast network of information and communication systems, are ini-
tiated and developed in order to maintain, reinforce and enhance
the existing social relations of production, and hence channel
wealth to, and safeguard the privilege and power of, the dominant
class. These developments are an integral aspect of the process of
automation itself, but applied to the realm of politics. The informa-
tion and communication system increasingly being used by states is
no less a crucial weapon than the organizational and human means
of force and violence. But the force and violence, the essential power
of the state, which these technologies enhance and perpetuate, is
not something independent of the very nature of the state as capital.
The essential factor in relation to the changing role of the state as
regards the exercise of domination and social control is that of the
changing relationship between capital and labour. Its greater utiliza-
tion of these advance automation and information technologies is
concomitant with the changing relations at the core of society, in
production. The greater application of these advanced technologies
for the purposes of social control by the state is a sign of the need
felt by the capitalist class that its control over society cannot be
maintained on the basis of consensus politics.
Information and communication are essential ingredients of politi-
cal practice, and thus the latter cannot remain unaffected when the
processes of communication become overwhelmingly dominated by
technological systems. But however advanced and sophisticated the
techniques and technologies of mass communications, they will
always remain qualitatively distinct from human-to-human commu-
nicative relations.
Mass technological communication relies on simulative communi-
cation, messages and imagery (especially with TV and communica-
tion satellites), which can be powerful means of mobilization as well
as manipulation, but can never have the same significance as active
and collective participation in sociopolitical activities and practice.
As socioeconomic conditions deteriorate, the tendency to replace
even the existing limited forms of active political participation with
 State, Ideology and Automation 153
technologically controlled ‘canned’ messages and imagery (some-
thing which has already begun, as is evident from the political TV
campaigns not only in the US, but throughout the advanced capital-
ist countries) is greatly intensified to the point of simple manipula-
tive command messages.
Whether such messages and imagery are successful or not in their
attempt to manipulate political and social consciousness, the point
is that contrary to the protagonists of the ‘information society’
thesis, the use of these technologies does not mean a more know-
ledgeable, socially and politically aware society. If the quantity and
availability of information increases because of the advance of the
means of its appropriation, the quality of information deteriorates
because the means of its transmission are controlled not by society,
but by a small section of society, particularly by the state.
Yet one thing is unquestionable: the shift from democracy to
authoritarian forms of social control in the age of automation is a
clear sign of the unprecedented crisis of social control within the
world system. Not even the massive technological means of commu-
nication and information can bring about its solution. In the age of
automation, therefore, because of the ever-deepening crisis of social
control, the economic domination of capital increasingly tends to
become a direct function of state-political domination.
In addition to this, the use of the technologies of information by
the state becomes crucial in another respect: since the advance of
automation will have a negative effect on the production of surplus
value and accumulation, this cannot but affect the character of the
capitalist ruling class itself.
A capitalist in his/her capacity as a capitalist is essentially con-
cerned with exploitation and money making. In this role he/she is a
boss and not a Jord; an economic ruler rather than a directly political
one. But the process of automation changes the essential conditions
of this role. The role of industrial capital, and the management of
the exploitation of living labour, is then no longer of primary,
essential significance. Management becomes far more than today
increasingly concerned with a more direct political management of
money-capital, and the politics of information tends to gain an
extremely influential role in national and international competitive
relations.
With the advance of automation of production, the fundamental
issue becomes that of parasitic growth (not positive growth or accu-
mulation) - of how this or that capital can grow solely at the
expense of others. This depends (to a greater extent than ever before)
upon the amount and quality of information a particular capitalist
Management can muster, and how fast and to what extent it can
utilize this information. Competition over information, therefore,
takes on a particular significance. The role of the state becomes vital
in the intensification of this competition for information: the
central reservoir of information in society lies in the powerful
154 Automation and Capitalism
institutions of the state, and the state is the most powerful agency
which, as the class organization of each national-capital, has final,
ultimate control over access to the most advanced technological
systems of satellite communications. Competition for information
thus increasingly tends to become a political function, just as the
struggle over the ever-shrinking markets becomes dominated more
than ever before by the control and possession of information.
(b) The consequences of the greater use and diffusion of automa-
tion within the sphere of production in particular and other spheres
of the economy, heighten the contradictions of the capitalist mode
of production (specifically manifested by the phenomenon of unem-
ployability), and necessitate a shift towards a more directly political
exercise and practice of social control. This political consequence of
the process of automation more specifically concerns those social
formations with a tradition of democratic and consensus political
systems. But it also now concerns the great bulk of nations which
have only recently been attempting to liberalize their system of
political practice and social control (e.g. many of the Eastern bloc
countries, as well as some within the Third World).
There is no doubt that consensus politics and democratic forms of
social control provide the capitalist ruling class with an indirect
means of domination best suited to the form of exploitation based
on wage labour in terms of its versatility and costs. But the question
that we have to deal with is: what happens to the role and form of
the nation-state when the exploitation of wage labour is no longer
dominant as a result of widespread automation, although the capi-
talist social order (capitalist society) as yet has not been fundamen-
tally transformed?
The argument of the protagonists of the system —- most of whom
do not accept or recognize the relation between capitalist class domi-
nation and wage labour exploitation — is basically (though perhaps
put too simply here) that automation, and in particular information
technologies, because of their quality and cheapness, in fact give a
positive lift to consensus politics. For these technologies tend to
increase the ability of human beings (of ‘everyone’) to have greater
access to, as well as greater amounts of, better information, and the
technological means of interactive communication of this infor-
mation.
But consensus politics (democracy) is essentially based upon the
most developed form of social control; that is, wage labour, mone-
tary relations and, of crucial significance, the fluctuations in the
reserve army of labour (of unemployment - in itself a most powerful
means of social control) which accentuates the competition among
the proletariat as it also generates a general condition of discipline.
This is thus a form of social control based upon the coercive power
of social conditions which take the form of natural, objective (and
inevitable) forces, seemingly beyond the control of individuals.
However, the socioeconomic significance of automation is
 State, Ideology and Automation 155
precisely that it dramatically and radically changes the very founda-
tions of these social (objective) conditions. The phenomenon of
unemployability, for example, cannot have the same power of disci-
pline as unemployment. As we have seen, with the advance of auto-
mation the fluctuations in the reserve army of labour tend to
disappear; with automation a person is no longer unemployed, but
unemployable. The uncertainty and insecurity characteristic of capi-
talist conditions of labour can be a powerful means of social control
as long as there is at least some hope of future employment. With
automation there is no hope of future employment.
It is because of such socioeconomic changes that consensus poli-
tics as a means of social control cannot survive; that freedom and
social democracy cannot but shift into their opposites. Given such
changed conditions of social production, the institutions of so-called
democracy must become concomitantly converted into techno-
political institutions of a more overtly and directly repressive kind,
in order to sustain the class domination of a rapidly decaying eco-
nomic order.
Direct political domination, however, is an extremely expensive
business, for it requires the expansion of the repressive organizations
of the state machine. There will thus be a relative growth of unpro-
ductive wage labour (from those involved in cultural and ideological
institutions to police, soldiers and prison staff) directly at the service
of the state. A considerable and unavoidable cost burden will grow
which, given the economic conditions mentioned, the ruling class
can ill afford, and which will further accentuate its ever-deepening
economic problems, further fuelling social unrest and thus accelerat-
ing the downward spiral of the decay and degeneration of the social
system.
A further, important aspect of the changing role of the state is in
relation to the social welfare system (public health, education, social
security) which needs to be considered not simply in terms of the
new technologies being used by the various institutions involved,
but in relation to the consequences of automation for capital pro-
duction and accumulation: for it is the latter which determines the
quality and extent of public and private welfare provisions and
services.
One of the most important developments since at least the late
1970s is the major rationalization and restructuring which is being
carried out throughout the state institutions of public welfare. In the
first place, methods of rationalization, whether through privatiza-
tion measures or re-organization and cut-backs, are used to reduce
the cost of services as a policy of reducing the value of labour-power.
Such a policy, which can be witnessed in all advanced countries, is a
response to the economic crisis, and is deemed essential in order to
re-establish an adequate condition for capital accumulation at the
expense of the working class. In this sense it is therefore an aspect of
the ‘healing’ process which capital needs to undertake.
156 Automation and Capitalism
However, it is also a necessary first step in the struggle by the
capitalist class to change the role and function of the state welfare
system in line with the needs of accumulation, at a time of the
changing structure of production and as a result of the introduction
of automation technologies.
Rationalization of the welfare state is thus double-edged: it is not
only aimed at reducing public expenditure, or cutting the share of
surplus-value going to the unproductive sector and also reducing the
value of labour-power. It is also an attempt to transform the organi-
zation of the state welfare services, as well as the attitudes towards
social welfare, as a preparatory step for the displacement of labour.
This should not be taken as a conspiracy; it is the way the advance
of accumulation through the mechanism of crisis articulates such
actions.

3. The Dilemma of the State Welfare

The fundamental principle behind social welfare is the maintenance

and reproduction of labour-power as a commodity. The form that
this maintenance and reproduction takes has changed tremendously
since the rise of capitalism. Initially this requirement was met
through private initiatives - charitable and pension funds, philan-
thropic employers, the church and similar institutions - with the
state having a relatively marginal role. But this private form became
less than satisfactory with the advance of accumulation, especially
with the extension of mechanization and the rise of mass
production.
The main concern of public welfare is to assume responsibility for
the part of the value of labour-power which is not covered by the
price of labour or the direct wages paid out by individual capitals.
The establishment of the welfare state is neither intended nor able to
eliminate the insecurity, uncertainty and discipline inherent in the
condition of wage labour. The notion and function of state welfare
rests on the conditions of free labour and a market for labour-power.
It does not challenge or even attempt to eliminate these conditions,
which are essential to the existence of capital.
However, on the basis of this underlying function of state welfare,
the social security systems contract or expand for two basic and
interrelated reasons: on the one hand due to the modifications of
the conditions of capital accumulation (class struggle and competi-
tion); and, on the other, in order to help preserve the existing social
order and maintain an adequate degree of political stability through
consent.
In the age of advanced mechanization, the welfare system func-
tioned to maintain and reproduce a supply of labour-power that met
the needs of capital accumulation. The unemployed had to be paid
and maintained as a potential labour force. Social education and
 State, Ideology and Automation 157
health were required in order to maintain both the right quality and
adequate quantity of always available and exploitable human mate-
rial. Social welfare had become a crucial pillar of mass production
and mass consumption.
But, as we move into the age of automation, capital’s require-
ments in terms of labour-power are radically different from the
epoch of mechanization. Every aspect of the welfare system requires
transformation and modification; policies and measures taken for
granted for decades need to be re-formulated.
If we assume that the process of automation will continue to
invade most aspects of economic (and social) activities and institu-
tions, which would mean a significant reduction in the absolute size
of the labour force, then the needs of capital for labour-power must
radically change. This change is both quantitative and qualitative:
social production requires far less living labour-power, as well as a
different quality of labour-power.
In the initial phase of automation, capital needs two basic catego-
ties of workers: one highly specialized, highly skilled and a purely
intellectual stratum; the other, an operative and functional group. In
both cases, the reproduction of labour-power can be effectively taken
out of the existing social welfare system. Both in terms of quantity
and quality of labour-power needed, capital finds it more economi-
cal to reproduce and maintain an adequate supply of labour-power
privately. Privatization of the reproduction of labour-power
becomes, with the greater diffusion of automation, a serious and
practical consideration. What is important is that capital in the age
of automation no longer needs a mass of workers either actually as
an active force or potentially as a reserve army.
Thus as the process of automation gathers momentum, the eco-
nomic requirements of maintaining the unemployed, as an available
and exploitable reserve army of labour, are effectively removed.
Moreover, in terms of capital’s production needs, the economic basis
for a general and universal system of health and education is also no
longer justifiable. The state institutions and services involved would
have to be considerably and drastically reduced and modified.
However, the problem is that social welfare cannot be looked at in
purely economic terms, in the sense of what is required for the
process of production as such. Not only social and political conside-
rations, but also the process of circulation of commodities and the
realization of value are just as important. Moreover, with automa-
tion, capital may only need a small supply of labour-power of a
special quality, but in order to maintain its domination over society
it would still need (and to a greater extent) its ideological and politi-
cal institutions.
Even if attitudes towards welfare can be radically changed, there is
a limit to the extent to which health, education and social security -
general welfare - can be cut. The unproductive expenditure on
general welfare, therefore, is from capital’s viewpoint a waste of
 158 Automation and Capitalism
diminishing surplus. This is a major contradiction of the more
advanced state capitals: economically they can ill afford such huge
and, with increasing automation and unemployability, growing
expenditure, yet politically they cannot but continue with some
form of general welfare.
The problems for the capitalist states become even more acute if
we add to the social and political difficulties the crucial problem of
the realization of value. If automation of manufacturing, commer-
cial and services, including those within the public domain, is
intended to reduce employment drastically, thus effectively remov-
ing quite a large mass of people from the wage system altogether
(receiving no direct remuneration), then the purchasing power of
these people is substantially reduced. This would necessarily effect
the demand for many commodities produced. And it is economi-
cally impossible fully to compensate for the loss of direct wages by
welfare payments (or indirect social wages), since welfare payments
enter the social (system-wide) value of ELM and are subject
to the constraints of the law of accumulation.
But even if we assume that monetary flows are not cut (this would
only be possible for the most advanced capitalist countries at the
expense of the less developed, and, with greater automation, it
would be impossible for the system as a whole), there will still be a
drastic reduction in purchasing power as unemployability increases.
This would create realization problems which would have a deterio-
rating effect on the rate of growth of capital, leading to a substantial
slowing down of the overall rate of accumulation.
The ruling classes, particularly in the West (and even in the
Eastern bloc), will, in this epoch of advancing automation, be forced
by the changing conditions within the world economy not merely
to restructure, but to dismantle the welfare state. Yet they fully re-
cognize that such a far-reaching move, by stripping the state naked,
would be politically extremely dangerous. But as long as such expen-
diture can be passed on to some other state capitals (e.g. through
improvements in national productivity and neutral centralization),
some form of welfare provisions can be maintained.
But this cannot provide a long-term solution, and the price that
has to be paid by the ruling class for the maintanence of its system
of social control will in time prove to be too exorbitant. Sooner or
later even the most economically powerful state will be forced with a
Stark choice: either to dismantle the institution and the very ideo-
logy of state welfare, or drastically to cut the level of consumption of
the ruling class itself and the profits of enterprise, in order to distri-
bute these to pay for the consumption of the mass of its population
as a way of maintaining the existing social order. That this cannot
go on for long at a time of diminishing mass of surplus value and
progressively increasing welfare requirements, is obvious.
For a relatively short period during the initial phase of the epoch
of automation, the powerful state capitals, particularly of the West,
 State, Ideology and Automation 159
may be able to purchase a degree of social conformity by means of
some form of state paid-for consumption, or welfare provisions to
create demand, through a restructured and rationalized service sector
(a model advocated by the post-industrial wizards). However, even
during this period such a social model can only work with the heavy
drain not merely of the surplus but the essentials of life from the
weaker state capitals.
In the West, paid-for consumption is a form of transformation of
the previous economic role of state welfare into one of purely politi-
cal means of control. For the rest of the world system, particularly
Third World countries, the institution of this model is impossible
given their weak (and progressively weakening) position in relation
to the advanced state capitals, within the world market. For them,
paid-for consumption to generate social conformity is out of the
question; the control system can only be based on the combination
of direct repression, and the seemingly natural (or rather socially fab-
ricated natural) force of wide-spread destitution and famine.
However successful this social and ‘natural’ mode of control, it has a
definite limit beyond which it cannot work to maintain the warped
stability of progressive degeneration. Indeed, whether social control
is based on purchased social conformity or direct brute force, the
longer the seemingly quiet period of apparant stability, the more
pent-up energy waits to be released in a final, massive explosion of
social unrest and cataclysmic revolutionary upheaval.
Moreover, the maintenance of class rule in the West, as in any
other part of the world, is not solely dependent upon the effective-
ness of social control systems within each individual country in isola-
tion, but increasingly depends on its effectiveness globally, within
the world system as a whole. This becomes essentially significant
with the progressive extension and intensification of economic
interdependence which is both accelerated and accentuated by the
diffusion of automation/information technologies.
In the age of automation, therefore, more than in any other
period of capitalist history, the breakdown of social control in one
country or region will have great and extreme repercussions for the
entire world order (particularly the West). The model of social
control based on consumption for all, guaranteed incomes, the
expansion of public services and welfare, increasingly being advo-
cated for the Western advanced countries by the post-industial
society theorists — beside being at best a mere short-term ideological
and political recipe for the maintenance of capital’s class domina-
tion, and besides requiring a massive expenditure on what is, in
terms of capital’s rationality, unproductive consumption - is in fact
built on sand, as long as we remember the irreversible and determi-
nant global nature of capitalism; growth, capitalism’s essential and
central driving force, is undermined by the increase of unproductive
consumption.
160 Automation and Capitalism
4. State Expenditure, Structural Inefficiency
and Economic Waste

In addition to welfare expenditure, there are other more menacing

forms of state expenditure: the growth in arms production, of the
military-industrial complex; the expanding role of the state as an
internally and externally necessary institution for security, surveil-
lance, control and coercion; the enormous extension of the role of
the state in support of domestic and international business adminis-
tration, the regulation and policing of commercial and financial
activities, which already drain a huge proportion of the surplus pro-
duced within the system.
These are direct and indirect expenditures rather than investment of
surplus value. They are now the incidental expenses of capital produc-
tion. In terms of the self-expansion of social capital, they are waste,
or unproductive consumption of surplus. This already reduces the
amount of surplus value available for accumulation.
The main effect of this in the past, as evident from the end of the
Second World War to the late 1960s and early 1970s, was a lowering
of the rate of growth, but a large degree of stability, ie. a long period
of sustained growth and the absence of structural crisis.
But this was at a time when the system was still expanding glo-
bally, and the internationalization of capital production, the incor-
poration of the vast masses of cheap labour-power into the wage
system, compensated for the enormous waste that was piling up on
an increasing scale, and for the increasing inefficiency that was
creeping in. The long period of boom sustained the inefficient at the
expense of the more efficient capitals, and global exploitation of
cheap labour compensated for the waste.
But with the expansion of wage relations, with the proletarianiza-
tion of the mass of humanity, necessarily comes the unfolding,
spread and intensification of class conflict. At the same time with
increasing growth (though at a slower pace) and concentration,
comes the necessity for greater intensification of exploitation, the
need to raise the rate of surplus value, which in turn accentuates class
conflict. Coupled with the fact that at any one time there are always
Capitals seeking excess or extra profit by taking advantage of the gap
between individual and normal productivity, it is obvious that the
increase of waste and inefficiency could not be sustained indefinitely.
Individual capitals can correct their inefficiency, and must do so
in order to survive, but they can only do so because the burden of
waste grows for the system as a whole. Japan’s increased efficiency is
at the cost of the US’s increased waste and at the expense of the inef-
ficiency that exists in much of the national economies around the
world. Waste and inefficiency have now become rooted in the very
structure of the capitalist system.
And, paradoxically, as the development of productivity advances
with greater mechanization of material production and the
 State, Ideology and Automation 161
introduction of certain automation technologies, and the volume of
output increases, so do the incidental expenses of capital
production.
Protection of domestic capitals and local markets, the sheer
volume of international trade and domestic circulation of commodi-
ties, the safeguarding of foreign outlays and markets, all demanded
an ever-increasing expenditure of surplus value to maintain the vast
institutions that prop up the day-to-day functioning of the social
order, as well as the ever-growing networks of commercial, financial,
insurance and other service and information gathering and process-
ing agencies.
Increasing the efficiency of production demands huge levels of
capital expenditure on research and development. But the latter is
entirely dependent upon a vast network of social and state institu-
tions, from education to welfare to health. Much of these activities,
though not all, neither contribute to the development of technologies
which capital can use, nor to the development of the skills capital
requires, in the production of surplus value. In effect, these unpro-
ductive activities may be essential to capitalism as a class system, but
are waste as far as the self-expansion of social capital is concerned.
More and more waste is the price capital must pay for an ever-
diminishing increase of surplus. The cost of its self-realization grows
with its greater self-expansion. This has a direct effect on the behavi-
our of nation-states, which need to become efficient in terms of
expenditure of revenue, yet as their social problems increase in scope
and scale, they require a greater proportion of parasitic functionaries
as well as unproductive workers simply in order to obscure the mode
of domination, and to enable its fragmented and autonomous con-
stituents (capitals) to realize the fruits of parasitic growth.
As Kidron (and Gluckstein) have already observed:

Capitalism now employs hundreds of millions of people who by no

stretch of the imagination can be said to contribute to its growth.
From its inverted point of view, if not explicitly in its terms, they
are unproductive even if they are necessary to maintain class rule
and the independence of individual capitals. Their consumption is
unproductive. The equipment they work with is waste. The surplus
goods they create and absorb are sterile. Together these constitute a
huge waste sector within an increasingly maleficent system.89

The problem for every state capital is that as automation advances

they must not only continue to maintain such panoplies of class
rule, but in fact expand them. And this at a time of ever-shrinking
mass of surplus value. The growth in economic waste, coupled with
the constant expelling of living labour, particularly from the produc-
tive sector, cannot but push the system into chronic depression and
massive social upheaval.
 162 Automation and Capitalism
5. State Repression and Social Unrest

With the advance of automation, therefore, two significant and

interrelated responses result:
As it becomes increasingly difficult to continue to maintain the
panoplies of a national welfare system, and as hegemonic rule tends
to become more and more problematic, the nation-states must resort
to far more open and visible policies and measures of direct force.
That this is nothing unusual even today is evident from the policies
daily being carried out in most, if not all, the countries of the Third
World, though it may be ‘exceptional’ in the West.
The production and expansion of value, upon which the entire
system is based, is, however, inconceivable without the use of state
power and the application of direct force. Whether direct force is
used by the state exceptionally or ordinarily is determined by the
particular conditions of production and accumulation at any given
phase of the development of capitalism. That force, coercion and
violence are not merely necessary, but indispensable to, and indivi-
sible from, the operation of the law of value, is often buried under a
cloud of mystification precisely because with the complete separa-
tion of the producer from the means of production, surplus extrac-
tion does not ordinarily require direct extra-economic coercion. The
social reality of value, however, spells class violence, coercion and
oppression. And if such violence, the application of direct force by
the state, is exceptionally used in the advanced Capitalist societies,
throughout the rest of the world system, at any one time, it is an
essential aspect of life.
Democracy in the West (however inadequate it may be), which
depends upon the dull compulsion of economic relations, is the
obverse of the necessary existence of brutal violence, dictatorship
and authoritarian statism in the backward South in the ordinary run of
things. The democracy-dictatorship nexus is indivisible for the social
system as a whole. It is impossible to extricate the historic genesis of
the British parliamentary system, for example, from the various
forms of authoritarian rule in the continents of Africa and Asia. Nor
can one even begin to understand the North American democratic
traditions and institutions without the banana republics of South
and Central America.
But what is of crucial importance is that while hitherto, and for
the most part, authoritarian rule has been confined to the periphery
of the system, as the age of automation unfolds the nation-states
at
the centre must also move in such a direction.
However, if such a move is on the cards, its realization, the
trans-
formation of bourgeois democratic rule into some form of authori-
tarian state, is entirely dependent upon the response of
the
proletariat, its level of struggle and its organizational ability to wage
a class war not simply in defence of bourgeois democracy, but for
its
own self-emancipation.
 State, Ideology and Automation 163
It is vital to note here that a move towards authoritarian rule is
entirely conditioned by an increase in the extent and intensity of
social unrest and class conflict. It is not because the restructuring of
the state machine, its modernization on the basis of advanced tech-
nologies of information and computerization, will in itself transform
the bourgeois democratic states into ‘strong’ states. It is only when
the ruling classes realize that their social order is falling apart that
the state is forced to dispense with its forms of democratic govern-
ment, and show its true face. And the ruling classes come to realize
such a need because of the protrusive movement of social unrest and
conflict. It is in fact how and to what extent the proletariat responds
to the deteriorating objective conditions as a result of capitalist auto-
mation, which determines how openly and frequently repression is
used to sustain the existing order.
Interrelated with this political move is the response of capital to
rising unemployability, the difficulty of surplus-value production,
falling demand and hence the dramatic slowing down of the rate of
accumulation: that response can only be increased centralization. The
process of automation will continue to be promoted by the state,
and in fact is accelerated by the progress in centralization.
Historically this has been the case with other technological
systems, particularly when capital is faced with a major crisis.
Because of competition, because efficiency is vital to profitability, at
no time can individual capitals completely abandon technical inno-
vations without risking bankruptcy or take-over. This becomes more
urgent at times of crisis, and falling rates of profit, and of paramount
importance not merely for individual capitals, but for national and
state capitals. And centralization is considerably accelerated by the
crisis, and is (in the form of mergers, amalgamations, the formation
of cartels and greater concentration of capital) the most powerful
means of riding the tide of crisis. For, besides other factors, it greatly
enhances the ability of capitals to improve their technical structure
and efficiency in order to increase profitability.
Whatever the actual course of events, capital will have no choice
but to complete its already implemented integration with the state.
Both the political move towards authoritarianism, and the inevitable
progress of centralization, can only result in the consolidation of
state capitalism, as progressive growth through accumulation
becomes increasingly more difficult with the advance of automation,
and parasitic growth through centralization becomes the only means
of extending capital’s final years of domination. Yet neither parasitic
growth and centralization, nor repression, can rescue capital from its
own success of transforming the productive force of technology
through the development of automation.
With the generalization of automation, the formation of the state
capitalist world system and the use of state terror can only gain the
capitalist world order a limited reprieve. For the old order breaks
down as automation displaces the very source of value creation -
164 Automation and Capitalism
wage labour. The social form of the new order being born is,
however, entirely dependent upon the outcome of the process of
this breakdown - i.e. upon the outcome of class war.
A

Automation and the

‘North-South Divide’

The spread of automation and the shift to parasitic growth cannot

but mean a change in the global interrelations between nation-states
of the North and South, East and West - between the metropolitan
states and the rest at the periphery. An exhaustive analysis of the
changes taking place in global interrelations and the multi-
dimensional complexities of these relations within the world system
lie beyond the scope of this section. I merely wish to dwell here
upon only a few essential points related to the consequences of the
automation of production for the existing division of the world
system between the advanced and the backward countries.
The geo-political structure of the world system is a product of cen-
turies of class struggle, inter-capitalist rivalries, crises and wars,
which are in themselves but moments of the process of self-
expansion of capital (of accumulation). Historically the process
began in earnest with the separation of commerce from production
in Europe, and the rise and supremacy of merchant capital some two
and a half centuries before the rise of industrial capitalism. But in a
more modern sense the existing geo-political structure — which is in
every sense fundamentally distinct from the early days of capital’s
‘civilizing mission’, as it is also distinct from that which was forged
during the classical period of imperialism (the pre-First World War
form of domination, characterized by the export of capital and the
system of colonialism) —- is the product of the changing conditions of
capital production and accumulation since the Second World War
and the rise of the permanent arms economy.”
The structure was formally established with the division of the
world into so-called ‘spheres of influence’ agreed at the Yalta
Conference. The new imperialist alliances (NATO and the Warsaw
Pact) not only grew out of war, but at the same time provided the
ideological/political and organizational/structural ground for both
militaristic and arms competition between the superpowers, as well
as the internationalization of production (the ascendancy of ‘multi-
national’ capitals) and that of war itself in the form of ‘localized’
wars, specifically in the increasingly decolonized and independent
countries of the periphery.

165
166 Automation and Capitalism
However, as a result of the current world economic crisis, the fun-
damental structural features of imperialist domination have become
increasingly unstable. As the introduction of automation technolo-
gies begins to revolutionize the processes of production and circula-
tion in the attempt to overcome the crisis, the international political
and ideological conditions of growth, the form of imperialist domina-
tion itself, cannot but also change. There are already the first mani-
festations of such a shift in the system’s geo-political structure and
relations, both with regard to the relationship between the two
superpowers, and their relations with other countries within their
‘spheres of influence’. There are now clear signs of a rapid and
growing weakening of US hegemony, as also of the break-up of the
Soviet bloc.
Thus, the deepening crisis of capital production (since the early
1970s) has not only meant a process of restructuring of production,
but also, and necessarily, a restructuring of international relations
(perhaps best exemplified by the growing signs of the end of the
Cold War). At least formally, if not as yet in substance, the East-
West axis of conflict appears to be changing rapidly. Such a shift,
however, is bound to intensify international competition as, and
when, it begins to release new social forces into the international
arena.
On the basis of such major changes taking place, as the process of
automation advances, the fundamental criterion for the redefinition
of the imperialist structure of domination will be the system of auto-
mated production itself which will reinforce the domination of
Northern capital over the rest, particularly in the South. To what
extent Russian domination can be maintained and expanded
beyond its present framework depends on how rapidly it can restruc-
ture its stagnant economy on the basis of automation. It is unlikely
that either Russia or the newly emerging ‘liberalized’ Eastern/Central
European countries could ever match the economic might of the
West, given the wide gap that already exists between them.
Nonetheless, given the developmental level of their economic (tech-
nological) infrastructure, it would be a mistake to include them
among the large group of backward countries of the South. The posi-
tion of the East within the rapidly restructuring world economy is
thus far from certain at present. One thing which is, however,
certain is that the ruling classes of the East are under the same pres-
sures to automate as those in the West. And furthermore, their fate is
inescapably tied to that of their counterparts in the West.
Whatever the future position and role of the Eastern state capitals,
the qualitative transformation of the production and circulation pro-
cesses characterized by the application of automation/information
technologies appears, in technological terms, to challenge the funda-
mentals of the North-South divide. Since on the face of it, the new
technologies of microelectronics (because of the basic qualitative
characteristics and cost factors described earlier) appear to be
 North-South Divide 167
extremely attractive for national economic development within the
South.
But neither these technological aspects of automation nor the
division of the world itself can be considered independently of each
other or in isolation from the socioeconomic context of world capi-
talism as such. We have already seen in relation to the process of
automation that this process cannot in any way be adequately exam-
ined independently of the process of capital accumulation. And in
the case of the North-South divide, although such a division may
indeed have a certain validity in terms of the territoriality and geo-
graphical differences of historical, political and cultural kind — which
are as much a condition as well as a manifestation of the global
development of the capitalist mode of production (e.g. as expressed
by the notion of the ‘development of underdevelopment’) — yet in
the final analysis it is only a geo-political expression of the two most
important processes of capitalist development itself — concentration
and centralization of capital.
Therefore what is crucial in the appraisal of the implication of
automation of production for the North-South division is to recog-
nize the ‘self-reinforcing attraction of capital’?! towards the largest
economic entities and markets. It is the extent and level of the con-
centration and centralization of capital which is absolutely crucial
for the development and application of advanced productive forces
(i.e. of automation).
The first and by far the most important obstacle in the path of
‘independent’ national economic development for the backward
countries is the constantly rising cost of entry, as it were, into the
age of automation. The actual development and production of auto-
mation/information technologies are open only to some of the
largest concentrations of capital. It is certainly true that a number of
small enterprises have been important innovators in this field. But
beyond the initial innovation stage, it is the backing of the state or
large financial institutions and multinational capitals which
becomes essential for the production and marketing of these tech-
nologies. Simply on the basis of the staggering costs involved alone,
the production of these technologies is beyond the individual capa-
city of virtually all, even the largest, of the LDCs (and NICs).
Moreover, however attractive a technological system, it has no
magical power to break the already fully developed pattern of ‘under-
development’ without a fundamental transformation of the system
itself as a whole. The massive socioeconomic gap that separates the
North from the South is self-reinforcing, and technology as capital is
a most powerful weapon in that process. Let us remind ourselves of
the enormous gap that exists, as pointed out by Armand Mattelart:

With 80% of the world population and 25% of GNPs, the Third
World countries in 1980 only represented S to 7% of operational
information systems. The USA, Japan and Western European
168 Automation and Capitalism
countries held 85% of computer resources. In terms of telecommu-
nications equipment, the Third World represented only a 10% slice
of the world market. The situation as regards audiovisual equipment
is of the same order: one person in every 500 either possesses or has
access to a television set. No more than 20% of world radiophonic
transmission and reception resources are located in the Third
World. These figures reflect no more nor less than the weakness of
the technological and scientific potential of these countries: 3% of
spending on scientific and technological research and development,
and 13% of engineers and researchers.92

Northern capitals dominate the South and drain it dry on the

basis of the logic and mechanism of accumulation itself, with tech-
nology as one of their most important weapons. It would be naive to
imagine that automation/information technology could somehow
change this condition. The diffusion of automation/information
technologies to (and in) the South is determined not subjectively or
in terms of its ‘purely’ technologically perceived advantages, but
objectively in relation to the interaction of forces within the world
economy dominated by Northern capitals.
On that basis there are two interrelated problems which need to
be considered: in the first place, what are the implications of the
advance of automation in the North for the socioeconomic (and
indeed political) conditions in the South, and how does this affect
North-South relations? And secondly, what would be the implica-
tions and the pattern of the application of automation technologies
in the South itself?
In terms of economics, a basic argument, put forward by, for
example, Rada?3 and Kaplinsky,% is that the application and diffu-
sion of automation technologies in the North will result in the
erosion of ‘comparative advantage’ and ‘international competitive-
ness’ of some of the ‘developing’ countries. For automation in the
advanced centre results in the diminution of the importance of
cheap labour-power in these countries. The ‘comparative advantage’
of lower labour costs in Third World countries, therefore, will be
drastically altered. Competitiveness is radically diminished and
foreign investments dramatically reduced.
The argument put forward appears to be supported by a number
of case studies which tend to suggest that there is a move towards
disinvestment by major multinational firms in offshore production.
It is argued that the expansion of the application of certain automa-
tion technologies in Japan, for example, has resulted in the decrease
of investment by Japanese electronics, parts’ assembly and textile
firms in the Asia/Pacific region.95 A similar pattern is also envisaged
for the garment industry. As automation technologies are made
more suitable for this industry it becomes more profitable to reduce
offshore production and to concentrate the processes in the
advanced countries.96
 North-South Divide 169
Sciberras?”? has argued that in the TV industry, for instance,
because of ‘automated-insertion devices’ it is economically feasible
to situate TV production in North America and Europe in spite of
the higher price of labour-power there. And finally, according to
Kaplinsky: ‘The largest domestic appliance manufacturer in the
world, situated in the USA, recently appraised the possibility of locat-
ing in the Third World in the context of emerging automation tech-
nologies. It concluded that whereas such a move might have been
justified in the mid-1970s (and indeed had been undertaken by the
competitor General Electric, among others), the availability of new
automation technology in the 1980s made it unnecessary and
indeed undesirable.’8
Ernst’s study, however, shows that: ‘The availability of automated
assembly lines for instance would not be sufficient to explain the
relative decline of investment into offshore locations undertaken by
semiconductor firms, based in the US, Japan and Western Europe.’
Nonetheless, the evidence tends to suggest a connection which
should not be dismissed. As Rada writes: ‘Whilst smaller companies
and new entrants might turn to subcontracting assembling opera-
tions off-shore, as well as on-shore, rather than overstretch their
managerial and financial resources with wholly-owned operations,
the fact is that the larger the company and the more vertically inte-
grated ... the less the use of off-shore plants in terms of numbers as
well as size.’100
On the basis of such arguments, it seems that the future prospect
of greater and enhanced participation in the world market for the
many capitals (state capitals included) of the South would be
extremely bleak, to say the least. The cheapness of labour-power and
other related factors (e.g. labour discipline, suppression of militancy)
which are essential to the so-called ‘comparative advantage’ of the
South become irrelevant as the process of automation spreads in the
heartlands of the system. This would further reinforce the estab-
lished pattern of international investment which since the Second
World War has meant a shift away from the LDCs towards the
advanced centre.!! And by implication, this pattern of disinvest-
ment must further accentuate the dominant position of the North,
as it also aggravates the existing pattern of socioeconomic backward-
ness, or the structure of ‘underdevelopment’ in the South.
Insofar as the so-called ‘miracle economies’ of the NICs - e.g.
those of Hong Kong, Singapore,Taiwan and South Korea - are con-
cerned, the situation is similar. As Locksley has pointed out, with the
further development of microelectronics itself, ‘fewer and fewer
components are required on any printed circuit board’. This in itself
affects ‘assembly tasks performed in NICs’. And coupled with this,
the application of automation to, for example, ‘testing and compo-
nent mounting is undermining the attractions’ of NICs for Northern
corporate investments, thus seriously weakening ‘their entire indus-
trialization programmes’
.102
170 Automation and Capitalism
With the advance of automation in the North, the relationship
between Northern capital and the South changes in a way which
rapidly exacerbates the problems of ‘underdevelopment’. Insofar as
material production is concerned, the North becomes even less
dependent than it is now upon the commodities being produced in
the South - with perhaps the exception of certain strategic raw mate-
rials and minerals. But even in the latter case, and particularly with
regard to many important primary materials and food production,
the rapid developments in the field of biotechnology!®3 will undoubt-
edly further reduce the role of the backward countries within the
world market.
Just as the powerful and dominant position of the North was con-
siderably enhanced as a result of the postwar combination of inten-
sive mechanization - ‘the relative growth of manufacturing [which]
dwarfed all other forms of capitalist activity’!94 - and the develop-
ment of synthetic materials (fibres, plastics, fertilizers) as a substitute
for natural resources (which came to be increasingly and widely used
in industrial production), so now, but with even greater potential,
the combination of automation/information technologies and bio-
technology threatens to undermine even the already insignificant
position of the LDCs (and even the NICs) within the world economy.
Perhaps by far the most important characteristic which biotech-
nology and automation share is the near absolute substitution of
fixed capital for living labour-power (variable capital). As Yoxen
remarks, in the case of biotechnology: ‘The tendency is to put capital
into chemical plants rather than into land and _ agricultural
labour.’105 It needs no exceptional powers to recognize the simply
enormous negative implications of these developments for the many
small agricultural producers and the masses of farm labourers con-
centrated in the South (given their existing pattern of single crop
specialization and ‘monoculture’ systems). However, that such a
radical change in the composition of productive capital (agriculture
and industry) will have an equally devastating effect at some point
in time on the rate of profit and Northern employment prospects is
invariably overlooked by the private and government promoters of
these innovations.
As far as the use of microelectronics technology in the South is
concerned, the obstacles are monumental; so are the negative socio-
economic implications of their use. In the first place it is worth
noting that the obverse of ‘the self-reinforcing attraction of capital
towards the largest markets’, is the ‘self-reinforcing specialization of
the South in low-skill labour-intensive occupations’! In other
words, there is an extremely high probability that any future move
towards the application of these new technologies, and the process
of automation of production, will follow the already established
pattern of industrial specialization.
The list of obstacles involved in the process of transformation of
mechanization to automation in the South is far too long and
 North-South Divide 171
complex (involving not merely economic, but also political factors)
to be tackled adequately ‘here’. The most obviously important would
have to suffice as illustrations.
The initial obstacle, beyond the ever-increasing cost of restructur-
ing, is the gaining of access to both the hardware and the software.
With mechanical technology it is certainly possible (though very
rare) to try to produce a technological system indigenously. With
automation technology, such an undertaking would be immensely
more difficult. As Kaplinsky remarks: ‘With electro-pneumatic-
mechanical control mechanism it is possible to “learn by undoing”,
whereas with micro-electronic “black-boxes” it is inherently more
difficult to discover the nature of control systems.’107
Given the technical difficulties, and the problems of time and
cost, LDC firms must therefore rely on imports of technological
systems; this entails a reliance on a restrictive and highly monopolis-
tic ‘market’. The production of these technologies is dominated by a
very few Northern capitals, either directly or through subcontracting
networks — and this not only in the case of hardware and software,
but as a complete technical system (including process know-how,
plant and system design).
In the case of telecommunications the same problem applies, but
with the added dimension of even greater direct or indirect involve-
ment of Northern state agencies (particularly as regards ‘sensitive’
instruments). The purchase of these types of technologies often
requires state approval and licensing, and in many cases formal
inter-governmental agreements; more often, however, access to tech-
nology is achieved through ‘partnerships’ or ‘joint ventures’ backed
and even subsidized by the local states. If this formal side of ‘techno-
logical transfer’ is meant to ensure the selection of a ‘friendly’
nation, the reliance on the supply of spare parts, or technical
improvements and modifications, tends to further ensure that
nation’s high degree of dependence on the Northern supplier.
But what also further increases dependence is the fact that auto-
mation/information technologies must be purchased as a package.
Generally, LDC firms (or states) have little alternative but to rely for
the whole package upon one foreign firm or consortium. Add to this
the extreme protectionist behaviour of the supplying companies
over their ‘trade secrets’ and the problems of dependence and
control become manifestly huge. As Rada comments, the transfer of
technology ‘tends to take place among established or important pro-
ducers, and furthermore, the technology is tightly guarded as trade
secrets. Many companies in the software area, for instance, do not
patent or copyright their products because it entails disclosure of
valuable information.’18
One of the major difficulties often mentioned with regard to the
diffusion of automation in the South is the low skill barrier which
has been a critical problem in most (if not all) LDCs for a long time.
One field which is especially picked out as of serious concern for the
172 Automation and Capitalism
process of automation is the lack or even absence of software skills.
However, it is important to recognize that this is a problem for the
development of software systems, and not essentially for their applica-
tion. If the issue is the indigenous development of such systems,
then the problems are immense and by all accounts extremely hard
or even impossible to overcome. With the exception of India and
perhaps Brazil, the rest of the backward countries lack even the
minimum educational and scientific basis to enable them to partake
in the development of software design and engineering.
But for the actual process of diffusion, the software skill barrier is
not a major issue. The shortage of software skills is only an obstacle
to the rate of diffusion of automation and this only in the North,
where the development of such systems is of critical importance.
Once a system is developed, then the necessary skills are already
incorporated within it. If individual capitals operating in the South
are able to find access (under whatever arrangements) to the techno-
logical system, then at that stage the skill requirements for the use of
the system are rudimentary - particularly with the further develop-
ment of self-diagnosing devices and software systems which are
intended to eliminate repair and maintenance skills, simplification
of computer languages and other even more far-reaching develop-
ments which I have already discussed.
But even today a foundry located in the South, for example, can
fully automate, say, its casting process; the skills involved (from
moulding, melting and pouring, to knock-out and sand recovery)
can all be incorporated in a microprocessor controller. And the use
of this controller requires no special skills in programming or soft-
ware design knowledge. Certain managerial adjustments and skill
modifications are required which are generally either directly pro-
vided by the supplier of the system, and/or by short-term training
(very often in the North) for the local management.
However, let us not forget that the essence of such control systems
is that knowledge is never transferred and it remains with the
Northern supplier; what is transferred is an objectified version in the
form of a set of applicable programs. This is an important factor in
the continued domination of the South by Northern capital, as it is
also important for the continued dependence of the local firms on
the latter.
Another point which is also important is that in all the new
microelectronic-based technologies (communication/information
technologies, domestic products, education/health related technolo-
gies) the control systems are designed to function in accordance
with the Northem (‘professional’ class oriented) perspectives of life
and work. The spread of such technologies and products, therefore,
tends to transform certain aspects of life and work in the South in
the image of that in the North, while extending capital’s boundary
of indirect control within the South. For example, it increases the
very subtle (in-built) forms of indirect control (or what is often
 North-South Divide 173
referred to as the ‘conditioning’) of behaviour through new product
design and the restructuring of domestic life processes.
The fact that the actual use of automation technologies does not
necessarily need the indigenous development of software related
skills in the South is thus of critical importance socially, and is based
on the essential qualitative distinction between the mechanized
systems and automation which I have previously discussed. And this
is precisely why the socioeconomic ramifications of automation are
both extreme and potentially disastrous for the South. Since capital
can leap-frog the skill barrier, and as automation dramatically affects
the demand for the type, quality and quantity of labour-power
needed, in purely economic terms, the local state can effectively
reduce its expenditure on education and health and concentrate its
resources more or less exclusively for use in the service and for the
benefit of the ruling order, ignoring and by-passing the rural/urban
unemployable, unwanted and ‘superfluous’ population.
Given the nature and extent of ‘underdevelopment’, however, the
diffusion of automation technologies in the South would at best be
highly selective both geographically and insofar as the various
branches of the economy are concerned. The rate of diffusion, and
the field of its application, depend on the pressures of international
competition exerted on and felt by the particular sectors within each
national economy. But perhaps more to the point, the rate of appli-
cation of these technologies in the different sectors depends on the
extent and degree of involvement of Northern capital either directly
(subsidiaries) or indirectly (‘joint ventures’) and upon the particular
sector’s level of interaction in international intercourse (e.g. higher
for the commercial and financial sectors).
In addition to this, in certain sectors of the economy there is a
strong element of technological ‘determinism’; this is especially sig-
nificant in the cases of commercial and financial activities. As these
activities become increasingly automated and computerized in the
North, so the countries of the South have no choice but to automate
and computerize their commercial and financial sectors simply in
order to be able to participate in international transactions and com-
munication systems. The process is unavoidable, and is similar to
that of the diffusion of the telegraph and telephone systems (but at a
much faster rate). If, for example, the London, New York and Tokyo
Stock Exchanges are computerized and linked by satellite telecom-
munication systems, then others would be forced to follow suit. To
sell commodities on the world market or to arrange financial
matters, it would be, if not impossible, then at least extremely costly
in terms of time and possible loss of business, to make transactions
and to communicate by the old methods.
Indeed the commercial and financial sectors of the LDCs (as also
with the all-important state security institutions), rather than the
industrial sector, would be the first and most likely candidates for the
rapid introduction of automation/information technologies. While
 174 Automation and Capitalism
there is a certain degree of accord and correspondence in the deve-
lopmental process of automation in the commercial, financial and
industrial sectors in the advanced heartlands of the system, for the
backward economies there is a complete ‘imbalance’ in the process of
diffusion of automation/information technologies. The very nature
and character of this process is determined not by the ‘ideals’ of
‘national’ economic development of backward countries, but by
world market competition dominated by the Northern capitals.
Whether in the commercial/financial or the industrial/
manufacturing sectors, automation is a ‘modernizing’ process that
guarantees an accelerated deterioration in the structural conditions
of ‘underdevelopment’. In other words, the use of automation/
information technologies carries to its logical conclusion the ‘mo-
dernization’ of the capitalist ‘development of underdevelopment’.
An example which demonstrates this and at the same time shows the
absurdity of the ‘post-industrial/information society’ thesis of tech-
nologically induced greater welfare, prosperity and development, is
in connection with the use of ultramodern international networks of
medical and educational data banks (though it also applies to many
other such information-technological networks). The promotion of
the technologies involved and the use of the available networks is
supposed to improve medical/educational services considerably by
improving access to more and supposedly better information. Yet as
a report from Venczucla, quoted by Mattelart, states:

The health, education and urban transport sectors are in such a pre-
carious state that to talk of applying information technology to
these services is madness. The hospitals are short of cotton wool, surgi-
cal spirit and bandages. In schools, overcrowding and unhygienic
conditions are serious risks to the health of the children.10

No matter what the quantity and quality of information, it cannot

be used to dress a wound or feed a hungry child; nor is a computer,
for example, of any use as a teaching aid for the education of starv-
ing children (or for that matter starving adults). Moreover, even
when automation technologies are applied to production processes
in order to expand output, this does not in itself entail any necessary
improvement in social conditions. Growth of output is hardly an
indication of real socioeconomic development. The harsh fact is that
any expansion of output achieved by means of automation is in fact
at the social, human cost of increased unemployment and poverty.
There is, therefore, no doubt that automation in the South under the
existing social system substantially increases the unending misery of
the mass of the population, and this precisely because of the nega-
tive socioeconomic consequences already discussed in relation to
‘productive capital’.
With the spread of automation the tendency is for each social for-
mation to split up both physically and socially into small fortressed
 North-South Divide 175
islands of prosperity, wealth and power, surrounded by oceans of
poverty, destitution and ‘superfluous’ humanity. And, just as in the
North, but in a more dramatic, extreme and expansive way, the con-
sequence of the diffusion of automation is to widen extensively the
already abysmal social differentiation and division between the
ruling classes and the constantly increasing masses of propertyless
population.
For the world system as a whole, the consequence of the advance
of automation is the increasing simplification of global class antago-
nisms. The world system becomes more visibly divided into two
socially (and objectively) antagonistic classes; on the one hand, a
pauperized mass of proletarians, on the other, a divided and compet-
ing, yet collaborationist, world capitalist class.
For the ruling classes of the oppressed nations of the world, the
economic consequences of automation (particularly and initially in
the North, and as it spreads to the South itself) forces an increasing
degree of collaboration with the different sections and fractions of
the Northern ruling classes as the only way of maintaining their
position both at home and abroad (i.e. within the world market).
Moreover, as automation spreads, with its consequence of an
increase in mass unemployability, it becomes not merely economi-
cally but also politically more and more impossible to implement
policies for the increase of profitability. The cutting of living stan-
dards - or a further and decisive shift from consumption to profit -
becomes economically increasingly more difficult to achieve given
the phenomenon of unemployability; and politically increasingly
more dangerous for the ruling classes as and when it begins to
concern the sections of the population hired to maintain and prop
up each national ruling order.
The result would be not mercly stagnation but a rapid process of
spiralling decay. The negative and shattering effect of this on the
confidence of the ruling classes of the South — the shattering of the
illusion of ‘national economic development’, pinned as it is on the
use of advanced technologies of automation — becomes manifestly
obvious in their response towards dissent, opposition and struggle: it
forces them towards the intensification of repression, which in fact
merely conceals their lack of any socioeconomic and political alter-
native other than naked force for sustaining their power and class
privileges.
If the advance of automation radically transforms the structure of
production and the technical composition of capital, thereby
making the exploitation of productive wage labour at best merely
marginal and incidental, rather than a systemic feature of advanced
capitalism, then even if one were to ignore completely the implica-
tions of automation in the South - even if one were to assume
wrongly that what goes on in the South would have no perceptibly
important effect on the socioeconomic relations in the North - it
would still be extremely hard, if not impossible, to envisage, as
 176 Automation and Capitalism
Daniel Bell does, the ‘coming of post-industrial society’ as an evolu-
tion of advanced capitalist societies into a ‘golden age’ of services
‘unmediated by things’.!10
Bell (the theoretician of the ‘end of ideology’) and other propo-
nents of the ‘information/post-industrial society’, imagine that tech-
nology and the growth of information and knowledge can somehow
magically reconcile the contradictions of capitalism. In place of an
examination of the contradictions involved in, and perpetuating,
the great historical change which is in the process of becoming - a
change which arises not from technology or knowledge, but from
the conflict between the advance of these productive forces and the
dominant form of social organization and relations — we are pro-
vided with a reformulated neoclassical ‘equilibrium’ theory mixed
with a distilled version of the Weberian notion of ‘rationalization’.
The ‘model’ of post-industrial/information society is based on a pos-
tulation for a ‘reformed’ capitalism which is contingent upon the
growth of information and social knowledge leading to a new frame-
work of relationships between people and nations based on harmo-
nious understanding and peace.
However, as Kumar points out:

Beneath the post-industrial gloss, old, scarred, problems rear their

heads: alienation and control in the workplaces of the service
economy; scrutiny and supervision of the operations of private and
public bureaucracies, especially as they come to be meshed in with
technical and scientific expertise. Framing all these is the problem
of the dominant constraining and shaping force of contemporary
industrial societies: competitive struggles for profit and power
between private corporations and between nation states, in an envi-
ronment in which such rivalries have a tendency to become expan-
sionist and global. Faced with such an agenda of questions it is
difficult not to conclude that the politics of the post-industrial
society will be essentially the politics of industrial society — only, as
it were, writ large.111

Iam in no way denying the fact that the advanced capitalist socie-
ties of the North are moving towards a new age, the age of automa-
tion. Nor that ‘information’ in political and economic terms is
increasingly becoming a crucial issue. What is, however, not merely
questionable but simply a gigantic myth is that somehow ‘informa-
tion’ can become a substitute for the exploitation of living labour as
,a ‘new’ source of surplus value, thus a source of accumulation in the
Strict sense.
The confusion of ‘profit’ with ‘surplus value’ lies at the heart of
this idea of ‘information’ becoming the mystical source of profit and
growth. This is an important issue which I have already looked at in
relation to the notion of ‘positive profit’. And as the process of auto-
mation advances throughout the Northern advanced economies, the
 North-South Divide 177
gaining of profit and the growth of Northern-based international
(and domestic) capitals can only be at the expense of other capitals,
particularly state and private capitals of the South. The growth of
Northern automated capitals and their increased profitability is not,
nor can it be, due to the appropriation and use of ‘information’ (or
‘knowledge’) in itself. Their profits and growth are derived either
from the already accumulated surplus-value or the sharing of the
surplus-value being created by the still non- and semi-automated
capitals (or from both sources). In either case the source is not, as
Morris-Suzuki seems to suggest, the ‘private exploitation of social
knowledge’,!12 but the past and present exploitation of living labour.
Given the negative implication of automation for the production
of surplus-value, the transformation of the advanced capitalist eco-
nomies into so-called post-industrial economies or ‘information cap-
italism’ cannot but mean the absolute heightening of the inherent
contradictions of the capitalist mode of production. The widening
socioeconomic division characterized by the North-South divide is
certainly an important manifestation of these contradictions, parti-
cularly the contradiction that the highest development of human
productive powers is coupled with the most massive and global deg-
radation and pauperization of humanity. Given this, rather than
transforming the world of humanity (North as well as South) into a
conflict-less ‘community’, the age of automation intensifies the
struggle for survival into a more openly direct conflict between the
propertyless and the ruling classes.
Furthermore, since the basis on which products are produced in
the North radically changes with the advance of automation of pro-
duction, and there will be a drastic fall in the production of surplus-
value; since there is no exploitation of living labour within the pro-
cesses of material production, and yet social intercourse, exchange,
commerce and international trade and finance are organized and
function on the basis of monetary, and hence capitalist, relations;
the fundamental function of capital in the North tends to become
increasingly and more exclusively concerned with financial (and
commercial) services. The products take the form of commodities
only by way of commerce. It is no longer the production of commodi-
ties which by their movements give rise to commerce; for, strictly
speaking, capital now stands in relation to an alien form of produc-
tion (i.e. fully automated production).
While the advance and development of capitalist production and
accumulation is based on the constant and increasing exploitation
of living labour (i.e. the growth of productive capital), the decay of
the system is a process of transformation of capital as productive
capital, which finally becomes complete through the advance of
automation. It is this fundamental transformation that will have far-
reaching consequences for the global interrelations between national
capitals, and which is both a necessary condition for and a cause of a
tremendous acceleration of the process of centralization in the form
178 Automation and Capitalism
of parasitic growth. With the global spreading of automation within
the productive sector, while capital’s immediate determinateness as a
social relation of production has ceased to be, the function of com-
mercial and financial capital is nonetheless still preserved. This
union of automated production and capitalist commerce and
finance is therefore inherently self-contradictory, and cannot but be
a merely vanishing moment of the system’s process of complete
degeneration and eventual negation.
Therefore, if the age of automation, or ‘information capitalism’, is
based on a tendency towards the elimination of productive wage
labour (mental and manual) from the process of material produc-
tion, then the critical question is not how developed capitalism in
the North can maintain its domination (hence can expand, grow)
through ‘the private appropriation of “accumulated social know-
ledge”’, or ‘information’ as ‘the source of profit’.1!3 The question is
how such a transformation, based on the final maturation of the
productive forces under capitalism, will necessarily bring about a sit-
uation of permanent crisis which would rapidly lead to a process of
decay and degeneration of the capitalist system - in fact to its
breakdown.
The fundamental issue that faces us as the age of automation
unfolds is that of capitalist breakdown (and hence an explanation of
that process), not a theory of ‘post-industrial society’ or ‘information
capitalism’; an analysis of the age of automation as an age of revolu-
tion, not the information-induced and service-based reform of decay-
ing capitalism. In the next and final chapter, therefore, on the basis
of my discussions so far, I shall attempt to explain the process of
capitalist breakdown from my evaluation of Marx’s theories of accu-
mulation and social transformation.
 5

A Final Note on Capitalist

Breakdown

The progressive advance of capital’s process of accumulation has

already brought into existence a massive concentration of property-
less humanity (the proletariat), as well as the elements of a most
highly developed, qualitatively unique, technological force of pro-
duction (automation), which has not merely the potential of ousting
living labour from the sphere of production, but is already actually
beginning to do so. It is on the basis of such a fundamentally contra-
dictory development that the breakdown of capitalism must occur
with all the inevitable force of a natural law.
The inevitability of breakdown is the result of the very dynamic
process of capital accumulation itself. It is precisely from the process
of accumulation, in fact from the very concept of capital as self-
expanding value, that the breakdown of capitalism is conceivable.
This I believe was central to Marx’s critique of political economy. As
opposed to the ‘economic’ theory of value, which is essentially only
concerned with how capitalism works, Marx’s sociohistorical theory
shows us the contradictions which drive the system towards its own
negation. Marx’s objective was not merely to explain how capitalism
works (which is only an academic exercise); his objective was to go
beyond that and to demonstrate, particularly through the analysis of
the form of surplus labour as surplus value, the dynamics of the system
which, powered by the contradictions inherent in the form of value
itself, drives it to its doom (this is a critical, revolutionary exercise).
The discussion presented in this chapter is based on the conse-
quences of the progress of automation which were examined earlier —
the negative implications for the production of surplus value, the rising
problem of unemployability, the issue of perpetual innovation and the
problem of realization of value. These problems, associated with the
qualitative character of automation technology, combine to generate
the objective conditions of capitalist breakdown. What, however,
needs to be explained is the meaning of breakdown itself. What is
involved in such a process? How and why it is related to automation?
In order to tackle this issue adequately it is crucial to make a clear
distinction between: (a) the cyclical repetition of crisis; (b) the
process of breakdown; and (c) between these two and the process of

179
 180 Automation and Capitalism
social transformation. For ‘breakdown’ is a process not of transfor-
mation, nor of crisis in the conventional sense, but of the non-
correspondence and incompatibility of objective material forces and
the dominant social relations.

1. Crisis

Perhaps by far the most widely accepted view among Marxists as

regards the idea of the ‘end of capitalism’ is based on Marx’s model
of how capitalism works and changes with crises as a necessary
feature of its dynamics. In broad outline, the model is as follows.
Individual capitals are driven to raise productivity by the pressure
of competition. The best way of increasing productivity is to
improve the technical conditions of production by introducing new
technologies and techniques. As the rationalization and restructur-
ing of production spreads, labour-power becomes a smaller compo-
nent of total capital, thus raising the organic composition of capital
(i.e. as the ratio of constant to variable capital), and also smaller in
absolute terms (i.e. as the reserve army of labour, or ‘unemploy-
ment’, grows). The value added in production and surplus value
becomes smaller in relation to the total capital invested, since, for
Marx, living labour is the only source of value. Therefore, the
average rate of profit declines and there appears a rupture in the
process of accumulation; a crisis appears. With each cycle of booms
and slumps, booms become progressively less profitable and shorter
in duration, and slumps more lasting and increasingly more severe.
At a certain point in time, severe stagnation threatens and the
system becomes increasingly restrictive, generating social unrest and
upheavals which become generalized; an epoch of revolution begins.
The past cycles of crisis have stopped well short of entering capi-
talism into its irreversible decline, and have not developed into its
‘final crisis’, Capitalism has not only managed to survive, but by
modifying and re-shaping certain of its structural features it has actu-
ally managed to expand enormously, producing wealth on a scale
that humanity had never even envisaged in the past.
For Marx’s critics the evidence of expansion, in spite of the so-
called ‘business cycles’, is an incontrovertible refutation of Marx’s
theory. I maintain that for Marx, however, the model, briefly
explained above, contrary to some of his followers, was never
intended to provide anything more than a means of understanding
the dynamic process of the development of the material forces of produc-
tion under capitalism. If taken as such then the model does provide an
excellent explanation of how and why there are constant revolu-
tions in the technical conditions of production under capitalism.
The rapid advance of the process of automation since the crisis of
the early 1970s is indeed an excellent demonstration of the validity
of Marx’s views on technical change.
 Note on Capitalist Breakdown 181
At the heart of Marx’s theory of crisis lies the tendency (or law) of
the fall in the rate of profit. Marx was emphatic that this law must
be considered ‘the most important law from the historical stand-
point’,14 not simply because he thought it was essential for the
understanding of the fundamental cause of crisis, but because he
considered it as ‘an expression peculiar to the capitalist mode of produc-
tion of the progressive development of the social productivity of
labour’.!15 In developing his theory of crisis, Marx is essentially con-
cerned with the peculiar (historically specific) mechanism of the
qualitative development of productive forces and not simply with an
explanation of capitalist crisis as such.
If the periodic and temporary loss of profitability and the conse-
quent rupture in the accumulation process have always in the past
stopped well short of the ‘final crisis’ of capitalism - and in fact have
led to modifications of its structure and relations, restoring the rate
of profit sufficiently for capital’s further expansion - it is only
because the material conditions (specifically the system of techno-
logy) were not qualitatively mature enough. For it is the quality of
technology (fixed capital) that determines the relation of necessary
and surplus labour, and thus whether or not, and to what extent,
the rate of surplus value can be increased to compensate for the fall
in the profit rate.
We know that the rise in the organic composition, and hence the
fall in the general rate of profit, are in practice checked by a number
of counteracting tendencies which are integral to the accumulation
process itself. The raising of the rate of surplus value, the devalua-
tion of fixed capital, the crisis itself, unproductive consumption of
or waste of capital,1!6 wars and capital exports, and in the more
recent past, arms production,!!7 have all acted side by side or at dif-
ferent times to check the fall in the general rate of profit.
Such leaks and counteracting tendencies are of fundamental
importance, however, not merely because they have generated the
conditions of relative stability as such for certain periods of time but
because they have actually generated the conditions that have led to
the development of the qualitative character of the material productive
forces. And this is what is historically crucial for the movement of
capitalism towards its own negation. Let us see how this takes place.
The process of accumulation gencrates the tendencies of a rise in
the organic composition and the fall in the general rate of profit. As
tendencies these are always present, but latent. But it also generates
certain counteracting tendencies and leakages. The two sets of ten-
dencies are what Marx called ‘antagonistic agencies’ which ‘counter-
act each other simultancously’.!18 In other words, not only are these
‘agencies’ integral to the accumulation process, but they are bound
together, and their contradictory linkage adds a qualitative dimen-
sion to the dynamics of accumulation.
Let us take as an illustration the case of arms production since the
Second World War. We have already seen that the development of
182 Automation and Capitalism
automation technologies is directly related to the development of
the ‘military-industrial complex’ and arms production. That this was
no accident is perhaps factually obvious, but needs explanation in
relation to the two sets of tendencies mentioned above.
The process of accumulation involves an increase in the ratio of
dead labour relative to living labour, or, in value terms, an increase
of constant capital relative to variable capital. The tendency is for
this ratio to rise progressively, and it does, but not successively
without breaks or interruptions. Its progressive rise should be seen
not simply in quantitative terms, but qualitatively. The rise in the
organic composition is interrupted or checked at certain times by
‘spontaneously arrived at’ leaks of different sizes and composition,
such as the ‘capital-intensive’ drain in the case of arms
production.119
The taxing of capital for arms expenditure deprives the system of
the resources (surplus value) that would otherwise have been used
for further production of surplus value, which sooner or later would
have led to the rise in the organic composition, overaccumulation
and a fall in the general rate of profit. But since arms production is
waste production, the drain slows down the rate of growth and has
no direct effect on the general profit rate.!20
But the arms production sector, though directly supported and
often controlled by the state, and thus relatively secure in that sense,
is nonetheless under the same compulsion to grow as any other
sector within the capitalist economy. The capitals involved (be they
state or private capitals), as with the national capitals upon which
that sector ultimately depends, feel tne intense pressure of com peti-
tion. Thus, as Kidron pointed out, there exists a ‘ceiling on arms
outlay’.121
The existence of such a ceiling is crucial. As Kidron explains:

It provides a massive incentive to increases in productivity (mea-

sured in potential deaths per dollar) and so leads to the arms indus-
tries becoming increasingly specialist and divorced from general
engineering practice. Coupled with this specialization, and partly as
a consequence, go a rising capital- and technology-intensity in the
arms industries, 122

Thus, although the arms production drain, or in effect, the unpro-

ductive consumption of a substantial portion of investible surplus
value had a restraining effect on the rise in the overall organic com-
position, the development of armaments and their processes of pro-
duction resulted in a higher than average organic composition for
this sector. Though this has no immediate effect on the average com-
position or average rate of profit, as this sector is essentially the same
as that of luxury production (Department III).123 Nevertheless, it has
two crucial effects: on the one hand, a substantial effect on the
development of the material productive forces, of new and improved
 Note on Capitalist Breakdown 183
technologies. On the other, on the distribution or the sharing of the
mass of surplus value, hence leading to the intensification of compe-
tition which is crucial to the rapid generalization of the existing and
functioning technological system (i.e. that of intensive
mechanization).
For although arms production is essentially the same as luxury
production insofar as the expansion of value is concerned, it is fun-
damentally different in one crucial respect: the quality, or use-value,
of the products produced.
It makes a great deal of difference to the user (purchaser) of arms,
whether, for instance, the tank purchased is as efficient and power-
ful as the one used by a rival. And it certainly makes a difference
whether or not, and to what extent, a missile guidance system is able
to cope efficiently with the tasks assigned to it. Hair-trigger sensiti-
vity, accuracy, sophisticated and precise performance, in short, high
quality, are the basic trade marks of modern armaments (at least in
principle). It effectively means a matter of life or death, at least to
the purchaser.
But, by contrast, such a principle does not guide the production of
luxury goods. Certainly quality is important. But there is a profound
difference between the qualitative requirements of a tapestry
hanging on Mr Rockefeller’s wall, and the qualitative requirements
of an anti-ballistic missile system.
This qualitative requirement of products as use-values is derived
direciiy from the quality of the process of production; the develop-
ment and use of highly sophisticated and advanced technologies
and techniques (e.g. computerization, numerical-control systems
and finally the development of microelectronic-based technologies)
as well as very specialized labour-power. This, coupled with the
special characteristic of arms production as by definition an
extremely security conscious and sensitive undertaking, further dif-
ferentiates this type of production from any other. The control of all
stages of production becomes even more important than in any
other industry. Not only because of quality control and accuracy,
but as a hedge against strikes, the direct input of labour needs to be
reduced to a minimum.
Massive investment was therefore poured into the research and
development of not only armaments as products, but technologies
that enable their production. And the one overriding principle
guiding such R&D has been the development and production of
technologies that substantially reduce the need for the input of
direct living labour - i.e. the technologies of automation.
The leak of surplus value due to the rise of the permanent arms
economy, which reduced the pressure on the fall in the average rate
of profit for some 25 years after the Second World War, had there-
fore significantly contributed to the transformation of the qua-
litative character of the fixed mechanized means of production into
early forms of automation technologies. Thus every elemental
184 Automation and Capitalism
technology of automation has a direct connection to the military
and arms production.
Meanwhile, as this qualitative transformation was gradually taking
place within the military sector, the other effect of the leak of
surplus for arms expenditure was also working its way through the
system, accelerating the process of generalization of the system of
intensive mechanization and assembly line throughout the world
system.
While the tendencies of the rise in organic composition and the
fall in the profit rate were interrupted by the drain of investible
surplus, they were not, nor could they be, eliminated. For they are
inherent in the very nature of capital as self-expanding value. And
since the drain has been uneven, greater for some national capitals
than others, and since for capital (whatever its form) growth is
always the ultimate compulsion, those national capitals with low
military budgets (e.g. Japan and West Germany) were consistently
able to improve and expand their productive sector, considerably
improving their productivity and competitiveness within the world
market, and thus gaining a relatively greater share of the mass of
surplus value produced. For these national capitals the organic com-
position rises, but so do their profits, at the expense of other less effi-
cient capitals (e.g. the US and Britain).
Thus as Harman writes:

So the Japanese and West Germans, by engaging in capital intensive

forms of investment, cut world profit rates, while raising their own
national share of world profits. Their increased competitiveness in
export markets forced other capitalisms to pay, with falling rates of
profit, for the increased Japanese and German organic compositions
of capital. But this, in turn, put pressure on these other capitalists to
increase their competitiveness by turning to higher organic compo-
sitions of capital so as to match Japanese and German
technology.124

The process of emulation resulted in a rapid acceleration of the gen-

eralization of the techniques and technologies of intensive mecha-
nization (the generalization of Fordism). But once these are genera-
lized the process exhausts itself, for the average organic composition
tises to such a level that, given the prevailing system of technology
and technique (in this case the system of intensive mechanization or
Fordism), the rate of surplus value cannot be increased sufficiently to
compensate for the decline in the value added in production and
surplus value, in relation to the increased capital (or to total invest-
ment). Thus the average rate of profit declines. There occurs a rupture
in the process of accumulation, and the whole system falls into crisis.
This is precisely what occurred in the late 1960s and 1970s.
It is now that the process of rationalization begins to raise the rate
of surplus value. The increase in the rate of surplus value can take
 Note on Capitalist Breakdown 185
place without technical alteration of the conditions of production,
by forceful (legal and otherwise) lengthening of the working day,
speed-up and direct or indirect lowering of the value of labour-
power. This has indeed taken place, especially in the weaker national
economies. But there are definite limits to these methods.
In any case, the important point is that because of the overproduc-
tion of capital and the fall in the profit rate, the fraternity of capital-
ists breaks down, and competition further intensifies — but now over
the sharing of losses. Now, as before, size, strength and cunning
determines who loses most.!25 Whatever the actual concrete forms
of struggle between capitalists as ‘hostile brothers’, it means a
destruction of immense quantities of value (bankruptcies and curtail-
ment of large investment projects). But it also means the greater cen-
tralization of capital, as stronger, more cunning capitalists absorb
the weaker ones (witness the enormous number of mergers and take-
overs since the late 1970s).
While this process of ‘healing’ through destruction effects a modi-
fication in the social structure and superstructural relations, the
essential adjustments are actually taking place within the production
process. For in terms of capital’s own frame of reference, nothing
can replace the transformation of the mode of extraction of surplus
labour, i.e. the raising of the productive power of labour.
Thus, something more fundamental (from the historical view-
point) is also taking place deep within production. The competitive
struggle drives every capitalist to lower the individual value of his/her
output below the established social norm. This is being achieved with
the modification and transformation of the mode of extraction of
surplus labour by the gradual introduction of the new technologies of
microelectronics, and the piecemeal reorganization and restructuring
of the processes of production on the basis of automation.
The technological spin-offs from arms to the civilian sector - the
elemental technologies of automation such as the computer, the
microprocessor and numcrical-control, and the software technolo-
gies associated with these - have thus come to play a fundamental
role in the process of restructuring taking place. And the qualitative
character of these, as we have seen, will have a most profound and
direct impact upon capitalism’s future, although not until the
various elements are moulded into a new system of technology. The
pace of such a developmental process will undoubtedly be much
faster than that of the establishment of the system of intensive
mechanization or Fordism which, although developed and applied
in the US in the first decade of the twentieth century, only began to
become more and more widely utilized with the appearance of the
major crisis of the late 1920s to 1940s.
Therefore, on the basis of the above argument, it would be a
mistake to fasten Marx’s notion of the breakdown of capitalism to
his theory of crisis (and the falling rate of profit). That there is a defi-
nite connection is unquestionable, but not, as has often been
186 Automation and Capitalism
wrongly stated, simply as a result of the progressive increase in the
severity of crises so that at some point the system breaks down. Nor
should one envisage a breakdown simply on the basis of the ten-
dency of the fall in the profit rate. For Marx the fundamental factor
was the development of the material productive forces. The reality of
the process of development of automation technologies, as I have
attempted to show in this study, confirms Marx’s constant insistence
on the essential role of the development of these forces.
It is, therefore, not the fall in the profit rate which ‘at a certain
point’ brings down the capitalist system. The fall ‘merely’ brings
about a rupture in the process of accumulation, a crisis. And this is
crucial, for it compels individual capitals, as with the force of a
natural law, to increase the productivity of labour (i.e. revolutions in
technology) at one level, and at another, to fall into an orgy of can-
nibalism (i.e. accelerate the centralization of capital).
The effect of the law and the crisis is to transform growth (quanti-
tative expansion) into development (qualitative change): structural
modifications (e.g. monopoly and state capitalism) and global
expansion, on the one hand, and the expansion of the scale of pro-
duction (e.g. mass production) and qualitative advance in techno-
logy (e.g. automation), on the other. And precisely because this
quantity—quality nexus is indivisible, and because it is finite (i.e. it
includes its negation within itself), given the nature of capital as self-
expanding value (i.e. that its expansion is entirely dependent upon
the constant transformation of labour-power into labour)!26 the
advance of accumulation by compelling the development and
increasing application of automation, which thereby negates the
production of surplus-value as it eliminates from the production
process the very source of value itself (i.e. living labour), must result
in the breakdown of the system.
Thus the advance of accumulation, and the periodic crisis inhe-
rent to it, is a process through which the ideality of capital’s infinite
expansion becomes finite because of the qualitative advance of the
productive forces (i.e. automation). It is true, as Weeks remarks, that
the ‘same process that makes crisis necessary also provides for recov-
ery, renewed accumulation’.!27 Nevertheless, ‘renewed accumula-
tion’ is always contingent upon a process of restructuring and
technical change which improves the productivity of labour.
The recovery from crisis is therefore not a return to the pre-crisis
state of affairs. Historically every major (and even minor) crisis has
meant a qualitative advance of technology and/or organization and
techniques, which is also precisely the current situation with regard
to the process of automation. It has also meant dramatic progress in
the centralization of capital. But if such a qualitative transformation
of the conditions of capital production is inherent in the very
process of accumulation itself, that it is itself the result of capital’s
mode of production, can one seriously assume that this process can
go on indefinitely?
 Note on Capitalist Breakdown 187
Certainly for bourgeois ideologues, and even for many within the
reformist socialist camp, the question of breakdown does not even
arise. For Marxists, on the contrary, it is of the utmost importance.
And here, as Raya Dunayevskaya states, the ‘question theoretically is:
does the solution [to the problematic of the end of capitalism] come
organically from your theory, or is it brought there merely by “revo-
lutionary will”?’128
In other words, the question is not whether ‘the end’ comes as a
result of ‘class meeting class on the opposite sides of the barri-
cades’.129 The question is: what are the conditions which arise and
develop that make such a meeting not simply possible, or even
necessary, but inevitable?
To understand Marx’s theory of breakdown we must take his
theory of accumulation (with the theories of crisis and falling profit
rate as part of it) in conjunction with his general propositions on
‘historical materialism’. The part of these propositions which con-
cerns us here — the essential part given in the celebrated 1859 Preface
to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy - can be stated in
a couple of paragraphs as follows:

At a certain stage of their development, the material productive

forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of
production ... From forms of development of the productive forces
these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social
revolution.

And:

No social formation ever perishes before all the productive forces for
which there is room in it have developed; and new, higher relations
of production never appear before the material conditions of their
existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself.

There is no doubt that whatever the form and role of productive

forces in the pre- and non-capitalist societies, it is only with capital-
ism that we have the unique imperative of a social system bent on
the systematic and continuous development of the productive forces.
Under the rule of capital, however, this development has its own
specific and peculiar characteristics. Here, the developmental level
of the material productive forces (e.g. the technologies of mechani-
zation and now of automation) is an expression of the degree of
labour’s alienation: its loss of communality and organic bond to
the conditions of labour itself. The development of the powers of
human labour, as the most fundamental productive force, comes to
be expressed through systematic objectification. In appearance and
in actuality, human capacity is consistently drained; living, active
power is transformed into dead labour (both in the form of hard-
ware and software technologies). This is the essential process that
188 Automation and Capitalism
simultaneously resolves and deepens the contradictions of capital.
The dynamics of this process, as already mentioned, are based on
the very nature of capital as self-expanding value. It is, however, on
that very basis (i.e. because of the contradictory consequences of the
progress of accumulation) that the incessant revolutions in techno-
logy are at once the progress and advance of the quality (and the
degree of maturity) of technological systems. The historical unfolding
of this process has now resulted in the development of the technolo-
gies of automation: a qualitatively unique form of production tech-
nology and control systems which unquestionably expresses the final
and full maturity of the material productive forces under capitalism.
With the establishment and spreading of this qualitatively unique
technological system, the ‘fettering’ factor that Marx had proposed
occurs; i.e. the fact that with automation there is no more ‘room’, as
Marx puts it, in the capitalist social system for the further develop-
ment of production technology (the material productive forces). This
is because with the expulsion of living labour from production, ‘the
increase of productive force would become irrelevant to capital’.130
It becomes ‘irrelevant’ because the advance of automation negates
the production of surplus-value which is the very life-blood of
capital. As surplus-value is nothing but a specific form of surplus
labour, and the extraction of surplus labour is obviously impossible
without the positing of necessary labour in production, with automa-
tion and the elimination of living labour the very motive and impe-
rative for capital to develop production technology in order to
increase surplus labour (or surplus valuc) is negated. But this is tanta-
mount to saying that capital’s self-realization ‘itself becomes irrele-
vant’, with the advance of automation, ‘and it would have ceased to
be capital’.131
Thus, the ‘fettering’, and hence the epoch of social revolution, can
only occur when the qualitative development of the system of pro-
duction technology reaches such a level that the positing of neces-
sary labour within the productive sector is reduced to such an extent
that the extraction of surplus labour, and hence the appropriation of
it as surplus value, becomes objectively impossible on a systematic
basis. And as I have attempted to show in my discussions on the
qualitatively distinct characteristics of the microelectronics techno-
logies already developed and being further developed, this is pre-
cisely what the advance of automation promises to promote.

2. Breakdown

What I have also tried to show in this study is that it is precisely

from the advance of accumulation itself - contrary to, for example
Weeks’ argument!32 — that the conditions of capitalist breakdown
arise, and objectively: as a consequence of the qualitative transforma-
tion of the technological system of production, and the result of the
 Note on Capitalist Breakdown 189
progressive decline in the mass of surplus value being produced,
which makes progressive growth through accumulation increasingly
impossible, thus transforming accumulation into parasitic growth.
For the capitalist system, parasitic growth is not dangerous as long
as it is as a result of accumulation. But since accumulation is essen-
tially only the specific historical form of social reproduction in
which the reproduction of the material conditions of production
takes place in such a way as to constantly reproduce wage labour/
capital relation,!33 and since it is entirely dependent upon the pro-
duction of surplus value, then the transformation of accumulation
into parasitic growth as a result of the insufficiency of surplus value
due to the advance of automation can only mean the non-
reproduction of the capitalist relations in production, and thus the
sublation of capital.
What must be taken into account, and not as an after-thought but
as essential to the understanding of the process of accumulation, is,
in the words of Marx: ‘The identity of surplus-value and surplus-labour’,
which ‘imposes a qualitative limit upon the accumulation of
capital’.134 This ‘qualitative limit’ of accumulation consists of: ‘the
total working day, and the prevailing development of the productive
forces and of the population, which limits the number of simulta-
neously exploitable working days’.!35
Even if we take the currently existing level of the technologies of
automation (not what is clearly already in the process of being deve-
loped but what is now being increasingly applied in production), it
requires no exceptional powers to see that, with its necessary diffu-
sion within the productive sector, it cannot but exhaust the ‘limit’ of
accumulation.
The identity of surplus value and surplus labour is important in
two respects: first in that surplus value is not some ‘economic’ cate-
gory, but a social form of forced unpaid human labour. The ‘social’
aspect is important, not because it simply refers to the labour per-
formed in ‘society’ — all labour in all ages was performed within a
social context, it cannot be otherwise. The ‘social’ here is significant
because it refers to the socially equated form of labour, abstract
labour or wage labour as such. That is, not the incidental sale of indi-
vidual labour-powers, but a systemic perpetual sale by a class (a col-
lectivity) of labourers. Incidental sale of labour-power had existed in
various past forms of socicties. What is specific to capitalism, and
sets accumulation apart from social reproduction in general, is the
existence of a class of wage labourers.
Now, as I have argued in previous sections, with the advance of
automation, the production of material life is no longer, in an objec-
tive and technical sense, dependent upon such a systemic sale of
labour-power, i.e. upon the exploitation of productive wage labour-
ers. The sale of labour-power takes place but is incidental as regards
material production as such. Thus, the process of accumulation, or
the self-realization of capital, cannot take place systemically, i.e. as
190 Automation and Capitalism
the self-expansion of value. Value as a social phenomenon is still domi-
nant — as are money and other categories — but it has now ceased to
be self-expanding. Growth is therefore no longer the result of value
that begets more value, but the absorption of already existing value
(objectified labour, money); it is parasitic growth.
Secondly, surplus value is determined by the relation of surplus
labour to necessary labour. Since there can be no surplus labour
without necessary labour, there is a limit beyond which the decrease
of the latter will not, and cannot, result in the increase of the
former, and hence that of surplus value. As Marx put it: ‘To produce
the same rate of profit after the constant capital set in motion by
one labourer increases ten-fold, the surplus labour-time would have
to increase ten-fold, and soon the total labour-time, and finally the
entire 24 hours of a day, would not suffice, even if wholly appro-
priated by capital.’136
Once again the ‘qualitative limit’ of accumulation is determined
by the necessity of the positing of a quantity of necessary labour, but
a quantity which is determined by the prevailing level of the deve-
lopment of the productive forces which determines the proportion
into which the functioning capital is divided as constant and vari-
able (ie. the ratio of dead to living labour in the process of
production).
Thus, on this basis, and as we have seen in the examples given in
previous sections, as automation progresses, one labourer will be
able to set in motion a quantity of constant capital which before
automation, in the age of mechanization, required 100, 200 or even
more labourers. In this case the rate of profit becomes essentially
irrelevant: at best it isa mere accounting procedure.
The importance of the level of population, which Marx refers to in
the passage quoted above, is in this: that the surplus population, in
particular the ‘superfluous’ or the unemployable, becomes larger both
as a result of the growth in population itself, but more crucially as a
result of the advance of automation. Thus, however inadequately
and reluctantly, capital will be faced with ever-increasing levels of
unproductive expenditure: initially a heavy tax on the decreasing
amount of surplus value; and ultimately a drain of existing, already
created value.
It is only now, with the development of automation technologies,
that the full force of Marx’s argument in relation to the pauperiza-
tion of the proletariat is becoming apparent. With the progress of
automation, the proletarian

sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his

own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more
rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident,
that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in
society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an
over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure
 Note on Capitalist Breakdown 191
an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help
letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of
being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in
other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.137

With automation, productive labour, the slave within capital’s

system of wage-slavery, is displaced. This is not a crisis situation of
unemployment, it is a situation of the highest level of material pro-
duction without labour, the unemployability of the slave. It is a situa-
tion of capital having to ‘feed’ the unemployable proletarians (or at
least some sections of them), since objectively (Marx’s phrase: ‘it
cannot help letting him sink into such a state’) the productive force
of technology has reached the stage when surplus value is no longer
produced to feed capital; thus capital is not being ‘fed’ by the slaves.
And it is only in the capitalist mode of production that pauperism
appears ‘as a result of labour itself, of the development of the pro-
ductive force of labour’.138
However, if we disregard the identity of surplus value and surplus
labour as bourgeois and vulgar economics tend to do (i.e. in the
forms of ‘positive’ profit, but particularly interest), then, as Marx
writes, the ‘limit is merely quantitative, and there is then absolutely
no reason why capital cannot every other day convert the interest
into capital and thus yield interest on its interest in infinite geomet-
rical progression’.139
As I have argued, the point is not simply quantitative expansion
in itself - large-scale industry, larger machinery - or even the value
of fixed capital in itself,!4° though these are of crucial importance,
but also the qualitative development of fixed capital, of the techno-
logical system. The significance of this qualitative aspect can be
seen, even at this embryonic stage, in the application of automation
technologies, which is beginning, in this or that industry and as yet
only piecemeal, radically to alter the ratio of dead to living labour in
favour of the former.
Capital, through its advance of accumulation, has only now pro-
duced such a force of production in the technologies of automation
that, with their diffusion and formation into a system, it will sublate
‘the self-realization of capital, instead of positing it’.141 Since, with
the generalization of even the existing technologies of automation,
necessary labour becomes so perceptibly diminished as to become
irrelevant.
As I have already described some of the main conditions which
would result with the advance of automation, I shall now briefly
look at the actual meaning of ‘breakdown’.
To begin with, the breakdown of capitalism is a process and not an
event. In the words of Marx: ‘As the system of bourgeois economy
has developed for us only by degree, so too its negation, which is its
ultimate result.’!42 Nor is it a situation of ‘crisis’ in the usual sense of
an economic crisis as a ‘healing’ process; though it is a period of
192 Automation and Capitalism
chronic depression.
The breakdown of capitalism is the sublation of capital; best
expressed by Marx’s use of the concept of aufheben.143 It refers to a
condition whereby capitalism is ‘maintained’, ‘preserved’, but has
lost its immediacy (in production) as self-expanding value, but
which, nevertheless, is not as yet abolished or annihilated on that
account. In its immediacy, it is a ‘non-capitalism’— i.e. accumulation,
self-expansion of value is no longer taking place, but state capitalist
domination continues - but this as a result of the conditions which
had their origin in capital itself. It still has, therefore, in itself, as a
capitalist world order, the determinateness from which it originates,
i.e. the complete separation of the mass of humanity from the
means of production (or the propertyless condition).
With automation, capital is sublated only insofar as it has entered
into unity with its opposite wage labour. With this advance of pro-
ductive force, wage labour and capital in their unity have vanished
as these determinations and are now something other than capital
and wage labour, and have a different significance. The breakdown is
a movement in which the presupposition (capital) sublates itself.
The contradictions released by capital’s automation of material pro-
duction are not ‘external’ to the system, but latent within it:

Capital itself is the contradiction [, in] that, while it constantly tries

to [sublate] necessary labour time ... surplus labour time exists only in
antithesis with necessary labour time, so that capital posits neces-
sary labour time as a necessary condition of its reproduction and
realization. At a certain point, a development of the forces of material
production [my emphasis-RR] ... [sublates] capital itself.144

In such a ‘state’ of sublation, capital has lost its inherent ability to

self-expand, since automation has removed its only value-creating
substance, living labour, as a direct result of Capital’s own self-
preservation. But now having lost this, it has lost its immediacy; and
therefore its existence is open to the forces born within it, as is its
preservation. In short, capitalist class rule and the dependence of the
mass of humanity upon capital, is not supported and guaranteed in
perpetuity, in the age of automation, by the conditions of produc-
tion themselves. Its preservation now becomes dependent upon the
power of the state, and thus upon terror and all forms of ‘extra-
economic’ coercion, since its existence is now open to the self-
activity of a massive concentration of unemployable proletarians: ‘In
order to become an “unendurable” power, i.e., a power against which
men make a revolution, it must necessarily have rendered the great
mass of humanity “propertyless”, and moreover in contradiction to
an existing world of wealth and culture .., ’145
Capitalist breakdown is thus a process of unstable unrest, of class
war: it is a process of transition set in motion by the birth of a new
objective condition for the production of material life within the old
 Note on Capitalist Breakdown 193
social form of organization of life, remorselessly bursting its limited
boundaries. It is a most intensely painful process of the self-
development of the proletariat, working itself out through all the
contingencies and contradictions in order to raise itself into a con-
scious being. But at the same time it is a process which takes place
on the basis of the opposition in unity of the subjective and objec-
tive moments. It is therefore a self-dissolving contradiction; it
cannot be indefinite.
Capitalist breakdown occurs when, with the advance of automa-
tion, ‘the material and mental conditions of the negation of wage
labour and of capital’!4© have become actualized; when capital
cannot self-expand and has lost its ideological hegemony. The break-
down of capitalism is thus a process which expresses the beginnings
of an epoch of social revolution in a rising crescendo of tremors. It is a
process through which the proletariat and the capitalist classes
become conscious of the existing conflict between the productive
forces and the relations of production, and begin to fight it out.
It is therefore a process through which material life is forced to
find a new form through the movement of class struggle. It is a
process of reaping the harvest; it is thus, and necessarily, violent,
catastrophic, calamitous. The fruits of centuries of labour are finally
ripe for picking, but they must be picked. The developed means of
production, the entire automated system, must be appropriated
through a process of social transformation. Only then can these
material productive forces (the technological systems of automation)
themselves become consciously transformed.

3. Social Transformation

If the breakdown of capitalism is inevitable, its social transformation

to a new, higher relation of production is not. While breakdown is a
process that comes about irrespective of ‘revolutionary will’, social
transformation is a process entirely dependent upon the self-
conscious, independent and universal movement of the proletariat.
It is not merely a process of reaping the harvest, but at once also one
of the planting of seeds. It is a process of the realization of the global
‘association of free individuality’ by means of self-emancipation
through universal appropriation. It is the process of the transforma-
tion of class war and the ‘nationally’ based revolutionary upheavals,
into a world revolution; it is the communist revolution in
permanence.147
Capitalist breakdown is the actual realization of the universal nega-
tivity of capitalist society taking a positive turn into class war. Social
transformation is an act of appropriation of the totality of produc-
tive forces and the total and universal self-development of the prole-
tariat. It is during the process of breakdown, as a result of class war,
that the proletariat is able to become universally class conscious. The
 194 Automation and Capitalism
process of social transformation is the transformation of class con-
sciousness into individual consciousness. In the first process the indi-
vidual merely unfolds himself/herself as a ‘class individual’148 and
becomes politically conscious. The process of social transformation is
the unfolding of his/her class individuality itself in the act of appro-
priation of the totality of productive forces which thereby negates
political (hence, class) consciousness itself: ‘the individuals must
appropriate the existing totality of productive forces, not only to
achieve self-activity, but, also, merely to safeguard their very
existence’.149
Up to and including the process of breakdown proletarian combi-
nation (‘association’) ‘was simply an agreement’ into which the indi-
viduals of the class entered ‘not as individuals but as members of a
class’. But social transformation is the process of formation of an
association (‘the community of revolutionary proletarians’) in which
‘it is as individuals that individuals participate in ... 150 In short,
social transformation depends on the universal, ‘world-historic’!5!
assertion of free individuality, which is entirely dependent upon the
outcome of the process of class war and its permanency into a world
revolution. In order ‘to assert themselves as individuals’, the prole-
tariat ‘must’ first ‘overthrow the state’.152
That is why, while the breakdown of capitalism is inevitable,
social transformation to communism, though absolutely essential
for the very existence and survival of the human race, is not inevit-
able. For to abolish and transform the old social form, the proletariat
first needs to conquer political power so that its class interest can be
represented as the general interest. Conquest of political power is
also essential because that is the only way the appropriation of the
productive forces, of the technological system of automated produc-
tion, can take place.
But appropriation is determined by the social character and nature
of the object (the productive forces) being appropriated, as well as by
those of the appropriator (the proletariat), and in both cases these
are universal and global in character.153 The conquest of political
power cannot therefore be confined within this or that national
framework: it must necessarily be international and total (i.e. univer-
sal) in character and dimension.
Thus, it is not merely a question of social unrest and class war,
but
the transformation of these into an international revolution.
The
outcome of this cannot be predicted; it all depends on the balance
of
class forces. This is why in the Preface Marx warns that: ‘In
consider-
ing such transformations, a distinction should always
be made
between the material transformation of economic conditi
ons of pro-
duction, which can be determined with the precision
of natural
science, and the legal, political, [etc.] ... ideological
forms in which
men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.’154
In other words, while it is clear that with the further
advance of
automation, capitalist breakdown must occur, there
is no certainty,
 Note on Capitalist Breakdown 195
no inevitability, of a socialist transformation. That is something that
must be fought for. And this is why we should not confuse the
breakdown of capitalism with its social transformation into commu-
nism (the higher social form). The former is the rise of revolutionary
conditions, the latter a result of revolutionary action. It is a question
of the proletariat actually becoming the ‘gravediggers’ of capitalism
(a class-for-itself), and moving beyond the ‘burying’ of capital to the
making of communism. This is a process of universal self-education
which can be achieved only through a total and permanent revolu-
tion; the only possible way that the proletariat ‘rids itself of every-
thing that still clings to it from its previous position in society’ .155
The negation of alienation and abstraction of labour as a result of
the advance of automation can itself only be negated (negation of
negation) through an epoch of social revolution. An epoch of social
revolution is necessary since that is the only way (i.e. through a pro-
longed period of class struggle) that self-consciousness and self-
activity (what is today often referred to as ‘the sphere of autonomy’)
can be developed into a new social synthesis (i.e. associated indivi-
duality). Only if and when, as Marx had proposed in the Preface,
‘ALL’ the productive forces - i.e. not merely technology, but human
capacity (or ‘labour-power’) itself - have finally developed and
matured, only then can the old order be replaced by a new higher
social relation (communism). And this is possible for the majority of
humanity only as a result of revolution.
With the development and advance of automation, capitalism
finally achieves its ‘historic mission’. With the new (and rapidly
developing) hardware and software technologies, with the advance
of automated control systems and telecommunications, with the
progress of biotechnology, and the many other forms of objectified
human productive knowledge and activity, the objective (material)
conditions for the complete satisfaction of every need of the entire
humanity are finally becoming fully developed. With these we are
now entering the age of automation, the ‘stage’ when ‘the material
productive forces’ of capitalist society ‘come into conflict with the
existing [value-RR] relations of production’ (Marx).
However, the age of automation leading to capitalist breakdown is
an age pregnant with hope and despair, with revolution and
counter-revolution.
Notes and References

Introduction

1. K.Marx: Theories of Surplus Value, Part I, London: Lawrence & Wishart,

1969,p.153.
Ze K.Marx: Capital, vol.I, London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1970, pp.314 and
320-1.
‘Even from the standpoint of this purely formal relation — the general
form of capitalist production, which is common both to its less devel-
oped stage and to its more developed stage - the means of production,
the material conditions of labour ... do not appear as subsumed to the
labourer, but the labourer appears as subsumed to them. He does not
make use of them, but they make use of him. And it is this that makes
them capital. Capital employs labour.’ Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, I,
1969, p.390, emphasis in the original.
See G.A.Cohen, ‘Forces and Relations of Production’, in B.Matthe
ws
(ed.): Marx: A Hundred Years On, London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1983,
p.129, my emphasis.
Ibid., p.129, my emphasis.
Ibid.
See ibid., p.128.
Ibid., p.130.
Ibid., p.129.
See A.Gorz, Farewell to the Working Class, London: Pluto Press, 1982,
pp.14-15.
. Ibid., p.15.
Ibid., pp.26-7.
. Ibid., p.27, my emphasis.
. Ibid., my emphasis.
- See K.Marx: Grundrisse, trans. M.Nicolaus, Harmondsworth:
Penguin
Books, 1973, p.325, my emphasis.
. Ibid., my emphasis.
. See Gorz, 1982, p.28.
- See Marx, Capital, 1, pp.487-8, my emphasis.
. See H.Braverman: Labor and Monopoly Capital, New York and
London:
Monthly Review Press, 1974, see footnote on p.231.
See Capital, I, p.488.
. Ibid., my emphasis.
. See Gorz, 1982, p.76.
. See ibid., pp.75-89.
. Ibid., p.87, my emphasis.
. Ibid., p.87.

196
 Notes and References 197
. Ibid., p.125.
. Tbid., p.87.
. Ibid., p.15.
. Ibid., p.33.
Ibid., p.87.
. See ibid., p.115.
. Ibid., p.116.
. Ibid.
. See A.Toffler: The Third Wave, London: Pan Books, 1981, p.18.
. See A.Toffler: Previews and Premises, London: Pan Books, 1984, p.103.
. Ibid., p.112.
. See D.Bell: The Coming of the Post-Industrial Society, New York: Basic
Books, 1973, pp.12-13.
. See A.Touraine: The Post-Industrial Society, New York: Random House,
1971, pp.64-9.
. See Z.Brzezinski: Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic
Era, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977.
. See C.Evans: The Mighty Micro, London: Coronet, 1980, p.208.
. See Braverman: Labor and Monopoly Capital, 1974; the quote is from p.58.
On this see Marx, Grundrisse, p.340.
. Ibid.
. K.Marx: Wage Labour and Capital, Marx/Engels Selected Works, in one
vol., London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1970, p.83.
. Braverman, 1974, p.212.
. The quote is from ibid., p.16.
. Although Braverman is well aware of and describes many aspects of
computerization and automation, the limits of his work do not allow
him to see the qualitative distinction between these technologies and
the process of mechanization he describes.
48. Historically the invention of the mechanical clock goes back to medie-
val times in Europe. It was thus only much later that it became a key
instrument of the industrial age. See D.S.Landes: Revolution in Time:
Clocks and the Making of the Modern World, Camb. Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1983.
49. As Jayaweera has argued, ‘we must ... draw a distinction between mere
“inventions” and “technology”’. (See N.D.Jayaweera, ‘Communication
Satellites: a Third World Perspective’, in R.Finnegan, G.Salaman and
K.Thompson (eds): Information Technology: Social Issues, London:
Hodder and Stoughton, 1987, p.201.) Inventions are ‘not organized
expressions of the productive structure’(ibid., p.202); technologies are
necessarily such an expression.

Part I

ie ‘Techniques’, or methods of production and organization of labour,

are nothing but an objectification of human productive knowledge
and experience like technology (although unlike technology they do
not take tangible form); they are, therefore, an essential force of
production.
. See L. Hirschhorn: Beyond Mechanization, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1986, Chap.2; and Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital, 1974,
Chap.9.
198 Capitalism and Automation
Braverman, 1974, p.189.
This is the case, for example, of the self-acting mule developed by
Roberts, 1825-30. The pattern of its action was fixed by the mechani-
cal arrangement of its parts; the carriage that shuttled back and forth
along a track which pulled and twisted the rovings from a bobbin on
to the spindle. See Hirschhorn, Beyond Mechanization, 1986, p.18.
See ibid.
See Marx, Capital, I, p.407.
SA
SENThe skilled machinist, according to D. Nelson (Managers and Workers:
The Origins of the New Factory System in the United States, 1880-1920,
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975, Chap.3) had a supervi-
sory and ‘managerial’ role in the machine shops of the late nineteenth
century in the United States.
See Marx, Capital, 1, pp.407-8.
Ibid., p.409. It was in fact in 1867 that factory legislation came to be
extended beyond the textile industries. See E.J. Hobsbawm: Industry
and Empire, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1969, pp.124-S.
. As Landes puts it: ‘From 1870 on, with the exception of a branch like
steel ... British industry had exhausted the gains implicit in the origi-
nal cluster of innovations that had constituted the Industrial
Revolution.’ The Unbound Prometheus, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1969, pp.234—S.
. Ibid., p.234.
Ibid., p.231; see also Hobsbawm, 1969, pp.129-30.
See D.F.Galloway, ‘Machine Tools’, in C. Singer (ed.), A History of
Technology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958-etc., vol.S,
pp.640-1.
See M.Malloren: The Rise of the Electrical Industry during the Nineteenth
Century, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1943, pp.90-2.
. Hirschhorn, 1986, p.18.
. Ibid., p.19.
Landes, 1969, p.316.
. Ibid., note S.
. This is not to say that this system disappeared with the advance of
mechanization. Capital uses any and all means of increasing surplus
value, but the importance of its different means varies from one phase
of accumulation to another.
. See Marx, Capital, I, p.410.
. See Hirschhorn, 1986, p.20.
. Ibid., p.21.
. See Landes, 1969, p.316.
. See W.E.Leuchtenberg: The Perils of Prosperity, 1914-1932, Chicago:
University Chicago Press, 1958, p.179.
. Hirschhorn, 1986, p.22.
. Ibid., p.23.
Ibid.
. Ibid.
. Braverman, 1974, p.191.
Ibid.
. See D.F.Noble, ‘Social Choice in Machine Design: the Case of
Automatically Controlled Machine Tools’, in D.MacKenzie and
J.Wajcman (eds): The Social Shaping of Technology, Milton Keynes:
Open University Press, 1985, p.111; and Braverman, 1974, p.197.
 Notes and References 199
32. See J.E.Ward, ‘Numerical Control of Machine Tools’, McGraw-Hill
Yearbook of Science and Technology, 1968, New York: McGraw-Hill,
1968; also W.Pease, ‘An Automatic Machine Tool’, Scientific American,
Sept. 1952.
33. According to Braverman, only 1 per cent of machine-tools were
numerically controlled by 1968. See 1974, p.198.
34. See Noble, ‘Social Choice in Machine Design’, 1985, p.111.
35. See F.Lynn, T.Roseberry and V.Babich, ‘A History of Recent
Technological Innovations’, in National Commission on Technology,
Automation and Economic Progress: The Employment Impact of
Technological Change, Appendix, vol.II, Technology and the American
Economy, Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1966, p.89.
36. Noble, 1985, p.111.
37. M.Kidron: Capitalism and Theory, London: Pluto Press, 1974, p.20.
38. Noble, 1985, p.113.
39. Ibid.
40. Braverman, 1974, p.199.
41. See A.Allen and B.Schneider: Industrial Relations in the Californian
Aircraft Industry, Berkeley: Institute of Industrial Relations, University
of California, 1956.
42. Noble, 1985, p.118.
43. See K.Bednavik: The Programmers: Elite of Automation, London:
MacDonald, 1965S.
44. Noble, 1985, p.114.
45. Braverman, 1974, p.199.
46. Ibid.
47. ‘A pattern is a message, and may be transmitted as a message.’
N.Wiener: The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society,
London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1954, p.96.
48. See O.Mayr: The Origins of Feedback Control, Cambridge Mass.: MIT
Press, 1970.
49. Hirschhorn, 1986, p.28. A good, simple example of the feedback loop,
used in a modern chemical plant, is a photocell device which meas-
ures and controls the density of mix between a liquid and a granular
solid in a pipe; see ibid., p.29.
See ibid., Chap.4, pp.34ff.
. Ibid., pp.34-S.
Ibid., p.37.
. D.F. Noble: Forces of Production, New York: Knopf, 1984, p.47.
. Ibid.
. See ibid; and R.Kaplinsky: Automation, the Technology and Society,
Harlow: Longman, 1984.
. The binary or digital system works on the basis of one of two states,
on or off, which is usually denoted by 0 and 1. The significance of this
apparently simple logical system is that it enables the calculation of
any number through the use of a series of switches (gates or bits)
which when ‘on’ would record a value and when ‘off’ would not.
. See R.N.Noyce, ‘Microelectronics’, in T.Forester: The Microelectronics
Revolution, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980, pp.29-41.
58. See Noyce, 1980, p.31.
. See ibid., p.32.
60. See E.Braun, ‘From Transistor to Microprocessor’, in Forester,
Microelectronics Revolution, 1980, p.78.
200 Capitalism and Automation
61. Noyce, 1980, p.38.
62. See H.K.Haffman and H.Rush: Microelectronics and Clothing: The Impact
of Technical Change on a Global Industry, Geneva: ILO,1985.
63. See Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybemetics and Society,
1954, p.57.
64. See Hen Foerster, ‘Epistemology of Communication’, in
K.Woodward (ed.): The Myths of Information: Technology and Post-
industrial Culture, London & Henley: RKP, 1980, p.19.
6S. For an analysis of ‘information’ as commodity, see G.Locksley,
‘Information Technology and Capitalist Development’, Capital &
Class, No.27, Winter 1986, esp. pp.89-91.
66. In a similar sense that we should not confuse the commodification of
labour-power with labour; or the objectification of human capacities,
as in instruments of production (technology, dead labour), with that
of living labour.
. Whether such a restriction of ‘choice’ is an ‘inevitable’ result of objec-
tification or not, is not my concern.
. For an explanation of the distinction between ‘information’ and
‘signal’, see von Foerster, 1980, p.21.
. See Microelectronics, Capitalist Technology and the Working Class,
London: CSE Books, 1980, p.30.
These are only a few examples based on the works of D.Ernst: The
Global Race in Microelectronics, Frankfurt: Campus Verlag,1983; and
C.Antonelli,,Transborder Data Flows and International Business — A
Pilot Study’, OECD Working Paper, Paris: OECD, June 1981.
. See Marx, Capital, 1, Chap. on ‘Co-operation’, pp.322-3, my emphasis.
. Marx, ibid., p.322.
. Ibid., p.368.
. See ibid., pp.418-19.
Ibid., p.419.
For the explanation of the ‘Absolute’ as used here, see Hegel’s Science
of Logic, trans. by A.V.Miller, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1976,
Section Three, Chap.I, pp.530-40.
- For a survey of early literature sce R.M.Bell: Changing Technology and
Manpower Requirements in the Engineering Industry, London: Sussex
University Press 1972.
P.Einzig: The Economic Consequences of Automation, London: Secker &
Warburg, 1957, p.2.
- H.A.Thomas: Automation for Management, London: Gower, 1969, p.6.
Kaplinsky, Automation, 1984, p.20.
. J.R. Bright: Autornation and Management, Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1958.
G.H.Amber and P.S.Amber: Anatomy of Automation, New Jersey,
Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1964.
Kaplinsky, 1984, p.23.
- See, for example: B.Jones: Sleepers, Wake! Technology and the Future of
Work, Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books, 1982; P.Large: The Micro Revolution
Revisited, London: Frances Pinter, 1984; J.Bessant: Microprocessors in
Production Processes, London: Policy Studies Institute, 1982;
G.Friedrichs and A.Schaff (eds): Microelectronics and Society: For Better or
For Worse (A Report to the Club of Rome), Oxford: Pergamon Press,
1982.
85. A.Francis: Technology at Work, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986.
 Notes and References 201
86. C.Gill: Work, Unemployment and the New Technology, Cambridge: Polity
Press, 1985.
87. K.Purcell, S.Wood, A.Waton and S.Allen (eds): The Changing Experience
of Employment: Restructuring and Recession, London & Basingstoke:
Macmillan, 1986.
88. W.W.Daniel: Workplace Industrial Relations and Technical Change,
London: Frances Pinter, 1987.
89. E.Batstone and S.Gourlay (with H.Levie and R.Moore): Unions,
Unemployment and Innovation, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986.
90. J.Northcott (with A.Walling): The Impact of Microelectronics: Diffusion,
Benefits, and Problems in British Industry, London: Policy Studies
Institute, 1988.
91. J.-P.Durand, J.Durand, J.Lojkine and C.Mahieu: L’enjeu Informatique,
Former pour Changer l’Entreprise, Les Meridiens, 1986.
92; See J.Lojkine, ‘From the Industrial Revolution to the Computer
Revolution: First Signs of a New Combination of Material and Human
Productive Forces’, Capital & Class, No.29, Summer 1986, p.123.
93. Ibid., p.125.
94. Ibid., p.123, my emphasis.
9S. See for example: J.E.Hays, D.Michie and Y.-H.Pao (eds): Machine
Intelligence 10, New York: John Wiley, 1982; I.Aleksander and
P.Burnett: Reinventing Man: The Robot Becomes _ Reality,
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984; A.Barr and E.Feigenbaum (eds): The
Handbook of Artificial Intelligence, London: Pitman, 1982.
96. See M.A.Boden: Artificial Intelligence and Natural Man, 2nd edn,
London: MIT Press, 1987, p.478.
97. See E.A.Feigenbaum and P.McCorduck: The Fifth Generation: Artificial
Intelligence and Japan’s Computer Challenge to the World, Brighton:
Harvester, 1983.
98. See J.Weizenbaum: Computer Power and Human Reason: from Judgement
to Calculation, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.
99. See P.H.Winston and K.A.Prendergast (eds): The Al Business: Commercial
Uses of Artificial Intelligence, Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1986;
also D.Michie and R.Johnston: The Creative Computer: Machine
Intelligence and Human Knowledge, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
100. See T.Athanasiou, ‘Artificial Intelligence: Cleverly Disguised Politics’,
in Compulsive Technology: Computers as Culture, T.Solomonides and
L.Levidow (eds), Radical Science Journal, No.18, London: Free
Association Books, 1985, p.14.
101. See D.Ernst, The Global Race in Microelectronics, 1983, p.89.
102. See D.Michie (ed.): Expert Systems in the Micro-electronic Age, Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 1979; R.Davis and D.B.Lenat (eds):
Knowledge-based Systems in Artificial Intelligence, New York: McGraw-
Hill, 1982.
103. On this issue see F.Murray, ‘The Decentralization of Production - The
Decline of the Mass-Collective Worker?’, Capital & Class, No. 19,
Spring 1983; and for a good criticism of the advocates of ‘decentraliza-
tion’, see A.Pollert, ‘Dismantling flexibility’, Capital & Class, No.34,
Spring 1988, especially p.61.
104. K.Marx: The Poverty of Philosophy, New York: International Publishers,
1971, p.133.
10S. Business Week, 14.5.85.
106. See R.H.Ballance and S.W.Sinclair: Collapse and Survival: Industry
 Capitalism and Automation
Strategies in a Changing World, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983,
p.148.
. See A.Sayer, ‘New Developments in Manufacturing: the Just-in-Time
System’, Capital & Class, No.30, Winter 1986, p.63.
. See B.Coriot, ‘The Restructuring of the Assembly Line: A New
Economy of Time and Control’, Capital & Class, No.11, Summer 1980,

. Ibid., p.37.
. See table in ibid., p.37..
. Ibid., p.39.
. Sayer, 1986, p.S1.
. Ibid., pp.51-2.
. Ibid., p.53.
. Ibid., p.S6.
Coriot, 1980, p.36.
Ibid., p.38.
. Sayer, 1986, p.S3.
Ibid., p.52.
. Ibid., p.54.
. Money Programme, BBC2, 21.5.89.
. See Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital, 1974, esp. Chap.4, pp.85-121.
. See CSE Microelectronics Group: Microelectronics: Capitalist Technology
and the Working Class, 1980, p.60.
- Examples of such factories are still only very limited, but they are
indicative of the trend towards full automation of direct material pro-
duction. In France, FMS is already operative in the Renault Industrial
Vehicles at Boutheon, near Lyon. In Germany, MAN has been making
diesel cylinder heads using FMS since the early 1980. In Britain, FMS is
used for the production of aircraft components by the aerospace firm,
Normalliar-Garrett, in Somerset.
Another example suffices to illustrate the tremendous extent of dis-
placement of labour possible. The Yamazaki plant near Nagoya, Japan,
making computerized numerically-controlled lathes and machining
centres, which was built at a cost of about $20 million, functions
during the day shift with only 12 workers and during the night shift
with only one watchman.
126. See K.Chandler, ‘Minos - a Computer Control System for Collieries’,
2nd International Conference on Centralized Control Systems,
London, March 1978; NUM: ‘New Technology in Mining’ (Briefing
Booklet No.6), Sheffield, S.Yorks.; and A.Burns et al., ‘Second Report
on MINOS’, Working Environment Research Group, Bradford
University, 1984; also D.Feickert, ‘Britain’s Miners and New
Technology’, Radical Science, 17, June 1985.
. See Feickert, 1985, p.27.
Ibid.
. See Braverman, 1974.
U.Huws, ‘Terminal Isolation: The Automation of Work and Leisure in
the Wired Society’, in Making Waves, Radical Science, 16, London: Free
Association Books, 1985, pp.14-15.
- Marx, Poverty of Philosophy, 1971, pp.125-6.
 Notes and References 203
Part Il

1.On the latter point see M.Kidron, ‘Two Insights don’t make a Theory’,
Intemational Socialism (ISJ), old series No. 100, July 1977.
Marx, Grundrisse, 1973, p.173.
Grundrisse, p.325.
Ibid., p.705.
See E.Mandel: Late Capitalism, London: NLB, 1975, p.207.
Ibid.
Ibid., p.206.
Ibid., p.208.
ee
oe See Kidron, Capitalism and Theory, 1974, p.81.
ee
ee
See Marx, Capital, 1, p.304.
. Ibid., p.305.
For example, the News International plant at Wapping in London,
now employs about 500 or so workers as against its previous labour
force of over 5,000. For a study of technical changes affecting the
print/newspaper industries see C.Cockburn: Brothers: Male Dominance
and Technological Change, London: Pluto, 1983; also T.F.Rogers and
N.S.Friedman: Printers Face Automation: The Impact of Technology on
Work and Retirement among Skilled Craftsmen, USA: D.C.Heath & Co.,
1980.
See K.Marx: Capital, vol.II, London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1970, p.174.
Grundrisse, p.340.
Lojkine, ‘From the Industrial Revolution to the Computer Revolution
«nig 986, p.112.
. See Marx, Grundrisse, p.543.
Ibid., p.547.
See I.Steedman: Marx after Sraffa, London: NLB, 1977; and his ‘Robots
and Capitalism: A Clarification’, New Left Review, No.151, May/June
1985.
Capital, I, p.217.
Steedman, 1985, p.127, my emphasis.
. The quote is given in P.M.Sweezy: The Theory of Capitalist Development,
New York: MRP, 1970, p.204.
. Capital, III, p.47.
. Ibid., p.158.
. T.Morris-Suzuki, ‘Robots and Capitalism’, New Left Review, No.147,
Sept/Oct 1984; and her ‘Capitalism in the Computer Age’, New Left
Review, No.160, Nov/Dec 1986.
. Ibid., 1984, p.111.
. Ibid., p.112.
Ibid., p.114.
. Ibid.
. Since the mid-1950s, well over a $100bn. has been invested in various
forms of computerization around the world. See M.A.Goetz, ‘A US
View of Software Trends’, Financial Times, 15 June 1981.
See The Economist, 1 March 1980.
Given in D.Ernst: The Global Race in Microelectronics, 1983, p.87.
Ibid., p.89.
. See J.Northcott, The Impact of Microelectronics, 1988.
Ernst, 1983, p.80.
Morris-Suzuki, 1984, p.114.
 Capitalism and Automation
. Ibid.
. Ibid.
. Marx, Grundrisse, p.694.
. See Marx, Capital, II, p.125.
. See ibid., p.126.
. See ibid.
Ibid., p.127.
. Ibid., p.133.
. See Marx, Grundrisse, p.422.
. See H.Draper: Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution, vol.Il, New York &
London: Monthly Review Press, 1978, Chap.2, pp.33-8.
- There is already a significant difference between youth (ages 15-24)
unemployment and adult (over 25), as is evident from the following
table for some Western economies:

Youth and Adult Unemployment 1983

Youth Adult
UK 23.2 8.8
USA 16.4 7.4.
France 21.0 S.7
Germany 10.8 7.0
Japan 4.5 2.4
Italy 32.0 4.7
Canada 19.9 9.6
Australia 17.9 7.1
Source: Employment Outlook, Sept. 1984. pp.33-4

In the OECD countries some 44 per cent of the official unemployed in

1983 were under the age of 25. Around ‘20-30 per cent of the youth
in all the European countries were unemployed by 1985. Most have
never had a job and expect never to find one.’ See J.Kolko:
Restructuring the World Economy, New York: Pantheon, 1988, p.337. In
connection with youth unemployment, it is interesting to note that
according to a study by G. Jehocl-Gijsbers and W. Groot (see
‘Unemployed Youth: A Lost Generation?’, Work, Employment and
Society, Vol.3, No.4, Dec. 1989), based on a survey of Dutch unem-
ployed youngsters (in 1984 and 1986), ‘the greater part of the youth
consider unemployment as a temporary situation: 85 per cent think
that they will find a job one day. To them, being unemployed does
not seem a definite status but something that will pass’ (p.506). With
the advance of automation as unemployment becomes transformed
into unemployability of the youth (and others), however, this belief in
the temporariness of unemployment is shattered, and the objective
condition of unemployability radically begins to effect the values and
attitudes among the young. It is then that a crisis of ideological hege-
mony in capitalist society follows - unemployability, by shattering the
 Notes and References 205
belief in the temporariness of the absence of work and income from
labour, begins to undermine the traditional social and authority rela-
tions, transforming cultural patterns and lifestyles. The process of inte-
gration through socialization, based on the social dominance of wage
labour, becomes precarious, and a ‘counter-hegemony’, the creation of
which was for Gramsci the main task of the socialist movement, can
assert itself as a powerful concrete political force for a revolutionary
transformation of capitalism.
. Kolko, 1988, p.309.
. Ibid., p.310.
. A.Gramsci: The Modem Prince & Other Writings, New York:
International Publisers, 1972, p.118.
. Marx, quoted in Draper, vol.II, 1978, p.488.
. See Kolko, 1988, p.312.
. See D.Leach and H. Wagstaff: Future Employment and Technological
Change, London: Kogan Page, 1986, p.72.
. See H.Brand and J.Drake, ‘Productivity in Banking: Computers Spur
the Advance’, US Monthly Labour Review, 1982, 10S, 12.
. Kolko, 1988, p.312.
. On this point and some empirical verification of this, see C.Harman,
‘The Working Class after the Recession’, in A.Callinicos and
C.Harman: The Changing Working Class, London: Bookmarks, 1987,
pp.53-81; and P.Kellogg, ‘Goodbye to the Working Class?’,
International Socialism, 2: 36, Autumn 1987, 105-11.
. See E.Mandel, ‘Marx, the Present Crisis and the Future of Labour’, in
The Socialist Register 1985/6, p.436.
Mandel gives the total number as 700 to 800 non-agricultural proletar-
ians, plus 200 to 300 agricultural, or around one billion; see ibid.,
p.437.
See N.Harris, ‘The Asian Boom Economies’, International Socialism, 2: 3,
Winter 1978/79, pp.3-4.
Kellogg, 1987, pp.109-10.
. See Kolko, 1988, p.306.
. See OECD Observer, April-May 1987, 14.
. See A.Gorz: Farewell to the Working Class: An Essay on Post-Industrial
Socialism, 1982, p.)5.
. Ibid., p.39.
. Ibid., p.68.
. See ibid.
Capital, |, p.644.
Ibid., p.653.
. See R.Hyman, ‘Andre Gorz and His Disappearing Proletariat’, The
Socialist Register 1983, p.287.
Marx, Grundrisse, p.651.
Given in H.Draper: Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution, vol. 1, New York &
London: Monthly Review Press, 1977, p.130.
Marx, Grundrisse, pp.749-SO, my emphasis.
Gorz, 1982, p.66.
Grundrisse, p.749.
Gorz, 1982, p.74.
Gorz (or perhaps his translator) seems to confuse ‘work’ with labour;
on this see Engels’ footnote, Capital, I, p.186, n.1.
Grundrisse, p.715S.
 206 Capitalism and Automation
des As Marx wrote: ‘The automaton, as capital, and because it is capital, is
endowed, in the person of the Capitalist, with intelligence and will; it
is therefore animated by the longing to reduce to a minimum the
resistance offered by that repellent yet elastic natural barrier, man.’
Capital, I, p.403.
78. Ibid.
79% This is a process that had begun from the early days of the rise of
modern industry. ‘It is only’ in the US, as Marx wrote, ‘that the
abstraction of the category “labour”, “labour in general”, labour sans
phrase, the starting point of modern political economy, becomes real-
ized in practice.’ A Contribution to the Political Economy, Chicago:
Charles Kerr & Co., 1911 edition, p-299 (see also Grundrisse,
pp.104-S).
Marx, ibid.
Marx, Grundrisse, p.410.
Ibid., p.411.
. The quoted sentence is from Marx, Capital, I, DSi
See A.Gramsci: Selections from the Prison Notebooks, London: Lawrence
& Wishart, 1971, p.275.
. See Marx, Capital, I, p.737.
On this see I.Wallerstein: The Modern World-System, New York:
Academic Press, 1974.
See D.Campbell and S.Conner, ‘Surveillance, Computers and Privacy’,
in R.Finnegan, G.Salaman and K.Thompson (eds): Information
Technology: Social Issues, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1987,
pp.140-1.
See M.Aglietta, A Theory of Capitalist Regulation, 1987, p.181.
Kidron and Gluckstein, ‘Waste: US 1970’, in Kidron, 1974, p.41.
For the details of the re-structuring of international relations
see
M.Kidron, ‘Imperialism: Highest Stage but One’, 1974;
and also
N.Harris, ‘Imperialism Today’, in N.Harris and J.Palmer
(eds): World
Crisis: Essays in Revolutionary Socialism, London: Hutchinson,
1971.
- The quote is from Kidron, ‘Black Reformism: the Theory
of Unequal
Exchange’, in Capitalism and Theory, 1974, p.114.
- See A.Mattelart, ‘Infotech and the Third World’, Radical Science, 16,
1985, p.28.
See J.Rada: The Impact of Microelectronics. A Tentative Appraisal of
Information Technology, Geneva: ILO, 1980; also
Rada, ‘Information
Technology and the Third World’, in T.Forester (ed.),
The Information
Technology Revolution, 1985.
See R.Kaplinsky, ‘Micro-Electronics and the Third World’, Radical
Science Journal, No.10, 1980.
See Rada, ‘Information Technology and the Third World’,
1985, p.575.
See K.Hoffman and R.Rush, ‘Microelectronics and
the Garment
Industry: not yet a Perfect Fit’, in R.Kaplinsky: Compar
ative Advantage
in an Automating World, Bulletin of the Institute
of Development
Studies, Vol.13, No.2, Brighton, 1982.
See R.Sciberras: ‘Technology Transfer to Developing
ies -— Countr
Implications for Member Countries’ Science and Techno
logy Policy’,
Television and Related Products Sector Final Report,
Paris: OECD, 1979.
Kaplinsky, Automation, 1984, p.161.
D.Ernst, The Global Race in Micro-Electronics,
1983, p.184.
100. See J.Rada, ‘Technology and the North-South
Division of Labour’, in
 Notes and References 207
Kaplinsky (ed.), Comparative Advantage in an Automating World, 1982,
see pp.12-13.
101. On this see M.Kidron, ‘Imperialism: the Highest Stage but One’, and
‘International Capitalism’, in his Capitalism and Theory, 1974,
pp.124-67.
102. See G.Locksley, ‘Information Technology and _ Capitalist
Development’, Capital & Class, No.27, Winter 1986, p.101.
103. For an excellent analysis and explanation of biotechnology, see
E.Yoxen: The Gene Business: Who should Control Biotechnology?,
London: Pan Books, 1983.
104. See Kidron, ‘Capitalism: the Latest Stage’, in Capitalism and Theory,
1974, p.18.
10S. Yoxen, The Gene Business, 1983, p.26.
106. The quotations are from Kidron, ‘Black Reformism: the Theory of
Unequal Exchange’, in Capitalism and Theory, 1974, p.114.
107. Kaplinsky, ‘Microelectronics and the Third World’, RSJ, 10, 1980, p.48.
108. Rada, ‘Information Technology and the Third World’, in Forester ed.,
1985, p.577.
109. See Mattelart, ‘Infotech and the Third World’, 1985, p.32, my
emphasis.
110. See Daniel Bell’s: The Coming of Postindustrial Society, London:
Heinemann, 1974.
111. K.Kumar: Prophecy and Progress: The Sociology of Industrial and Post-
Industrial Society, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1986, pp.230-1.
112. See T.Morris-Suzuki, ‘Capitalism in the Computer Age’, New Left
Review 160, 1986, p.88.
113. The quoted sentences are from Morris-Suzuki, ibid., p.89.
114. Marx, Grundrisse, p.748, my emphasis.
11S. Marx, Capital, Ill, p.213.
116. See Marx, Grundrisse, pp.750-1.
117. See Kidron, Capitalism and Theory, 1974.
118. Capital, III, p.249.
119. See Kidron, 1974, p.82.
120. See ibid., pp.19-20.
121. Ibid., p.22.
122. Ibid., pp.22-3.
123. On this see C.Harman: Explaining the Crisis. A Marxist Re-appraisal,
London: Bookmarks, 1984, p.40.
124. Ibid., p.100.
12S. See Marx, Capital, Ill, p.253.
126. See Marx, Capital, I, p.215, note 1.
127. J.Weeks: Capital and Exploitation, London: Arnold, 1981, p.214.
128. R.Dunayevskaya: Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and Marx’s
Philosophy of Revolution, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1982, p.45, emphasis
in the original.
129. Ibid.
130. Marx, Grundrisse, pp.340-1.
131. Ibid., p.341.
132. See J.Weeks, 1981, p.214: ‘from the process of accumulation itself
there is no reason to predict or expect a final crisis that because of its
severity will for economic reasons alone result in the collapse of the
capitalist system ... ’
133; See Marx, Capital, I, p.578.
 Capitalism and Automation
- Marx, Capital, III, p.398, my emphasis.
. Ibid.
- Marx, ibid., p.398.
. Marx/Engels: Manifesto of the Communist Party, Selected Works, 1970,
p.45, my emphasis.
Marx, Grundrisse, p.604.
- Marx, ibid., p.375.
‘The value of the fixed capital is ... never an end in itself in the pro-
duction of capital.’ Marx, ibid., p.739.
. Marx, ibid., p.749.
. Ibid., p.712.
‘Aufheben’ is translated by Nicolaus, in the Grundrisse, as ‘suspension’;
however ‘sublation’ or ‘to sublate’, seems to me to express the philo-
sophical meaning of ‘aufheben’ far better (on this see Hegel’s Science of
Logic, 1976, pp.106-8).
. Marx, Grundrisse, p.543.
. See Marx/Engels: The German Ideology, Collected Works, vol.5, London:
Lawrence & Wishart, 1976, p.48.
. Which ‘are themselves results of its [capital’s-RR] production process’.
Marx, Grundrisse, p.749.
- On the concept of ‘permanent revolution’ see Draper, Karl Marx’s Theory
of Revolution, vol.II, esp. pp.242-9.
. I have taken this notion of ‘class individual’ which is from The German
Ideology, p.78, from H.Marcuse: Reason and Revolution, London: RKP,
1968, see pp.289-90.
- Marx/Engels, The German Ideology, p.87.
. Ibid., p.80.
Ibid., p.49.
. Ibid., p.80.
. See ibid., p.87.
- Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, see Selected
Works, 1970, p.182.
Marx/Engels, The German Ideology, p.88.
Index
abstract labour, 95, 142
and mechanization, 141-2
and microelectronics, 143-4
negation of, 141-4, 195
Amber, G.H., and Amber, P.S., 61
American Clearing House Interbank
Payment System (CHIPS), 83-4
appropriation, 11, 15, 16, 17, 44, $1,
52, 146, 147, 150, 153, 178, 193
form of, 98-9, 194
politics of, 16
arms production, 32, 181-3
artificial intelligence, 22, 23, 58, 65,
76, 78
Athanasiou, T., 65
aufheben, 192
Automatically Programmed Tools
(APT), 43
batch production, 37, 38, 63, 79, 80
Batstone, E., and Gourlay, S., 62, 63
Bell, D., 14, 135, 137, 176
biochip, 77
biotechnology, 170
Braverman, H., 11, 18-20, 33, 42, 43
Bright, J.R., 61
Brzezinski, Z., 14
bureaucracy, 86
bureaucratic organization, 87, 88,
150-1
Campbell, D., and Conner, S., 151
central processing unit (CPU), 49, 54
centralization, 127, 138-9, 163, 167,
177
circulation time, 124-8
class conflict, 15, 18, 89, 160
class struggle, 7, 15, 19, 107, 148,
156, 165, 195
Cohen, G.A., 6-7
communication, 22, 32, 50, 51, 5S,
64, 125, 146, 147
interactive, 154
mass technological, 152
and satellite, 150
systems of, 21, 54, 152
computer, 6, 18, 20, 30, 43, 48, 53,
54, 64, 65, 79, 80, 83, 85, 150, 151
computerization, 2, 15, 53, 64,
66, 125, 183
neural, 76
computer-aided design (CAD), 75,
142
computer-integrated manufacturing,
63, 64
conception, process of, 61, 75-8, 111
consensus politics, 152, 154
control, 16-20, 23, 37, 38, 42, 43,
44, 67, 68, 97, 133, 151, 159, 160,
172
class control, 16, 22, 23
centralization of, 78
directly political, 154
externalization of, 17-18, 20, 39,
$8, 59
managerial, 58, 61, 85-90
mechanical system of, 33-9
social, 20-3, 58, 127, 150-4
technical, 17, 58
control loop, 44-S
crisis, 1, 18, 31, 34, 104, 123, 134,
135, 139, 156, 163, 165, 166,
180-8
cycles of, 120, 123, 179, 180
of surplus value production, 134,
135, 139
permanent, 123, 127, 139
crisis of ideological hegemony,
145-9
CSE Microelectronics Group, 54
Daniel, W.W., 62, 63
democracy, 146, 153, 154, 155, 162
Direct Numerical Control (DNC), 79
 210 Index
domination, 15, 16, 18, 24, 42, 148,
153, 157, 163, 172
class, 29, 155
directly political, 23, 155
imperialist, 165-6
state-political, 153
Draper, H., 129
Dunayevskaya, R., 187
Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT), 84
electronics, 6, 32, 40, 46, 47, 48, 49,
64, 79
Ernst, D., 65, 113, 169
expert systems, 56, 65, 77, 113
feedback, 44-6, 50, 68, 72, 73
Feigenbaum, E., 65
fibre-optic, 77, 79
fixed capital, 4, 68, 69, 79, 107, 118,
122, 125, 142, 170, 181, 191
moral depreciation of, 119
Flexible Manufacturing System
(FMS), 79-80, 82
Foerster, H. von, 51
Fordism, 184, 185-6
Gorz, A., 7-8, 135, 136-7, 138, 140-1
Gramsci, A., 133, 148
Harman, C., 184
Hirschhorn, L., 35, 36, 38, 45
Hoffman, H.K., and Rush, H., 50
Hoilerith machine, 86-7
Huws, U., 88
Hyman, R., 138
Inbuilt Machine Performance and
Condition Testing (IMPACT), 82
indirect labour, 43, 49, 58, 59, 64,
65, 111, 113
Industrial Revolution, 17, 24, 27,
30, 56, 66, 101, 102
inference engine, 77
information, as message, 44, 52, 53,
182
commodification of, 52
competition for, 153-4
and signal, 52, 54
information technology, 2, 20-3,
54, 62, 64, 146, 159, 166, 167,
168, 172, 173
and surveillance, 151
input/output devices, 54-5
integrated circuit, 49
integrated workstation, 88
intelligent machines, 22
Just-in-Time system, 67, 69, 71-3, 122
Kaplinsky, R., 61, 62, 168, 169, 171
Kellogg, P., 136
Kidron, M., 41, 161, 182
Kolko, J., 132, 134
Kumar, K., 176
Landes, D., 34, 36
Less-Developed Countries (LDCs),
136, 167, 169, 170, 171, 173
Locksley, G., 169
Lojkine, J., 64—S, 107
machine tool, 34, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42,
79, 80, 81
magnetic-ink character recognition
(MICR), 83
Mandel, E., 102-3, 135, 136
mass production, 37, 63, 124, 156
Mattelart, A., 167, 174
Methodology for Unmanned
Metalworking plant, 80, 105
microprocessor, 49, 53, 54, 79, 185
military competition, 31, 32, 41, 42,
48
military-industrial complex, 31, 39,
182
miniaturization, 49, 54
Mine Operating System (MINOS),
81, 82
Ministry of International Trade and
Industry (MITI, Japan), 76, 80
Modular System, 69, 71-3, 122
Morris-Suzuki, T., 111, 177
nation-state, 149-56, 161, 162
neo-proletariat, 8, 12-13
Newly Industrializing Countries
(NICs), 92, 136, 167, 169, 170
Noble, D.F., 40, 41, 42, 43
numerical control, 39-44, 79, 80,
183, 185
office automation, 87-8
optically bi-stable devices, 77
parasitic growth, 127, 163, 165, 190
pauperization, 9, 127, 144, 177, 190
permanent arms economy, 41, 49,
165, 183

perpetual innovation, 114-16, 119,
120, 179
Policy Studies Institute, 62, 63, 115
polytechnic workers, 9-11
positive profit, 107-10, 176, 191
post-industrial society, 7-16, 93,
174, 176, 178
production time, 120-3
productive capital, 85, 95-6, 110,
170, 177
productive forces, 1-7, 24, 53, 100,
102, 103, 137, 163, 176, 193
development of, 4, 18, 106, 187
fettering of, 2, 6, 187, 188
freezing of the development of,
103
material, 1, 2, 3, 8, 10, 18, 19,
100, 102, 129, 133, 180, 187, 188,
195
maturity of, 2, 3-7
productive knowledge, 66, 133
as Capital, 78, 133
proletariat, composition of, 130-1
definition of, 129-30
revolutionary role of, 7, 9,
136-41
Rada, J., 168, 169, 171
rate of profit, 115, 139, 170, 180-3
fall in the, 163, 181, 184-5, 186
reserve army of labour, 131, 154,
157, 180
tobot/robotics, 18, 63, 65, 79, 101,
108, 110, 142
Sayer, A., 71, 72, 73
scientific management, 17, 65, 86
Sciberras, R., 169
software, 43, 44, 53, 55, 65, 66, 67,
111-12, 172
application and utility, 54
Index 211
problem of realization of value of,
113, 116-20
production of, 65, 78, 111
social obsolescence of, 115
technology of, 51-4, 112, 185
transfer of value, 114-15
unity with hardware, 54-9
state capital, 152, 158, 159, 161, 166
Steedman, I., 108-9
sublation of capital, 192-3
superfluous population, 92, 128,
145, 149, 173, 175, 190
Taylor, F.W., 37
Taylorism, 45, 66, 122
technical composition of capital, 7,
59, 101, 109, 175
technique, 18, 19, 31, 45, 100
technological determinism, 30-1,
147-8, 173
technology as capital, 4
telecommunication, systems of, 18,
20, 85, 152
Toffler, A., 14
Touraine, A., 14
unemployable, 128, 131-2, 137-8,
190-1
Universal Product Code (UPC), 84
Ure, A., 57
use value, 4, 95, 100, 117, 119, 183
wage-labour, definition of, 129-30
waste, economic, 160-2, 181
Weeks, J., 186, 188
Weizenbaum, J., 65
welfare state, 156-60
Wiener, N., 51
work ethic, 138, 145, 146, 147
Yoxen, E., 170
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Can the further development and app
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Previous studies of the automation revolt

to this question, or to the problematic of linking tne‘quantanve craravicrisues
of these new technological developments with the issue of value and surplus
value production. The study presented here is intended as an attempt to
examine this problematic.

The main thesis of Capitalism and Automation is that the technological system
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material productive forces under capitalism.

Ramin Ramtin argues convincingly that automation’s greater application and

diffusion will inevitably heighten the inherent contradictions of the existing
social system — drawing the controversial conclusion that this will result in
the breakdown of the capitalist mode of production, and bring about a
social revolution.

Ramin Ramtin has specialised and published in the social history of ancient
and modern Middle East, and is currently researching social aspects of
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