On Technology and
Consciousness: a reply to Raoul
The text of Raoul,
"Visibility of the Revolutionary Project and New Technologies", is a
welcome contribution toward the articulation of an answer to the most crucial
questions asked to us: How revolutionary desire can capture the imagination of
the working class, of humanity?
For orthodox Marxism, the answer to
this question starts with the conflict between the development of the prodcutive forces and the relations of capitalist
production which must lead to a higher stage in the development of human
society: communism. This is posed as a law, valid not only in the present but
throughout history. Personally, I never understood the essence of this "law",
that is to say, that which connects the decadence of slave, feudal and
capitalist societies. But, at the empirical level, it should be noted that
indeed, in each case (even if there is a danger of exaggerating the
similarities) the development of the productive forces creates a new
revolutionary class which seizes power in society, in spite of the fact, that
the old dominant class organized this in terms of the conservation of its own
power. The revolutionary class manages to seize power when it sees its potential
capacity. It is thus, indeed, a question of visibility.
I speak of class, because it is the
essential element of the productive forces. One cannot speak of the productive
forces without speaking about the working class nor of
the working class apart from the productive forces. The question is thus not so
much how technology evolves, but how the working class evolves. Both are
connected, of course. For orthodox Marxism, technological development clashes
with the conditions of valorization, which drives the crisis,
economic collapse, which convinces the proletariat to liberate itself from its
chains. Unfortunately, that lead many of these
orthodox Marxists to focus their critique of capitalism on its so-called
incapacity to increase the economy, and to lead to present communism as a
superior model of growth (under their management, of course). It is on this
design that the "traditional" theories on the decadence of capitalism
(from Trotsky and Luxemburg to the ICC and the IBRP) are based. Arriving at the
fatal point X, capitalism cannot accumulate any more,
therefore, the undeniable need to continue production, causes the revolution. Too easy, much too easy. Even with the party added as a
catalyst. And especially, denied by history. If one recognizes that since the
first world self-destruction of capital, a new context is presented for capital
and for the proletariat, that one calls "decadence" while waiting for
a better term, it is necessary to recognize also that during this time, the
capacity of world capitalism to increase the economy did not disappear, and
that the temporary interruption of growth does not guarantee the revolution.
It is comprehensible that at the
beginning of decadence, this productivist vision was
credible, but today it is manifest that it is not a lack of productivist
argument. But by rejecting this argument, one does not reject the materialist
position on consciousness, one does not deny that the conditions that the
proletariat undergoes, determine, not what must occur, but what can occur. It
thus should be hoped that these conditions evolve in a way favorable
to the development of revolutionary consiousness. Any
position, which ignores the conflict between the productive forces and
relations of production, is not materialist.
Raoul insists that the visibility of the
need is not enough, that the possibility also must be visible. He is right, but
again, that is say, that initially, the revolutionary class must be visible to
itself. In this respect, it is difficult to see technological development as favorable. It seems to me, on the other hand, that the
changes on the level of the recomposition of the
working class., the decentralization of the places of work, etc. have a very
negative side for the capacity of the class to recognize itself, at least, for
the moment. It is this difficulty which weighs heavily on the class struggle
and which makes some believe that there is no more working class as a
revolutionary subject, that our fate is in the hands of the
"multitudes". It is not by chance that the techno-determinist, Marcuse, is again a la mode, and contradictory.
Of course, the effect of technology
is a lot more complex, and contradictory. I agree with the analysis of Raoul on the fact that information technology can make more
visible the possibility of a world based on non-commodity relations. The
technological evolution develops for the proletariat some new obstacles, but
also new opportunities. One cannot conclude from it that it determines an
ineluctable revolution, nor and ineluctable defeat.
Once again, let me reconsider the
validity of the concept of the conflict between the productive forces and the
relations of production as motor of the development of revolutionary
consciousness. The productivist interpretation of
this concept being largely accepted in the revolutionary marxist milieu; the debate was especially on the
question if the revolutionary party is the essential ingredient or an obstacle
in this "ineluctable" process.
Those who reject both can be brought
to also reject the connection between capitalist crisis and awakening of
proletarian consciousness. For Aufheben, quoted with
approval by Christian, "to consider history in terms of contradiction
between the development of the productive forces and existing social relations, is to take the point of view of capital. If it is
true, the Communist Manifesto and a lot of other fundamental texts of the
revolutionary movement are capitalist documents. By affirming the opposite, I
also think that the Manifesto and other deserving texts should be criticized
for their determinist vision, the idea that communism is the ineluctable result
of economic development to which the proletariat becomes the heir. Why would
that be the case? Because capitalism arrives at a point of
irreversible collapse? The theoretical arguments for such a position are
null and void and rejected by historical experience. Because
communism would be more intelligent, more human, more pleasant? As if
they were the only criteria determining the choices that humanity made
throughout its history. What is ineluctable, is that
capitalism goes through terrible economic crisis to which it will react by
causing a massive destruction (it does it already). As JW writes, it is a pity
that the only thing which is not ineluctable, is the
revolution. He jokes, but he is right.
The revolution is not ineluctable,
because it can be only one human choice. One cannot predict the future of
humanity. If human beings are robots up to a certain point, they are also much
more. I do not suggest "free will" given by a god, but a complexity to
which the simplistic Marxists "law" do not do justice. But does the
rejection of determinism also imply a denial that the objective conditions
determine consciousness? Does it imply the negation of the position which
affirms that the objective conditions for the revolution ripening through the
demonstration (negative) of its necessity (collapse of the capitalist economy)
and the demonstration (positive) of its possibility (by the presence of
material conditions necessary, there include technology)? This is what
Christian seems to think when he denies that the development of labor productivity in capitalism was necessary so that
communism becomes possible. In my opinion, he leaves materialism and founders
in a romanticism when he affirms that "Communism
will not recover the productive forces of capitalism to liberate them and to develop
them."IT WILL RAZE IT "(my loose
translation). It is almost a religious vision, with technology in the role of
Satan.
Christian is right when he affirms
that technology is not neutral. It is deeply impregnated by capitalism, by the
law of the value. The capitalist social relations do not exist apart from it,
but are inside. Communism cannot simply recover it just as it is and change its
goal, but it will not make tabula rase either. Let us avoid simplistic radicalism. It is
easy to see only unfavorable aspects in the
development of technology: its destructive application, reification, commodification, the isolation
that it imposes on us more and more, in work as well as in our "free
time"... this tendency can hardly be seen as facilitating the revolution.
For a vision which is only based on that, the observations of Raoul are a welcome antidote. Such contradictory analyses
can be made and both be correct (but too limited and thus
incorrect) because the dynamics of the development of technology, and the
productive forces in general, is contradictory too. There is of course nothing
ambiguous in connection with the direction in which capitalism leads this
development: intensification of exploitation, increase in its totalitarian
control, etc. But the inherent contents of this development are more complex.
On the one hand, technology is, perhaps from its origin and certainly as of the
Middle Ages, the fruit of a vision of reality as
subject of control, of manipulation. It develops and is spread with the law of
the value, and according to the latter. Its evolution, narrowly bound,
culminates in the real domination of capital, where all is manipulated, all is
quantified, all becomes capital. But this capital is
valorized always with more difficulty, there includes variable capital, which
means the rapid growth of the multitudes of human becoming valueless objects.
The whole of humanity was transformed into capital and this capital is on a
bloody race of devalorization.
Information technology is the most
thorough expression of this dynamic. It pushes the tendency to the interiorization of work in the machine, with the
integration of "spare time" in the market, with the penetration of the
law of the value in all aspects of life. Since this tendency becomes
increasingly more present, its effects on class consciousness must be too.
Nothing can be understood, if this question is avoided.
But there is not only that.
Information technology is also the most thorough expression of the inherent
tendency of technological development to make production increasingly more
social, collective, interdependent, worldly, and to require a proletariat
increasingly informed, educated, literate. Information technology makes the
world more connected, increasingly more dependent on the free transmission of
information. That makes it impossible for the dominant class to remove the
expression and the communication of ideas, in spite of its totalitarian
instincts. It is also the most thorough expression of tendencies which result
from the fact that under the real domination of capital, the creation of real
wealth (use values) and the capitalist creation of wealth (exchange value) are
disconnected and follow separate ways: tendencies to overproduction and
valueless production. All these characteristics have in common that they
exacerbate the conflict between the productive forces and the relations of
production, between the working class and the social relation which is capital, its institutions and reasons; conflict
which tends to make more visible the possibility of revolution.
Concerning the
tendency to valueless production: the more information technology and
automation develop, by the same fact, the more this tendency is accentuated. An increasing number of commodities
exists only as information. Independently of the
quantity of value which created them in their original form, their reproduction
- their transmission is practically valueless. The value of the original must
be recovered by selling the copies with a broad excessive profit, but this is
only possible if the salesman has a monopolistic position on the market. Since
its commodities are easy to copy, this one is difficult to maintain. The
exchange is not sanctioned automatically any more by the market, it must be
protected by the capacity of state. The more important information technology
becomes in the economy, the more pronounced will become this projection of
power. In broad measure, the foreign politics of the
Although the point of production
remains the principal battlefield between the old and the new world, there are
others. The Internet is also a battlefield, where the capitalists continuously
try to lock us up in isolation of the consumer, and the proletarians (for the
majority) continuously try to use the new opportunities to create non-commodity
relations. It goes without saying also that the proletarians in struggle, in the
factories and offices as well as in the streets, will fully use the means of
communication at their disposal (they do it already) and that information
technology has largely increased these means.
All things considered, in this
debate, I share neither the position of those who see only negative aspects in
information technology , nor the position that makes
it the condition which finally will open the door to revolution. In this
respect, I pose questions concerning the framework in which Raoul
locates his observations. In this text, it is rather implicit, but I remember
some discussion on decadence in which he (and others of the
The analysis of Raoul
on new technology could serve as a realization of this vision "one was
mistaken when it was thought that capitalism was condemned to stagnation since
1914, that it had developed all the productive forces that it could contain and
that the era of the revolution had thus begun. In fact, it is only today that
it develops the productive forces necessary so that the revolution becomes
possible." In this vision also is integreted an
over-estimatimation of
Sander
August 2005