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Computers and Capitalist Economics
Computers were
born and developed under capitalism. How have computers served the interests
of those with the means to promote their spread? And what subversive
byproduct capacities, if any, do computers have?
Under
capitalism, owners and managers are eager to use new technologies that can
mystify work, disempower employees, and replace potentially rebellious
workers with machines that don't talk back. Similarly, technologies with
military applications are welcome in militaristic societies and technologies
that strengthen surveillance techniques are welcomed by those atop all kinds
of hierarchies. In short, if a new technology can help dominant elites
maintain their advantage, it will be promoted by those elites. Even a cursory
survey of the history of computer advances makes clear their overwhelming
dependence on military financing.
Obviously-when
armed with software that replicates rote human behavior, that accelerates
functions essential to profitmaking, or that allows data retrieval critical to
social control, military radar, or targeting-computers meet the needs of
capitalists, politicians, and military elites well placed to promote their
production and dissemination. Promoted by these interest groups, it should be
no surprise when computers disenfranchise workers by further fragmenting
production tasks, allowing more effective oversight and control, fostering
the use of new kinds of equipment, and making weaponry even more lethal.
Computers are
"mutations" potentially well
suited to the environment in which they were born. If further development and
dissemination of their hardware and software is regulated so that no
disruptive characteristics emerge, certainly computers will reproduce
patterns of life familiar to capitalist, racist, sexist, and authoritarian
societies.
But what if
the development of computers takes a different turn? What if, in addition to
features that appeal to the various elites of contemporary societies, they
also have byproduct capabilities serviceable to oppressed groups? Indeed,
even in the U.S. we can see emerging uses for computers that seem contrary to
the reasons why elites championed them in the first place.
At the level
closest to the top, some technocrats are beginning to argue that computers
would allow them to greatly
streamline social functions if only restraints currently imposed by property
owners could be removed. Further down the hierarchy, hackers are poking
around in data banks of companies whose owners and managers want privacy. Increasingly aware of how easily it
can be provided, employees are demanding access to computer records-partly to
make more strategic demands regarding pay and conditions, partly because they
think they might be able to do a more humane job of running their workplaces
than their employers.
Some people
are already talking about computers allowing a decentralization of decision
making and redefinition of job patterns. The millions who own personal
computers are developing important skills capable of demystifying the work of
intellectuals. Will there be computerized distribution of books and journals
to all citizens under capitalism? If yes, then everyone will have easy access
to vast amounts of information and knowledge. Will large numbers of people
become familiar with how computers work and develop some programming
capabilities? If yes, it will be harder to use computers to mystify
illegitimate authority. Unless most people can be prevented from attaining
this access to computer technology - a real possibility in the contemporary U.S.-
this could certainly be a subversive development.
Are these
liberatory potentials subversive of capitalist relations insignificant when
compared with the mystifying and fragmenting effects of computers? Or are
they significant byproducts that could abet important changes in social
relations? A lot depends on how social groups other than capitalists and
political elites struggle to define the uses and distribution of computers.
In the worst
scenario, computers will become a tool of repression and regimentation in an
Orwellian future. They will make thuggish fascism obsolete by making slick
fascism more effective. Everything anyone reads, owns, or says will come
under big brother's scrutiny. But this needn't be the case.
Computers and Coordinator Economics
The major
difference between capitalist and coordinator economies is that in the former
the currency of economic power is property, while in the latter it is
information. In capitalism, the ruling class rules because it owns the
material means of production. In a coordinator economy, control over
knowledge empowers the coordinator economic elite. In the coordinator
economy, whether allocation is by central planning or markets, coordinators
are responsible for the vast majority of economic decisions. They monopolize
information critical to making decisions and skills associated with
controlling hierarchical work settings. They also claim a disproportionate
share of society's produced output for themselves.
In many ways
the uses of computers in coordinator societies are similar to their uses
under capitalism, though in the former case the coordinator class no longer
functions at the behest of a class of owners. As economic chieftains they
work not to maintain property relations and profit margins for owners but to
maintain their own monopoly on information and skill as their means of
appropriating a disproportionate share of social output and power. Like
capitalism, coordinator economies can come in more or less totalitarian
forms. To date we have seen the more totalitarian versions in which most
intellectuals and professionals are excluded from access to most important
information. While many of these coordinator societies are currently
reverting to capitalism, it is still unclear where the Soviet Union and China
are headed. And, in any case, if social democratic trends persist, we may see
transitions from more to less authoritarian coordinator forms in Europe's
future. The point is that computers can fit into this setting even if they
are accessible to all intellectuals and administrators, so long as they are
kept from other members of society.
So whereas
capitalists want computer science to advance the old capitalist goals,
coordinators want computer science to rationalize society under the sway of mystified
knowledge they monopolize. The two economic systems have different
characteristics. But neither serves the interests of ordinary workers and in
both computers are primarily tools of elite control. From the workers'
perspective the struggle between coordinators and capitalists is ultimately a
fight between two factions of the "haves." The struggle could be
over whether massive advertising and aggressive marketing, as at IBM, or
technocratic creativity in product design, as in smaller companies, will
determine success in high-tech industries-a very interesting contemporary
example of coordinator versus capitalist struggle within capitalist
society--or over economic structures themselves. But what if the non-elite
began to struggle over the definition and dissemination of computer
technologies? What difference might that make?
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