Date: Sat, 25 Jan 1997 11:57:52 -0700 From: Hans-AT-pseud.pseud Subject: M-INTRO: The fall of the Soviet Union OBONE wonders whether the downfall of the Soviet Union might be attributed to improved information technology. The flow of information was indeed tightly controlled in the Soviet Union. OBONE hypothesizes that these constraints in the relations of production collided with the improved technology to disseminate information, and that this led people to overthrow the Soviet system. This would be an explanation of the downfall of the Soviet Union by a contradiction between productive powers and relations of production, as Marx defines them in the Preface of the "Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy." The problem with OBONE's explanation is that it assumes *too direct channels* for the assertion of these contradictions. People will not simply throw away their social structure and create turmoil and uncertainty, in order to get better newspaper or TV or an email account. And the relations of production usually have quite sophisticated mechanisms to protect themselves against dissent. In order to give you an idea how *varied* and *indirect* the expressions of a contradiction between productive powers and relations of production can be, I want to make a case here that improved information technology is undermining *capitalist* relations of production. I can think of at least 7 different mechanisms: (1) big corporations have computerized econometric models of their markets; which allow them to use scientific marketing procedures to manipulate the markets. This makes the markets increasingly unable to allocate social labor in an efficient way. (2) Computerized financial markets are too fast and frictionless, overreacting to the slow-moving and often localized underlying economic conditions. They create financial crises and prevent national macroeconomic policies. (3) The system of private property rights is undermined because information is so easy to copy. Copyright laws simply cannot keep up with this. (4) The flow of information to the masses was in the past controlled by a few big publishing corporations, which gave the News a pro-capitalist slant. New technology allows alternative channels for News and therefore a better-informed public. (5) The capitalists have always been organized and centralized; better information technology also allows the working class to organize. (6) Computerized democracy gives the population a real influence on the political process, and the old-fashioned capitalistic representative ballot-box democracy is exposed for what it is: a mechanism to create majority consent for an economic system that benefits only a minority. (7) The introduction of computers in Cuba and the other remaining socialist countries greatly improves the performance of their planned economies. However varied these factors are, they all can be considered expressions of the contradiction between capitalist relations of production, which are mass-based in an abstract way but benefit only a few, and an information technology which allows the masses to really come together and determine their own destiny. All these mechanisms together work to undermine and de-legitimize the capitalist relations of production. This may have the effect that anti-capitalist organizations, which nowadays are tiny sects, grow to become mass movements which are able to overturn the capitalist system. --- from list marxism-intro-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005