File spoon-archives/marxism-intro.archive/marxism-intro_1997/97-02-04.192, message 77


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.



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