Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 20:14:54 +0100
From: James Heartfield <James-AT-heartfield.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Nuclear Power and fetishism......


>KARL: These remarks of yours suggest that capitalist technology is neutral and 
>does not have inscribed on it, in its very physicality, the very capitalist 
>relations that spawned it. The capitalist conditions under which modern 
>technology has emerged  necessarily leaves its fingerprints all over that very 
>technology. 

Surely, the whole point of Marx's critique of political economy is that
you can distinguish between the historically specific relations of
production: exchange value, wage, surplus value, profit, rent etc on the
one hand, and those general conditions of use-value production in human
societies, use-value, production, consumption-fund, surplus product. AS
presented to us these are aspect of one and the same process, but Marx's
critique aims to separate them off ideally, as a prelude to separating
them of in fact, by organising social production differently.

You seem to be saying that production per se is indistinguishable from
capitalist production - in which case Marx's critique is redundant.

>If, as you claim, capitalism
>
>"held back from developing industry to its full potential, because it was 
>cheaper to use labour under exploitative conditions (insofar as labour is not 
>renumerated at the value it creates);"
>
>then it must follow that the character of technology is, in itself, coloured by 
>these very capitalist conditions under which it emerged.
>
No. That only follows in the negative sense that industrialisation has
been limited in its scope, or held back by the narrow motive of
augmenting profit. Without that constraint, we might expect to see a far
greater application of existing technology, and a further extension of
new technology. Who knows, nuclear fission might well seem like steam
power to a society that was not constrained by profitablity.


>If technology is introduced as a labour-saving device then this must determine 
>the character of that technology, as sheer technology. 

I am sorry but you have lost me there. I just fail to understand how the
development of plastics, destructive as that was for the employees of
the gutta percha and rubber industries, means that somehow plastic is
somehow inherently capitalistic.

>This being so it follows 
>that the negative character of capital is physically inscribed  on that 
>technology. This being so the quality of technology will be distinctly different 
>under comminism.

Well I certainly hope that the quality of technology would improve under
communism, but unlike the benighted Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, we
won't have to start from year Zero, and will inherit the very best
products of capitalist industry - the very point that Marx was amking in
that passage form the Communist Manifesto. Or did you think that he
disapproved of the electronic telegraph, steam power, and the
cultication of whole continents?

>
>JAMES: There may well be a case against nuclaer power in technical terms - I for 
>one would be interested to hear it. 
>    
>If, as you intimate above, there may be a case against nuclear power in 
>technical terms then contained in your argument is an untenable contradiction. 

I don't think so.

>You are admitting that capitalist technology is not necessarily neutral
>and that 
>it can bear negative technical features because of its capitalist
nature.
>

No. I am saying that technical considerations of the efficacy of any
production process can be considered quite separately from its social
application. For example, the larger, helium-filled air-ships of the
early century were abandoned as an inherently impractical and dangerous
form of flight. Nothing to do with capitalism. Just a technical
question.

On those latter points. I quite agree that weapons, in general and
nuclear weapons especially, serve no useful purpose except to a society
premissed on social conflict. But you might still need explosives, for
mining, rockets for sending up communications' satellites and so on.
Nylon was invented to make parachutes during war-time, radar to detect
enemy planes. It does not follow that these technologies could not be
put to more positive ends. 

Finally, you object to my earlier comment that value (exchange value
that is), does not have an atom of matter in it. I should have
referenced the remark: 'The value of commodities is the very opposite of
the coarse materiality of their substance, not an atom of matter enters
into its composition.' Karl Marx, Capital, Vol 1, Ch 1, Section 3, p 54
of the Progress Publishers edition. Value fetishism?

Re Louis and John Gillott's article. I don't doubt John will be thrilled
to here that his article on Chernobyl has been posted here, but Louis
should not be so scandalised that a Marxist publication should swim
against the tide of public opinion.

All the best
-- 
James Heartfield


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