Page 8 RAIN December 1976 (Courtesy E. F. Schumacher: and Satish Kumar, editor, Resurgence. U.S. subscriptions are $10 surface mail, $15 airmail, from Resurgence, Pentre Ifan. Felindre, Crymych, Dyfed, Wales, U.K.) / ( Few people deny that technological change has political con- , sequences ; yet equally few people seem to realise that the · present 'system,' in the widest sense, is the product of technology a.nd cannot be significantly changed unless technology is changed. The question may be asked: What is it.that has proquced mode·rn technology? Various answers can be given. We may go back to the Renaissance, or _even further, to the arising of Nominalism, and point to certain changes in Western man's attitude to religion, science, Nature, and society, which then apparently released the intellectual energies for modern technological development. Marx and Engels gave a more direct explanation: the rising power of the bourgeoisie, that is, 'the class_ of modern capitalist, owners of the means of social production, and employers of wage labour.' The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his 'natural superiors,' and has left no other bond between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous 'cash payment'... It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production. · Th'e bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities . .. has agglomerated population, centralised means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. If the bourgeoisie did all this,·what enabled it to do so? The answer cannot be in doubt; the creation of modern technologies. ~Once a pr~cess of technological development has been set i,n motion it proceed~ largely by its own momentum irrespective of the intentions of its originators. It demands an appropriate 'system,' for inappropriate systems spell inefficiency and failure. Whoever created modern technology, for whatever purpose, this technology or, to use the Marxian term, these modes of production, now demand a system that suits them, that is appropriate to them. Society in crisis As o.ur modern society is unquestionably in crisis, there must be something that does not fit. . (a) If overall performance is poor despite brilliant technology, maybe the 'system' does not fit. (b) Or maybe the technology itself does not fit present-day realitid,.including human nature. 1 Which of the two is it? This is a very crucial question. The assumption most generally met is that the technology is all right--o·i tan be put right at a moment's notice'- but that the 'system' is.so faulty it cannot cope: Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange and offroperty, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means o production and of exchange is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to cont~ol the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells ... The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by the enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other by the conq'!lest of new markets and by the more thorough exploitation pf the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means by which crises are prevented." (Marx and Engels: Manifesto ofthe Communist Party, 1848). The culprit is the Capitalist System, the Profit System, the Market System, or, alternatively, nationalisation, bureaucracy, democracy, planning or the incompetence of the bosses. In short: we have a splendid train but a bad track or a rotten driver or a lot of stupid, unruly passengers. Maybe all this is quite true, except that we do not have such a splendid train a;t all. Maybe what is most wrong is that which ~as been and continues to be ~he strongest formative force-the technology itself. If our technology has been created mainly by the capitalist system, is it not probable tha.t it bears the marks of its origin, a technology for the few at the expense of the masses, a ,technology of exploitation, a technology that is class-oriented, undemocratic, inhuman, and also unecological and non-conservationist? Uncritical docility .· . I never cease to be astonished at the docility with which people-even those who call themselves Socialists or Marxists -accept technology, uncritically, as if technology .were a part of Natural Law. As an ex.ample of this''docility' we may take the Prime Minister of Iran who is reported to have said in a recent interview (To the Point International; January 12, 1976): . There are many aspects of the West that we particularly wish to avoid in the industrialisation of Iran. We seek the West's technology only, not its ideology. What we wish to avoid is an ideological transplant. The implicit assumption is that you can have a technological transplant without getting at the same time an ideological transplant; that technology is ideologically neutral; that you can a<;quire the hardware without the software that lies be- ~ind it, has made the hardware possible, and keeps it moving. Is this not a bit like saying: I want to import eggs for hatching, but I don't want chicks from them but mice or kangaroos? I do not 'wis~ to overstate th~ case; there is nothing absolutely clear-cut m this world, and, no doubt, many different tunes can be played on the same piano, but whatever is played, it will be piano music. I agree with the general meaning of Marx's rhetorical question:-"Does it require deep intui,tion to comprehend that man's ideas, views. and conceptions-in a
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