Doug, I wonder if we wouldn't be better advised to think of the technology as a social relation (much the same way the Marx thought about manufacturing) and to understand the technology's influence on other social relations. >Posted on 29 Apr 1997 at 12:50:16 by TELEC List Distributor (011802) > >[PEN-L:9708] Re: Globaloney > >Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 09:48:42 -0700 (PDT) >Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >From: Doug Henwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >Michael Eisenscher wrote: > >>But it would be as grave an error to ignore the >>qualitative, not just quantitative impact these technologies have had on the >>capacity for capital mobility, reorganization of the labor process, control, >>and the options these open for capital which were not available 30 or 40 >>years ago. > >I don't think the transformations wrought by chips and fiber optics are >underappreciated by anyone, mainstream or radical. In fact, I think too >much attention is paid to them, at the expense of some very old underlying >social mechanisms (competition, profit maximization, etc.). I'll admit that >some of my attack on globalization thinking is done in the spirit of former >Economist editor Geoffrey Crowther's maxim for journalism, "simplify and >exaggerate," but it's needed. It's understandable why bourgeois analysts >would want to promote globalization and system-transformative technical >change; liberal (U.S. sense) apologists like Columbia's Graciela >Chichilnisky say that the knowledge revolution has made notions like >ownership and even capital obsolete. And I guess postmodernists like the >idea of an epistemic break between then and now; it makes it easier to >dismiss Marxism and to stop thinking about social relations, or to treat >social relations as entirely discursive. But radicals should, I think, >follow Larry Summers' advice and dispense with "the breathless tone about >technology." > > >Doug > >-- > >Doug Henwood >Left Business Observer >250 W 85 St >New York NY 10024-3217 USA >+1-212-874-4020 voice +1-212-874-3137 fax >email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >web: <http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/LBO_home.html> > > Marsh Feldman Phone: 401/874-5953 Community Planning, 204 Rodman Hall FAX: 401/874-5511 The University of Rhode Island Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Kingston, RI 02881-0815
