Capitalism, Technology, Labor

Socialist Register Reader Vol 2

Greg Albo, Leo Panitch, Alan Zuege

• Publisher: Haymarket Books
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781642592146
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Communism, Post-Communism & Socialism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Socialist Register has been at the forefront of intellectual enquiry and strategic debate on the left for five decades. This expertly curated collection analyzes technological innovation against the backdrop of the recurrent crises and forms of class struggle distinctive to capitalism. As we enter what some term the "fourth industrial revolution" and both mainstream commentators and the left grapple with the implications of rapid technological development, this volume is a timely and crucial resource for those looking to build a political strategy attentive to sweeping changes in how we produce goods and live our lives.

NOTES

The Economics of Neo-Capitalism

1Fully developed in “Die langen Wellen der Konjunktur,” Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik (Tübingen) 56:3 (December 1926), pp. 573–609.

2Leon Trotsky, The First Five Years of the Communist International, Vol. 1 (New York: Pioneer Publishers, 1956), pp. 201, 205–6.

3The “boom” of the civilian electronics industry has been mainly sustained by military orders, e.g., in the United States.

4“Statistiques Industrielles,” OSCE 3–4 (1963).

5One should add that the change in the structure of popular demand, with the proportion of the family budget devoted to buying food declining rapidly, is an additional explanation of some aspects of the boom (for instance, the greatly increased demand for durable consumer goods). Of course, this has been compensated by a permanent crisis in agriculture.

6Some striking examples of wrong forecasts: the Belgian ministry of Economic Affairs, under the influence of the Suez crisis, thought that coal output would have to be increased from 30 to 40 million tons; it was, in fact, reduced from 30 to 21 million tons within a few years’ time. The fourth French “plan” foresaw a big increase in refrigerator output, and it discounted foreign competition; in fact, Italian imports have cut French output by nearly 25 percent.

7Other examples from Western Germany: the precision industry just kept its output from 1961 to 1962; but employment fell by 2.3 percent. The iron and steel industry increased its output by 7.9 percent between 1960 and 1962 but reduced total employment by 2.8 percent; the musical instruments and sports equipment industry increased its output by 22.7 percent between 1956 and 1962, but employment fell by 6.3 percent. All these employment figures are global, i.e., they apply to the sum total of manual workers, white-collar workers, and technicians. The fall in production workers’ employment is of course much greater.

8US News and World Report, May 25, 1956, and March 11, 1955.

9Günter Friedrichs, Automation und technischer Fortschritt in Deutschland und den USA (Frankfurt: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1963), p. 127.

1011e rapport general sur l’activite de la Communaute (ler fevrier 1962 – 31 janvier 1963), EU Commission working document (Luxembourg: May 1963), available at aei.pitt.edu/40270/.

11Agence Europe, “Les problèmes de l’industrie automobile européene en 1963,” Documents 179, January 4, 1963.

12Thomas Balogh, Planning for Progress, Fabian Tract 346 (London: Fabian Society, 1963), pp. 46–47.

Professor Galbraith and American Capitalism

1John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1967), p. 427.

2Galbraith, The New Industrial State, pp. 74–75.

3Galbraith, The New Industrial State, pp. 71 and 69.

4The fact that power is “obscured” (if it is a fact) would not, one would have thought, mean that it does not exist, but simply that it is more difficult to perceive, which is something very different.

5Galbraith, The New Industrial State, p. 268.

6Robert Sheehan, “Proprietors in the World of Big Business,” Fortune, June 15, 1967, p. 178.

7Sheehan, “Proprietors,” pp. 179, 180, 182.

8Gabriel Kolko, Wealth and Power in America (New York: Praeger, 1962), p. 13. See also C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (New York: Oxford, 1956) and Don Villarejo, “Stock Ownership and the Control of Corporations,” New University Thought 2 (Autumn 1961 – Winter 1962). For Britain, a survey of share owning, published in 1955, showed that directors of companies held shares to an average value of twenty-eight thousand pounds, and that this was the largest average holding of all the groups about which information was available (Bulletin of the Oxford Institute of Statistics, November 1965, cited in Perry Anderson and Robin Blackburn, eds., Towards Socialism [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1965], pp. 116–17).

9Robert L. Heilbroner, “The View from the Top: Reflections on a Changing Business Ideology,” in Earl F. Cheit, ed., The Business Establishment (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1960), p. 25.

10Earl F. Cheit, “The New Place of Business: Why Managers Cultivate Social Responsibilities,” in Cheit, The Business Establishment, p. 178.

11Adolf A. Berle and Gardiner C. Means, The Modern Corporation and Private Property (New York: Macmillan, 1932), p. 84.

12Clive S. Beed, “The Separation of Ownership from Control,” Journal of Economic Studies (University of Aberdeen) 1:2 (1966), p. 31, original emphasis.

13Villarejo, “Stock Ownership,” p. 52.

14Beed, “Separation of Ownership,” note 22.

15Beed, “Separation of Ownership,” p. 32, original emphasis.

16Galbraith, New Industrial State, p. 93.

17The argument that there is no display of greed and graspingness would seem a poor basis for the claim that it does not exist. It could, after all, be that “greed and graspingness” are now simply less ostentatious, better concealed, not least by a vast public relations industry of which many academic economists appear to be honorary members.

18Carl Kaysen, “The Social Significance of the Modern Corporation,” American Economic Review 47:2 (May 1957), pp. 313–14.

19C. A. R. Crosland, The Conservative Enemy: A Programme of Radical Reform for the 1960s (Anne Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962), pp. 88–89.

20Industry and Society: Labour’s Policy on Future Public Ownership (London: Labour Party, 1957), p. 48.

21Sheehan, “Proprietors,” p. 242. See also my earlier references to gains through stock options and Villarejo, “Stock Ownership,” Part 3.

22Kolko, Wealth and Power, p. 65.

23Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy, Monopoly Capital (New York: Monthly Review, 1966), pp. 39–40.

24Kaysen, “Modern Corporation,” pp. 313, 315.

25Sheehan, “Proprietors,” pp. 183, 242.

26James S. Earley, “Contribution to the Discussion on the Impact of Some New Developments in Economic Theory: Exposition and Evaluation,” American Economic Review 47:2 (May 1957), pp. 333–34.

27Galbraith, New Industrial State, pp. 162, 163, my emphasis.

28Galbraith, New Industrial State, p. 163.

29Galbraith, New Industrial State, pp. 138, 141, 161.

30Galbraith, New Industrial State, pp. 356, 105.

31Galbraith, New Industrial State, pp. 229, 341, my emphasis.

32Galbraith, New Industrial State, p. 345.

33John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1958), p. 254, my emphasis.

34Galbraith,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Contents
• Capitalism, Technology, Labor: An Introduction
• The Economics of Neo-capitalism
• Professor Galbraith and American Capitalism
• André Gorz and His Disappearing Proletariat
• Marx, the Present Crisis, and the Future of Labor
• “Competitive Austerity” and the Impasse of Capitalist Employment Policy
• The Making of a Cybertariat? Virtual Work in a Real World
• No-Collar Labor in America’s “New Economy”
• A Tale of Two Crises: Labor, Capital, and Restructuring in the US Auto Industry
• Crisis as Capitalist Opportunity: The New Accumulation through Public Service Commodification
• The Walmart Working Class
• Reconsiderations of Class: Precariousness as Proletarianization
• Class Theory and Class Politics Today
• Notes
• Back Cover