The science and technology revolution

By Gus Hall

This article was reprinted from the April 4, 1998 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

The scientific and technological revolution is changing our world at a dazzling pace. The new technology is molding the future.

The revolution is bringing with it advances in production, communication, transportation - in almost every area of human activity.

Scientific and technological advances affect the struggles in politics, ideology and economics and the class struggle. The scientific and technological revolution has a tremendous impact on the work of our party and the entire world Communist movement.

The big change in our party's recruiting patterns, including that so many are joining via the Internet, is a sign of the times. The fact is that we are the only party on the left that is growing so fast.

This is in no small measure due to the fact that our party is accurately reflecting the impact of the scientific and technological revolution. We are also becoming part of it and, of course, we project solutions to make life better under capitalism as well as providing a socialist vision of the future.

The elimination of the anti-Communist clauses in the AFL- CIO constitution, and the big changes in the trade union movement, especially in the top leadership, are also big factors in the party's growth, expanding influence and prestige.

What it is

The scientific and technological revolution is significantly affecting all economic and social relationships. It is having an impact on the process of the world transition from capitalism to socialism.

And, most importantly, it will bring on the next crisis of capitalism. The new crisis will be a result of, and molded by, the revolution in technology.

Until now there were inventions that made production by human labor more efficient. But today's advanced technology is based on replacing human hands and minds. Machines replacing human labor on a mass scale will bring on the next crisis of capitalism.

Why? Because under capitalism the continually higher level of productivity is bringing with it an escalating level of unemployment and pauperization, while at the same time it is making the rich richer and giving the transnationals huge profits.

No sooner is a technological advance created, produced and applied than another is already on the drawing boards to replace it. That's how fast the world revolutionary process in science and technology is changing.

Keeping up with this has become a daily challenge. It is safe to say that the scientific and technological revolution will be felt on the scale of the harnessing of steam, electrical and atomic energy.

What is the nature of this new technological revolution? The basic kernel of this breakthrough was the development of the transistor and the integration of many transistors onto a microelectronic chip. The chip is made of silicone wafers imprinted with millions of transistors and other components, creating vast and complex integrated circuits.

The chip is one-quarter the size and thickness of a postage stamp. Today's integrated circuits, though small in size, can have more computational power than machines that used to fill whole rooms and buildings.

These tiny chips are revolutionizing the world of communications, of the production process, of home appliances, calculators, etc. The "mighty chip" makes industrial assembly lines (without human hands) a reality. The microprocessors automate controls not only over production lines, but also research and design work.

For example, General Motors just announced that with the use of computers they have cut six months off the 36 months it used to take to design, develop and produce a car.

They eliminated a whole layer of engineers, designers and administrators, and cut 12 percent off the production cost of the vehicle. Because workers never see this savings, the end result is bigger profits for the stockholders and even bigger bucks and bonuses for the executives.

By the end of this year, GM, using even more advanced computer designs, projects cutting another six months in the process. But the U.S. is still way behind the Japanese who take only 18 months for the same process.

Chips and robots are making possible whole auto production facilities untouched by human hands, except for the very few, very highly skilled workers it takes to operate the computers.

The development of the chip has by no means reached its ultimate potential. The latest technology now in use provides up to 200 million transistors on a single chip processing almost a billion events per second. Furthermore, trends show that by the year 2012 chips could contain up to 750 million transistors each and process 10 billion events per second.

At the projected rate of advance, within 25 years we can expect that a single computer will have more computing power than all the computers operating in Silicon Valley today combined.

What it means

New and exotic technologies are being developed at the same time the more established ones are perfected. New technologies exploit different physical processes like biomechanics or quantum mechanics in order to create a whole new level of speed and miniaturization. Not all new technologies will be revolutionary, but some certainly will be.

The direct cause of the next crisis of capitalism will be the mass replacement of human labor by new technology, by computers and robots. At a certain qualitative point, this process will set off a crisis of the whole system, one that capitalism cannot solve. It is one more reason why capitalism is the past and socialism is the future.

Already, corporate downsizing, mass layoffs, plant closings, moves to lower-wage, non-union regions and globalization are creating mass unemployment and a part- time, sweatshop work force.

For example, corporations are laying off thousands, hundreds of thousands, and forcing the remaining workers to work faster for less.

These unprecedented numbers being thrown into the ranks of the unemployed changes the very nature of unemployment, of the unemployed, and thus raises a whole new question for the trade union movement. Add to this the creation of the part-time work force and the problem becomes monumental for the trade union movement and the whole working class.

In the main, corporate downsizing decisions are driven by the flow of profits. Soon, these decisions, still profit- driven, will be motivated even more by the availability and practicality of highly advanced computers and robots.

Until recently many millions of union workers felt they had guaranteed lifetime employment. Today, U.S. workers have no job security of any kind. They have lost all confidence in the system, in the future.

Besides tremendous insecurity, this is producing tremendous resentment and anger in the form of anti-corporate, anti- capitalist sentiment and a radicalization process that makes workers, especially, open to revolutionary concepts such as a new socialist system to replace capitalism.

Next crisis of capitalism

Under capitalism, the higher level of productivity is resulting, simultaneously, in a high level of joblessness and poverty. As the new technology produces advanced automated and computerized systems, layoffs and plant closings will vastly increase.

One company might have three plants in three different countries. As daylight fades in one country, a button is pushed and production starts with the second shift in the next country as the sun rises. Again, as the sun goes down in the second country, another computer in another country starts the third shift. All three shifts are "worked" by about six employees.

The capitalist system cannot deal with this new technology because capitalists use and abuse the technology strictly on the basis of maximum profits. It is a system of anarchy and dog-eat-dog competition that has no place for planning, cooperation, human labor or human welfare.

Capitalist production is unplanned and chaotic because that is the nature of capitalism. Advances in science and technology create leisure and wealth for the ruling class, unemployment and poverty for the working class - profits for the ruling class, nothing for the working class.

New vision of socialism

To fully take advantage of advanced technology for the good of society requires a planned economy that takes into consideration both the level of production and the level of consumption. Socialism and the scientific and technological revolution fittogether hand-in-glove.

Socialism is a scientifically planned and operated economic system that eliminates private profits. It eliminates private corporations. It is a system owned and run "of, by and for" all the people. It is a humane system concerned first and foremost with meeting the needs of the people.

Thus, it can make decisions to research, investigate, discover and invent and apply without considering profitability, but only the practicality and benefit for the people and society as a whole.

Each new technological breakthrough means an advance for the people in a socialist society. The increase in production is passed on to the people by way of wage increases. When machines replace workers the hours of work are cut, without any real cut in wages.

There are no competing, antagonistic interests or classes. War is no longer profitable and all the scientific efforts poured into weapons of destruction can be turned toward creating science and technology for sustaining and nourishing life, for curing diseases and disabilities, for making life better and for learning more about it.

Under socialism, the work force of a newly mechanized factory would simply be retrained and relocated. The costs involved in making these major adjustments, in machinery, technology and human labor come out of social profits, the profits that were once privately confiscated - stolen - by the ruling class through exploitation of labor.

Socialism is in harmony with new, advanced technology. Socialism is the only system that can utilize technology for the benefit of all the people.

Under socialism, the scientific and technological revolution creates greater career possibilities and more leisure time for workers. Technology enables society to assign the dirtiest, hardest jobs to machines and robots, while humans will increasingly do the work that requires creativity and ever-higher skills.

Advanced technology creates a totally integrated production process. It requires workers of a different kind. Capitalism can't produce the workers needed to run the new technology.

Already, public education that was necessary to create a better educated and skilled work force for the industrial age is being destroyed by capitalism because the system no longer needs more mass production workers, but instead only a much smaller technological elite.

We have a big challenge before us: to recognize, understand and integrate the scientific and technological revolution into an updated vision of socialism, USA.

The scientific and technological revolution makes it possible to project a new kind of socialist future that was not foreseeable until now.

The Communist Party USA is the only force in this country capable of creating the new vision of the inevitable socialist future. It is a vision whose time has come.