Technology and Labor saving devices increase the productivity of Labor so capitalists, the owner of the means of production and of the human Labor power used in the process can produce more while reducing Labor costs.
There is an obvious problem in this of course which jumps right out at you. If more commodities are produced using fewer workers might this not lead to a problem in the sales department? As it is the payment we receive from the capitalist for use of our Labor power (our wages) that allows us to purchase the commodities we make, both necessaries and luxuries; won’t laying us off and replacing us with machines or other technology, lead too to few dollars chasing too many goods? I think so.
There is an obvious problem in this of course which jumps right out at you. If more commodities are produced using fewer workers might this not lead to a problem in the sales department? As it is the payment we receive from the capitalist for use of our Labor power (our wages) that allows us to purchase the commodities we make, both necessaries and luxuries; won’t laying us off and replacing us with machines or other technology, lead too to few dollars chasing too many goods? I think so.
Capitalism as an economic system has developed these highly efficient productive forces that have far outstripped the economic and social infrastructure that as I Richard Katz pointed out in Foreign Affairs in a previous blog “Manufacturing mirrors farming: just a tiny sliver of the work force can now feed the entire country.”
The crisis we face throughout the world, disease, poverty, hunger, not to mention endless warfare and environmental destruction, all this is a result not of our inability to feed people, cure them or them having too many babies as the Malthusians claim. The catastrophe’s that people face in their everyday lives are a product of how society is organized. The problem is that the production of human social needs, the process of production and all the elements of that process including the finished product is a private enterprise and not a social one and the object of such a private enterprise is to make profit fir tis owners, to exit the process with more money than you put in to it. That’s called capitalism.
For a collective, democratic socialist system of production we would still produce a surplus, the same surplus that is the source of the capitalists profit and accumulated billions. But how we manage that surplus, use and distribute it would be different as would be the process during which it is produced, our work lives.
Every step the capitalists take toward increasing technological innovation gets them further and further in the hole and brings more and more misery to the vast majority of humans on the planet. I see they are focusing their beady little eyes on vending machines as a very lucrative venture for the future.
The new technology here u=is the Machine to Machine Management Center (M2M) that coordinates all the activities of the new, suped up vending machines that will have the ability to determine the gender of the user through facial recognition software. The new vending machines will not be like their older kin; no coins, just cards. The new breed will be “wireless enabled machines sending real-time messages to the Machine to Machine Management Center about any problem” writes Business Week. Vending machines have traditionally been useful in that few employees are needed except during mechanical failures or when they need to be re-stocked. But the new technology and centralized management will allow for fewer employees therefore reduced Labor costs as the machines communicate through the management center.
The new technology here u=is the Machine to Machine Management Center (M2M) that coordinates all the activities of the new, suped up vending machines that will have the ability to determine the gender of the user through facial recognition software. The new vending machines will not be like their older kin; no coins, just cards. The new breed will be “wireless enabled machines sending real-time messages to the Machine to Machine Management Center about any problem” writes Business Week. Vending machines have traditionally been useful in that few employees are needed except during mechanical failures or when they need to be re-stocked. But the new technology and centralized management will allow for fewer employees therefore reduced Labor costs as the machines communicate through the management center.
“It’s a fragmented industry but here is so much we can bring to it with this platform” says Alexandra Sotereanos Sneeed who BW describes as a “Retail and hospitality solutions expert.” You would think that a “hospitality” expert might be something you would want your child to become but this type of hospitality expert works for Verizon (What happened to that strike of 45,000 workers?) and is engaged in figuring out how to maximize surplus value, that value over and above the cost the capitalist lays out for wages and the source of their profits.
The prospects are endless. Imagine the airport late at night when “when airport boutiques are closed and planeloads of connecting executives flood the concourse….” Business Week writes, “…that’s the smart retailing moment to sell a $50 tube of luxury skin moisturizer.” With the push of a button, the consumer can get the product information and other details. The owners of the machines simply pay Verizon a monthly fee for use of the machines and M2M system that coordinates automatically all the activity between the machines including when they need stocking or malfunction.
The new vending machines have the ability to guess the users age and gender and recommend products to them. Aren’t we lucky? Capitalism can do all this but can’t feed a couple billion people. Even in the mighty US as I wrote the other day, half of all single mothers without a high school diploma live in poverty.
The issue is not that technology is a bad thing. The problem is that those who do the productive Labor in society, the working class, do not own this technology. The answer to Labor saving devices like the self checkout at grocery stores which is a job killing device under capitalism and leads to the unemployment line and should be avoided, would, in a democratic socialist system of production mean less hours of Labor, more leisure and more time to participate in the organization of work and the rational planning of society’s needs.
The issue is not that technology is a bad thing. The problem is that those who do the productive Labor in society, the working class, do not own this technology. The answer to Labor saving devices like the self checkout at grocery stores which is a job killing device under capitalism and leads to the unemployment line and should be avoided, would, in a democratic socialist system of production mean less hours of Labor, more leisure and more time to participate in the organization of work and the rational planning of society’s needs.
New technology is not a bad thing, we want to own it not smash it. We’re not Luddites.
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