Raise the Hammer

Technology has long been a competitor of workers for jobs. It was a huge focus of the labour struggles for the first half of the last century, and much of the time before.

The problem with technology is that it enters the workplace in the position of resources and capital. Since workers don't own the machines or the company - they're put in a position where the machines directly 'threaten their jobs'. If that machine replaces the work of 10 workers, those workers are simply let go. Since most people don't really have much of a stake in the company they work for other than being paid to do a specific task, once that task is met more cheaply, they've got nothing.

A further problem arises, and I suspect this goes toward explaining the greater drop in efficiency Smith mentions - these machines are also capitalist products. Thus, like any car or appliance built after 1980, they're designed to break and cost money. Talk to anyone who runs an office about computers, printers and other such technology. We were supposed to have a "paperless society" by now, weren't we?

To see both of these factors at work, look at agriculture. The "Green Revolution" made farming far more efficient in terms of labour, but not financially, or in terms of energy and resources. The machines and chemicals which replaced farmhands came with a whole host of unmentioned side-effects, like soil degradation and pesticide resistance which led to cycles of increasing dependence. Average Canadian small farmers now make less than no money on a yearly, and the picture's no better globally.

I'd like to say that I that going back to 'a world made by hand' would solve all of this, but it wouldn't. We'd have work, but it'd be long and hard. What we need instead is a system where new technologies (where appropriate) enrich everyone in a workplace. And that can only come by decentralizing ownership and control.