Abstract
This chapter aims to demonstrate that both for the economy as a whole and for each of its sectors, it is possible to outline the main features of current capitalist practice, the implicit requirements for a socialist alternative, and the degree to which the conditions for satisfying these requirements are already present. In short, a society-wide shift to cleaner and more sustainable technologies is already conceivable. The distinctive contribution of socialism lies not in any particular inventions that might emerge but rather in the reorganisation of society in such a way that technological choices are no longer made on the basis of marketability and profit-potential, but rather on the basis of compatibility with the overall requirements of humanity and the natural world. There is nothing ‘inevitable’ about such a socialist transformation; nonetheless, what works in favour of this constructive response is the emerging recognition that doing nothing - letting current trends run their course - spells disaster.
This is an updated version of an article which was originally written for Toward a New Socialism, eds. Anatole Anton and Richard Schmitt (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007), and which appeared with minor revisions in Capitalism Nature Socialism, 17, 2 (June 2006). The present version is published with the permission of Lexington Books and of Routledge Journals – Taylor & Francis (the publishers of CNS). I wish to thank Karen Charman, Milton Fisk, Joel Kovel, Ronald Price, Richard Schmitt, and David Schwartzman for their comments.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Under this principle, products have to be proven safe before they are marketed. See Multinational Monitor2004.
- 2.
An expression of this is the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements founded in 1972, which held its 15th World Congress in 2005. See http://www.ifoam.org.
- 3.
In ‘On the immediate tasks of the Soviet government’ (1918), Lenin regretfully but firmly calls for emulating the industrial discipline of what he terms ‘state capitalism’ as then practiced in Germany.
- 4.
- 5.
See, e.g., Joffe-Walt 2005. Prisoners within the U.S. are also used for computer recycling.
- 6.
This goal is in part suggested by Chinese practice in the 1960s, when the enterprise was a site for general cultural development of its workers (Richman 1969: 723).
- 7.
See also the detailed study by Eric Williams of the United Nations University of Japan (Williams 2004) and the ongoing monitoring done by the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (http://www.svtc.org).
- 8.
Grossman 2007: 60; my italics. Williams notes (2004: 6166) that the ratio of fossil fuel use to product weight is approximately ten times as great for computers as for ‘many other manufactured goods’.
- 9.
Marx wrote that the worker ‘only feels himself [i.e., feels human] outside his work’ (Marx 1964: 110); we can now similarly say that the MUD addict only feels fully human outside real life, in the ‘virtual’ world.
- 10.
Rippin, H. (2005). The mobile phone in everyday life.Fast Capitalism 1,1, from http://www.fastcapitalism.com.
- 11.
Eyewitness accounts of the November 2003 demonstration in Miami against the Free Trade Association of the Americas; see Manski 2004: 250.
- 12.
See especially Miller 2007. The manipulation of the decisive Ohio vote in 2004 was taken to an even higher level in November 2005, when referendum proposals to reform that state’s electoral procedures were defeated by margins that diverged from pre-election surveys by as much as 28 percentage-points. See Fitrakis and Wasserman 2005.
- 13.
Witness U.S. efforts to undermine the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chávez, whose victory in the 2004 recall vote was both more decisive and less tainted by fraud than was the victory of George W. Bush in U.S. elections the same year. See http://www.cartercenter.org/documents/2020.pdf and http://www.venezuelanalysis.com
- 14.
See Wilkinson 2005and also the medical research papers of Nancy Krieger online at www.hsph.harvard.edu/faculty/NancyKrieger.html.
References
Akre, J. (2002). The fox, the hounds, and the sacred cows. In K. Borjesson (Ed.), Into the buzzsaw: Leading journalists expose the myth of a free press(pp. 37-63). Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
Anderson, L. (1999). Genetic engineering, food, and our environment. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Co.
Blum, W. (2003). Killing hope: U.S. military and CIA interventions since World War II.Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press.
Bowring, F. (2003). Science, seeds and cyborgs: Biotechnology and the appropriation of life. London: Verso.
Box, D., et al. (2005). The end of cheap oil. The Ecologist,35(8)(October), 36-53.
Box, D., et al. (2006). Peak oil forum. World Watch, 19(1)(Jan/Feb), 9-24.
Brodeur, P. (1993). The great power-line cover-up: How the utilities and the government are trying to hide the cancer hazard posed by electromagnetic fields. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.
Cook, C. D. (2004). Diet for a dead planet: How the food industry is killing us. New York: New Press.
Cribb, R., & Hamilton, T. (2005). Is her cellphone safe? Some scientists trying to find the answer say they’ve been pressured to soften controversial findings. Toronto Star, July 10.
Cusac, A. (1996). Stunning technology. The Progressive, July.
Cusac, A. (1997). Shock value. The Progressive. September.
Douthwaite, R. (1999). The growth illusion: How economic growth has enriched the few, impoverished the many, and endangered the planet(2nd ed.). Gabriola, BC, Canada: New Society.
Elliott, C. (2004). Enhancement technology. In D. M. Kaplan (Ed.), Readings in the philosophy of technology(pp. 373-379). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Epstein, S. (2003). Cancer: It’s a growth industry (interview). Z Magazine. October.
Firstenberg, A. (2004). Killing fields. The Ecologist, 34(5), 22-27.
Fitrakis, B., & Wasserman, H. (2005). Has American democracy died an electronic death in Ohio’s 2005 referenda defeats? The Free Press[Columbus], November 12.
Grossman, E. (2007). High tech trash: Digital devices, hidden toxics, and human health(Revised ed.). Washington, DC: Island Press.
Haila, Y., & Levins, R. (1992). Humanity and nature: Ecology, science and society. London: Pluto Press.
Heinberg, R. (2003). The party’s over: Oil, war and the fate of industrial societies.Gabriola, BC: New Society, 2003.
Hood, E. (2004). Are farmed salmon fit fare? Environmental Health Perspectives, 112(5)(April), A274.
Huws, U. (2003). Material world: The myth of the weightless economy. In U. Huws (Ed.), The making of a cybertariat: Virtual work in a real world. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Joffe-Walt, B. (2005). China’s computer wasteland. The Progressive. January.
Lenin, V. I. (1918). On the immediate tasks of the Soviet government [many editions].
Mandel, E. (1975). Late capitalism. London: New Left Books.
Manski, B. (2004). Massacre in Miami. Socialism and Democracy, 18(1), 249-251.
Marx, K. (1964). The economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844. Ed. D. J. Struik. New York: International Publishers.
Marx, K. (1976). Capital, Vol. I (trans., B. Fowkes). New York: Vintage Books.
Meyrowitz, J. (1985). No sense of place: The impact of electronic media on social behavior. New York: Oxford University Press.
Miller, M. C. (2007). Fooled again: The real case for electoral reform. New York: Basic Books.
Monbiot, G. (2007). Heat: How to stop the planet from burning. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.
Montague, P. (2004). Welcome to the nanoWorld: Nanotechnology and the precautionary principle imperative. Multinational Monitor, 2004, 16-19.
Mowthorpe, M. (2004). The militarisation and weaponisation of space. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Multinational Monitor(2004). Special issue, 25(9). The Precautionary Principle.
Navarro, V. (1976). Medicine under capitalism. New York: Neale Watson Academic Publications.
O’Harrow, R. (2005). No place to hide: Behind the scenes of our emerging surveillance society. New York: Free Press.
Panitch, L., & Leys, C. (Eds.) (2000). Working classes: Global realities [Socialist Register 2001].London: Merlin Press.
Pinderhughes, R. (2004). Alternative urban futures. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Richman, B. M. (1969). Industrial society in communist China. New York: Random House.
Rifkin, J. (1992). Beyond beef: The rise and fall of the cattle culture. New York: Penguin Books.
Rifkin, J. (2003). The hydrogen economy. New York: Penguin Books.
Rosset, P. M. (1998). Alternative agriculture works: The case of Cuba. Monthly Review, 50, 3.
Sachs, W. (1997). Wasting time is an ecological virtue. New Perspectives Quarterly, 14, 1.
Sanders, B. (2009). The green zone: The environmental costs of militarism. Oakland, CA: AK Press.
Shiva, V. (1997). Biopiracy: The plunder of nature and knowledge. Boston: South End Press.
Singer, P. W. (2009). Wired for war: The robotics revolution and conflict in the twenty-first century. New York: Penguin Books.
Turkle, S. (1997). Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the internet. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Ubell, R. N. (1989). Twenty-five years of Cuban health care. In P. Brenner, et al. (Eds.), The Cuba reader: The making of a revolutionary society(pp. 435-445). New York: Grove Press.
Wallis, V. (2000). ‘Progress’ or progress? Defining a socialist technology. Socialism and Democracy, 14(1), 45-61.
Wallis, V. (2001). Toward ecological socialism. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 12(1), 127-145.
Wallis, V. (2004a). Technology, ecology, and socialist renewal. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 15(2), 35-46.
Wallis, V. (2004b). Innovation. In W. F. Haug (Ed.), Historisch-kritisches Wörterbuch des Marxismus, Vol. 6/II (pp. 1188-1196). Hamburg: Argument [English original in Historical Materialism 16(3) (2008), 227-232].
Wallis, V. (2008). Capitalist and socialist responses to the ecological crisis. Monthly Review, 60(6), 25-40.
Weiner, T. (2005). A new model army soldier rolls closer to the battlefield. New York Times, February 16, A1.
Wilkinson, R. (2005). The impact of inequality. New York: New Press.
Williams, E. (2004). Energy intensity of computer manufacturing: Hybrid assessment combining process and input-output methods. Environmental Science and Technology, 38(22), 6166-6174.
Zweig, M. (2000). The working class majority: America’s best kept secret. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wallis, V. (2010). Socialism and Technology: A Sectoral Overview. In: Huan, Q. (eds) Eco-socialism as Politics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3745-9_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3745-9_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-3744-2
Online ISBN: 978-90-481-3745-9
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)