Here’s an amusing aside from Harvey and Reed’s 1996 “The Culture of Poverty”:
A third form of contemporary class denial seeks refuge in the promise that a technological quick fix can eliminate persistent poverty. Of course, this is not the first time a technocratic myth has promised escape from the spiraling contradictions of capital. From Fourier’s phalanxes and Bentham’s workhouses of the last century, to the dreams of leisure-based societies in the American Century, capitalist culture has periodically bred utopian-based, futurist visions of technological progress. The latest myths look to robotics, computers, and the so-called information revolution to move humanity away from capital’s destructive commodification of institutional life.
Notice, Harvey and Reed weren’t denying that great technological progress was going to happen. They were denying that massive technological progress, if it occurred, would dramatically improve humanity’s quality of life in capitalist societies.
We are promised, even now, that the cybernetic revolution will usher in a new post-capitalist society in which Marxist political economy is to be rendered passe, just as the dynamics of class and class conflict will be technologically nullified. The Post-World War II welfare state in America, replete with its complex of class compromises, is being all but dismantled by flexible accumulation’s new system of unfettered production.
This “dismantling the welfare state” language, oddly popular in sociology and anthropology, raises many questions. Starting with: How long can the “dismantling of the welfare state” proceed before the welfare state actually gets dismantled?
At least 22 years, I suppose.
Moreover, we are promised that the new mountains of commodity wealth to be produced by this unfettered technology will make chronic need largely a thing of the past. Similarly, the old forms of cultural oppression will usher in a post-capitalist order that will provide a viable alternative to the twin modernist evils of American monopoly capitalism and Soviet Communism.
The promised technological fix is now upon us with a vengeance. Flexible accumulation and its concomitants-increasingly unregulated, international markets and the “freeing-up” of productive inputs-have transformed the monopoly capitalism of three decades ago. In the process, the cultural liberation pledged such a short time ago is faltering as forces of cultural reaction have seized the ascendancy. The freedom the new information technologies were to deliver to the many has been achieved for only the few-and, as usual, at the price of uncertain futures for the many.
To be fair, it wasn’t crazy back in 1996 to say that new information technologies hadn’t done much for most people. But as a prediction, this is even worse than Krugman’s notorious 1998 line that, “By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.”
READER COMMENTS
Dylan
Dec 19 2018 at 2:25pm
I find it difficult to fully engage with work like this, when it is clear that myself and the authors are starting with such different baseline understandings of the world. Whenever I read things like this I just really want to have a discussion that would go back to first principals and build up from there…and I suspect that I’m closer to their starting point than you, so kudos for slogging through the literature like you have been.
That being said, I’m not entirely sure what you are getting at here. Sure, the internet and all the technologies that have been built around it, are amazing and have improved life for many people in countless ways, while making them worse in others. On net, I’d say that it is a tremendous improvement for most people. However, I think most people, and certainly those that share the views of the authors, would say that the technological boom hasn’t come close to eliminating persistent poverty. Indeed, arguments can be made that by switching more industries to a winner take all model, that information technology has made the situation worse for the persistently poor. I don’t subscribe to that view, but it isn’t completely crazy either.
Mark Bahner
Dec 19 2018 at 11:54pm
We’d need to start by trying to agree what “persistent poverty”. Here is a graph of the number of people in the world living on a per-capita consumption of less than $1.90 (2011 dollars, purchasing power parity).
Global number of people living in extreme poverty
In 1996, it was 1.66 billion; by 2013, it had been lowered to 766 million. So more than cut in half in less than 20 years. And the trend downward in extreme poverty was accelerating as of 2013. (Of course, by “persistent poverty” they’re probably thinking about the comparably wealthy Western poverty.)
A final aspect is that I don’t think “automation” has even gotten started. (I’d say it will have just started when 10 percent of the automobiles on the roads of the world are fully computer-driven.)
Dylan
Dec 20 2018 at 10:57am
I agree with just about everything you say here, but I’m focusing in on this statement “The freedom the new information technologies were to deliver to the many has been achieved for only the few-and, as usual, at the price of uncertain futures for the many.” and Bryan’s assertion that as far as predictions go, it ranks up there with Krugman’s. I think to rank that high, you need even the person who made the prediction to realize that they were crazily off base (as Krugman does). I doubt the person who wrote that in 1996 would see today and think they were wrong, in fact I suspect they would see the world today as complete validation of their thesis.
robc
Dec 19 2018 at 3:20pm
capital’s destructive commodification of institutional life.
and
American monopoly capitalism
seem at odds. Are they pro or anti-commodity, because commodification requires the exact opposite of monopoly capitalism?
I think I am even worse off than dylan. When I see stuff like that, I just ignore everything else they have to say. Not even worth trying the first principles discussion.
Matthias Goergens
Dec 19 2018 at 7:46pm
Looks like if you want to complain about the impact of real world capitalism, Georgism has the better criticism.
Lots of the most productive cities in the world are ‘closed access’, and access is auctioned off dearly. Instead of just building more.
Places like London still see poverty and hard budget constraints on public services, despite there being enough land rent to go around that would cover quite lavish expenditures—without any negative effect on the economy. Instead the money goes to rentiers.
JFA
Dec 20 2018 at 9:48am
“We are promised, even now, that the cybernetic revolution will usher in a new post-capitalist society in which Marxist political economy is to be rendered passe”
Funny how it was the Soviet Union in the ’50s and ’60s that was the most optimistic about the cybernetic revolution’s promise of utopia.
Hazel Meade
Dec 20 2018 at 11:44am
The funny part is how terrified they were of being rendered “passe”. Another thing that the anti-globalization left shares with the populist right.
Mark Z
Dec 20 2018 at 5:58pm
I remember (well, I wasn’t born yet, but I remember reading about) all the writing about ‘cybernetics’ among East German economists in the 50s and 60s. It seemed like much of the ‘field’, which seemed to aspire to be something like systems engineering, often amounted to a veiled way of ‘scientifically’ justifying the devolution of decision-making away from central authorities, i.e., a more market-based economy. Scientific sounding argot was used to justify “engineering” a more “flexible” and “dynamic” system. Which amounted to a less centrally planned one.
JFA
Dec 21 2018 at 7:10am
The Russian writers I’ve read had a back and forth over what level of centralization to have for the cybernetic system (some of the disagreement was just based on computation time and available computational resources), but the thrust of both sides was that you could take autonomy away from individual persons and have some technocrat adjust levels of production by pushing a button here or there to change the value of the Lagrangian multiplier (i.e. the shadow price). Whether you want to call that “decentralization” or not, it is certainly nowhere near a market economy.
Hazel Meade
Dec 20 2018 at 11:29am
I’m enjoying these 1990s marxist throwbacks this morning. Thank you for the laugh. Indeed, this stuff seems wierdly anachronistic on today’s political environment, where the battle lines now seem drawn between a right-wing nationalist party of the working class, and a left-leaning liberal-internationalist party of the technocratic elite.
Although it is actually kind of telling how much today’s right-wing worker’s party draws on ideas drawn from the anti-globalization left. The dislike of the technological revolution of the 1990s and what it meant for the restructuring of the economy is shared between the populist right and the populist left.
Thaomas
Dec 24 2018 at 9:23am
Yes except the anti technology left is totally marginal to actual political discourse. (Ok somewhat relevant for slowing use of GMO.)
Todd Kreider
Dec 24 2018 at 9:43am
And nuclear power.
Plato’s Revenge
Dec 26 2018 at 8:24am
the Nazis also stole a lot of their rhetoric from the communists. They just added antisemitism
Elijah Eby
Dec 24 2018 at 8:56am
I don’t think quoting that line is fair to Krugman. Even though you linked to a fair article that explains the matter more fully, it seems like you’re feeding your generally anti-Krugman audience with the wrong impression.
Todd Kreider
Dec 24 2018 at 9:42am
Krugman later said he was wrong about that quote appearing in “White Collars Turn Blue” written in 1996. I just read that and his famous prediction about the internet isn’t in that column but instead appears in a column written in 1998. Snopes, which Caplan linked to, was also incorrect to say that Krugman wrote the column for Red Herring. They just picked it up later.
Robert EV
Dec 24 2018 at 8:27pm
Not too long ago I had to manipulate my weekly paychecks to make sure I had enough at the proper time to cover the rent.
Just this month I had to pull a couple thousand from savings to checking to cover the monthly rent since, for the first time at this job I’ve had for 3.5 years, I’m getting paid on the 2nd of the month (Jan. 2) instead of the 1st or before. And I wouldn’t have been able to do that if not for a small, unfortunate inheritance last year.
This is the kind of ‘need’ that hasn’t improved in the last 20 years; in fact technology has probably made it worse as there’s now no “the check’s in the mail” excuse with instant transfers. And I’m in far better circumstances than many others.
At least we can say that Facebook and Tinder technological fixes have made the social and dating necessities free or cheap and easier for the vast numbers (though there are still those without easy access to these). But this doesn’t make it easier to make the rent or buy groceries if your job situation is touchy (though I’d guess someone could come back with a ‘gig economy’ solution to that even – at least for those with cellphones and an Uber/Lyft worthy car or handyman’s tools and the know-how to use them).
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