Paul Sweezy on the Scientific-Industrial Revolution
* Report: Paul M. Sweezy (published anonymously), The Scientific-Industrial Revolution (New York: Model, Roland & Stone, 1957), 10, 27–36
Discussion
John Bellamy Foster:
"Perhaps the most perceptive analysis of the general state of automation and its relation to labor in the 1950s originated with Marxist economist and Monthly Review editor Paul M. Sweezy in an anonymous monograph titled The Scientific-Industrial Revolution written for the Wall Street investment house Model, Roland & Stone in 1957. In this report, Sweezy argued that while the steam engine had powered the First Industrial Revolution, the Scientific-Industrial (or Scientific-Technical) Revolution was powered by science itself, a development made possible by the rise of large-scale capital. This gave rise to the “collective scientist,” a concept that he took from Marx’s notion of the collective worker. In referring to automation, Sweezy explained that “the labor process,” in which machinery was increasingly incorporated, was characterized by “a loop” of information involving both workers and machines. “When the human being is replaced by one or more mechanical devices, the loop is closed. The system has been automated.”5
Sweezy referred in this context to a lecture by the U.S. engineer, inventor, and scientific administrator Vannevar Bush, in which Bush theorized the possibility of a self-driving car that would follow the white line on the road even after the driver fell asleep. The larger economic and social implications of such a high level of automation with smart machines, according to Sweezy, were mainly due to labor displacement. “The purpose of automation,” he went on to explain, “is to cut costs. In all cases it does this by saving labor. In some cases, it saves capital too.” With the advent of the transistor, the technological possibilities for expansion seemed endless. Computers, Sweezy predicted, would become not only more reliable but also “pocket-sized.” Mobile radio-telephones operating through networks were also feasible and could be reduced to even smaller sizes than the pocket-sized computer, to fit on a wrist. With the Scientific-Technical Revolution, automation and more versatile intelligent machines meant a “shift to profits” and away from wages in the overall economy. It also meant the conceivable displacement of millions of workers."