After the discussions that have been taking place on the issues of the importance of engineering for any future society, I can’t think of a better video than this, nor an apter moment for us all to watch it. The first 17 minutes are David Harvey – the world’s leading Marxist geographer – outlining a Marxist template of radical social transformation. I think it’s exactly a way of thinking which might be able to unite everyone here at The Night Shift, so please dedicate the 17 minutes to it! (The rest of the video is his responding to the audience’s questions).
Basically, Harvey says that there are seven moments which have to co-evolve in any major transition from one social order to another. But: They have to change in dialectical relation to each other: no one of them is determinate. What I find so liberating about it is this: a new social movement can begin at any one of these seven moments…so long as you then move across all of the other six. Here are the seven moments (but watch the video for the details):
- Relation to nature
- Technology
- Social relations (Joe, he literally makes exactly the same point you made about the necessity of hierarchy for things such as power stations).
- Organisation of production
- Mental conceptions of the world
- Daily life
- Institutional and administrative arrangements
I’ll follow this up soon with a couple of posts on the role of technology in history, as seen from a Marxist perspective. Need to read about it first…
I think Harvey is doing everyone proud here. Bloody genius. Also, these are good ideas for categorization on the blog (which would involve everyone agreeing for once – eek). I see in my ‘consumables’ idea Harvey’s ‘Daily Life’ and well, I think what Dan was trying to say before was that we should not employ a unilateral view of society (for instance, in stating that engineering/technology is the be-all and end-all) because the society’s systems are highly complex and, as Harvey comments, dialectically related. United front boys and gals. Hence why we need practical answers to all of the practical issues and theoretical answers to the all the theoretical issues.
I might have said this before, but get your thinking hard hats on.
I am in general agreement with David Harvey. Yes, it should be blindingly obvious to anyone that precise changes in society come about through a variety of hugely complex interlinking factors. Whether those seven separate factors contain everything, is something that I would have to (and will) think about in more depth. However, I disagree with him over the idea that all of those factors are equally weighted. To me, it’s fairly obvious that of those seven factors the relationship to the natural environment has a far greater influence over society than any other factor. To argue that day to day life has as great an impact on society as the natural environment is frankly ridiculous. For an example, look to Haiti: an entirely natural event there, has caused the kind of impact on society that could not be approached by a change in any other single factor in a similar timescale. Yes, the earthquake has and will lead to changes in all of the other factors considered, but what kind of person would consider all these factors as being equal in creating the present conditions?!
This comes down to a proper appreciation of dependency, which Marx and Engels were fully aware of (historical materialism is one of the very few areas of Marxism that I am in general agreement with: Consciousness is a construct of material conditions). More than any other thing, we depend on our natural environment for our survival. Without it, there would be… well… nothing. It is therefore the primary factor of all of those discussed by David Harvey and is perfectly capable of changing in isolation to create huge impacts on society (or indeed potentially destroy humanity entirely). Considering this, I’d like to think that we could all agree that not all of these factors are in fact equal. This post is clearly intended to take aim at my assertion that technological development is the most important factor on the development of society, I’m afraid that in line with the above arguments I’m unwilling to change my position. Nothing (that is directly under the control of humanity) has influenced the development of society as a whole to a greater extent than the development of technology. Once again, it is perfectly simple to imagine that revolutionary new technology can be created with little or no impact from any other factors. To quote Marx directly from the footnote mentioned in the video:
“Die Technologie enthüllt das aktive Verhalten des Menschen zur Natur, den unmittelbaren Produktionsprozesss seines Lebens, damit auch seiner gesellschaftlichen Lebensverhältnisse und der ihnen entquellenden geistigen Vorstellungen.”
Or
“Technology discloses the active relation of man towards nature, as well as the direct process of production of his very life, and thereby the process of production of his basic societal relations, of his own mentality, and his images of society, too.”
Haiti’s a nice example to combine all these factors – plus the importance of engineering!. Let’s compare it to Chile. The earthquake in Chile was 500 times more powerful than that in Haiti. Yet in Haiti thus far around 300,000 people are estimated to have been killed, whereas in Chile apparently only about 800 people were killed. Now, if the natural environment is the determining factor, why didn’t roughly 500 times more people die in Chile? Not least since Concepcion is Chile’s second-largest city and was hardest hit?
The answer is – one for you! – engineering. The buildings in Chile were engineered to be (relatively) quake proof. In Haiti, they weren’t. So, surely this is a case in point of your argument that engineering is the most important thing in the entire world? Well, yes and no. The reason Haiti didn’t have quake-proof buildings is that they were poor and couldn’t afford the materials nor the engineers. Why were they poor? Because, as Peter Hallward says, ‘the history of the country really since independence, for the last two centuries—has been about maintaining the control of a small group of very wealthy, privileged people in partnership with their international backers.’ Haiti had more natural wealth than all of France’s other colonies put together. And this was expropriated to fund industrial extravagances back in the motherland.
In purely natural terms, the earthquake in Chile should have killed 500 times more people than in Haiti. It didn’t because of a whole range of other social, technological and non-natural factors.
The Marx quote you chose is precisely the quote Marxist theorists choose when they want to prove that Marx is not a technological determinist. The key word is ‘disclose’ (‘enthüllt’ can also be translated as ‘reveal’). Precisely because, as I write in my other post on technological determinism, ‘technology for Marx is the material form of the labour process through which the underlying forces and relations of production are expressed’ (which I take from Harvey), it can be really useful to study particular types of technology: because they disclose or reveal the forces and relations of production which dominate in that particular society. In other words, technology is a way in to a fuller comprehension of how a system functions.
Apparently you will not listen to a word I say… I’m not even sure that I’m technically taking part in this discussion.
For the (what feels like) millionth time: I have never said that we should look at any factor in isolation. All I said is that some factors are are more important (lead to greater impacts) than others. So my assertion was that the single most important factor on the earthquake in Haiti was the earthquake in Haiti.
The fact that I’m even having to spell it out like this is making me want to go smack my head against the wall.
Readers will be pleased to hear that Joe and I have achieved an out of court settlement…
Joe,
what you just said is a bit exaggerated, I’d say. Basically, yes, technological advancements might be the most radical, and evident, factor in changes in society…but how we life our daily lives holds the key to all our ideological beliefs. what we eat, where we buy it from etc, these things express the how firmly we are entrenched in a single way of thinking…further to expressing them even, they are the modes of our entrenchment in an ideology. We are capitalist, and some engineer building a bridge or an ipod does express that, but me buying toilets and loo paper and those very ipods is just as important as the person building the machines to make them. I still stand by (relatively) equal weight.
That said, I can’t pay particular attention the engineering as I’m not an engineer (though I did chat to some guy in Eindhoven this weekend who’s an engineer and will get him signed up I hope), so I leave it to you in most. In any case, your belief that technology is the most important will hopefully give you the zeal to fight the machine (quite literally). Even so, don’t forget to think about those consumables.
equal weight in what we need to pay attention to…that is.
The philosophy of “Dialectical and Historical Materialism” was the first scientific explanation, that clearly explained how scientific understanding can explain how and why social change took place in the past and is taking place in the present, and what social change will look like in the future.
The fact that our capitalist society is fearful of a scientific method that can scientifically prove that Capitalism has within its social structure, irreconcilable contradictions that will eventually be the cause that will create the effect that will topple the system of capitalism and replace the system of capitalism with the system of Socialism.
The fact that this scientific discovery is being swept under the rug by the powers that be, is evidence that the system of capitalism is fearful of the public getting a scientific understanding of how and why societies change.
To believe that Capitalism will be a positive force in the world and will not change with the passage of time from what it was, to what it is, and to what it will become in the near and distant future is incredible stupidity.
Those that ignorantly believe that all social change is the result of subversive activity that changes that what is already perfect to that what is imperfect, is a rationalization by those that fear and hate that, what is unfamiliar.
This is why the Right Wing hate and fear merchants, go crazy when they are confronted with the possibility of a future that will challenge what exists in the present and what existed in the past.
The crap in their pants Right Wingers, and the stuck in the past Libertarians, should grow up and face the changes that will certainly occur in the future