futures volume 6 issue 4 1974 [doi 10.1016%2f0016-3287%2874%2990078-0] john sanderson -- 3.2....
TRANSCRIPT
-
8/11/2019 Futures Volume 6 Issue 4 1974 [Doi 10.1016%2F0016-3287%2874%2990078-0] John Sanderson -- 3.2. Programm
1/6
-
8/11/2019 Futures Volume 6 Issue 4 1974 [Doi 10.1016%2F0016-3287%2874%2990078-0] John Sanderson -- 3.2. Programm
2/6
-
8/11/2019 Futures Volume 6 Issue 4 1974 [Doi 10.1016%2F0016-3287%2874%2990078-0] John Sanderson -- 3.2. Programm
3/6
given what arx called the poverty and restricted consump tion of the masses
-
8/11/2019 Futures Volume 6 Issue 4 1974 [Doi 10.1016%2F0016-3287%2874%2990078-0] John Sanderson -- 3.2. Programm
4/6
-
8/11/2019 Futures Volume 6 Issue 4 1974 [Doi 10.1016%2F0016-3287%2874%2990078-0] John Sanderson -- 3.2. Programm
5/6
344
From Prophecy to Prediction
ruptcy
of less efficient capitalists;
increased exploitation and increased
mechanisation thus engendered a solid
and violently resentful working class,
ultimately capable of taking its destiny
into its own hands: What the bour-
geoisie produces above all, are its
own grave-diggers.
Proletarian bitterness reached a peak
with an economic crisis when an un-
usually large number of workers would
be unemployed and the lot of those
remaining in work was scarcely more
enviable than that of those without.
Moreover, it was in an economic crisis
that the restrictive character of the
capitalist relations ofproduction became
most apparent, for when the capitalist
saw no prospect of profit, the logic of
the system obliged him to shut down
his works and to lay off his men. Marx
further insisted that it was only the
restricting rationale of capitalist produc-
tion which wastefully allowed un-
employment to be the consequence of
technological innovation. But just as
bourgeois) man had broken through
the restrictions imposed upon human
creative potential by feudal society,
so proletarian) man would break
through those imposed by bourgeois
society.
Although exploited and oppressed,
the workers are brought by the impera-
tives of capitalist production into close
contact with each other. This fact,
coupled with the relative ease of the
communication of ideas in modern
society, facilitates the formation of a
united proletariat as a history-making
force, conscious of its degraded position
within the system, knowing who its
class enemies are, and realising that it
can liberate itself by revolution. Indeed,
Marx writes in the Communist Mani-
festo of the organisation of the pro-
letarians
into a political party,
arguing at the same time that non-
proletarian men of ideas such as himself
and Engels could hasten this process
by revealing to the proletarians the
nature of the system whose victims
they were: Just as, therefore, at an
earlier period, a section of the nobility
went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a
portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to
the proletariat, and in particular, a
portion of the bourgeois ideologists,
who have raised themselves to the level
of comprehending theoretically the
historical movement as a whole.
Marxs own theoretical comprehen-
sion of history indicated that there
could be no flinching from the emerg-
ing struggle between capital and
labour, and he urged other intellec-
tuals who sympathised with the prole-
tarian cause to recognise that this
struggle was inescapable. In reality,
he wrote in
The German Ideology,
the
actual property owners stand on one
side and the propertyless communist
proletarians on the other. This opposi-
tion becomes keener day by day and is
rapidly driving to a crisis. If the
theoretical representatives of the prole-
tariat wish their literary activity to
have any practical effect, they must
first and foremost insist that all phrases
be swept aside which tend to dim the
realisation of the sharpness of this
opposition,
all phrases tending to
conceal this opposition and giving the
bourgeois a chance to approach the
communists for safetys sake on the
strength of their philanthropic enthusi-
asms. The Communists therefore
aimed not at any kind of accommoda-
tion with the bourgeoisie, but at the
dictatorship of the proletariat.
Now the dictatorship of the prole-
tariat was the outcome of the seizure
of power by the proletariat. This
hitherto oppressed mass would use
political power as it had been used in
previous eras: to coerce the enemies
of the ruling class. But the dictatorship
of the proletariat, unlike any previous
regime, would oppress only a small and
diminishing minority in society and
would gradually disappear as the
remaining enemies of the proletariat
disappeared. Thus Marx was able to
envisage a society in which as he
FUTURES August 1974
-
8/11/2019 Futures Volume 6 Issue 4 1974 [Doi 10.1016%2F0016-3287%2874%2990078-0] John Sanderson -- 3.2. Programm
6/6
From Propheg to Prediction/Conferences
345
puts it in the Manifesto the public
power will lose its political character;
he believed that a society unbedevilled
by class-divisions would be able to
dispense with politics, and would evolve
non-coercive ways of arriving at, and
of implementing, the public decisions
about priorities, allocation of resources,
etc, which any modern society had to
make. As well as the elimination of
politics as thus understood), post-
revolution society would also see the
control of all production concen-
trated in the hands of a vast association
of the whole nation, an arrangement
which would make possible a more
rational exploitation of Natures re-
sources, together with an equitable
distribution of the proceeds. From the
standpoint of a higher form of
society, Marx declared in Capital III,
private ownership of the globe by
single individuals will appear quite as
absurd as private ownership of one
man by another. Production would
be expanded and would be free from
the insane fluctuations characteristic
of capitalist society. And the impact of
the division of labour would be sub-
stantially mitigated by encouraging
the worker to undertake a plurality of
functions, involving both manual and
intellectual skills, in a single day, thus
producing what Marx called in Capital
I
the greatest possible development
of his varied aptitudes.
It has become a notorious paradox
that the areas where men claiming
intellectual descent from Marx have
come to power are not the economic-
ally-advanced areas indicated by his
own analysis. This analysis suggests
that in general the proletarian revolu-
tion can succeed only where the capita-
list mode of production has run its
course
and exhausted its creative
potential. Thus in what is often regarded
as his definitive theoretical statement,
The Preface to the Critique of Political
Economy 1859), Marx wrote that no
social order ever perishes before all
the productive forces for which there
is room in it have developed; and new,
higher relations of production never
appear before the material conditions
of their existence have matured in the
womb of the old society itself. There-
fore mankind always sets itself only such
tasks as it can solve . . . Now it can
scarcely be argued that capitalism had
run its course in Russia in 1917, or in
China in 1949; but in these instances
history would not wait, even for the
Red Terrorist Doctor himself.
ONFEREN ES
Second European meeting on cybernetics and
systems research
de Cybernetique. These occasions are
proving a useful clearing house for
trends within the systems movement as
they attract up to 200 delegates from
Europe and the Americas and cover
most aspects of systems research. Re-
porting on such a meeting is difficult
as the four parallel sessions encom-
passed nine sections ranging through
Systems Theory General 10, Techno-
logical 13),* Biocybernetics 19), Cog-
*
Numbers refer to the number of papers in each
section.
A
list of authors and papers mentioned
in the report appears on p. 348.
VIENNA 16-19 April 1974
Organised by the Austrian Society
for Cybernetic Studies
With commendable enthusiasm the
Vienna
Systems Circle held its
second biennial European meeting
under the benign patronage of the
Federal Minister of Science and Re-
search, and in association with the
Society for General Systems Research
as well as the Association Internationale
FUTURES August I@74
E