Re: Guerin and Mann.

[boddhisatva <kbevans@xxxxxxxxx>]

                Mr. Proyect,


        I really hope  that you don't buy that bourgeois stuff
about an "information economy".  While the short term trend requires massive
computerization, the long term aim of computerization is to reduce the number
of "information" jobs.  Look at the newest trends in the consumer credit,
insurance, and stock trading industries.  The hottest new company
in consumer credit centers on an automatic system to determine who is a good
possible credit customer.  This system takes away the necessity for many of
the jobs in a typical credit card company.  Technical stock tend analysis,
that was once done by rooms of geniuses, now finds those geniuses designing
systems to phase out their own jobs.  People at Prudential insurance have
said that the entire actuarial department of that company could be reduced to
about 9 or 10 actuaries and a few programmers and sysops.  The "information
economy" stuff is a soft pedal for the fact that white collar jobs will
suffer from automation just as industrial jobs have.  It is also a product of
the bourgeoise fantasy of a meritocratic elite running an automated
industrial system without all those messy workers.


        The bourgeoisie rely on the white collar job to placate the
industrial worker.  The idea of "moving up the ladder" reenforces the
values of the meritocracy and solidifies the false consciousness of the
working class.  The white collar job is the pot of gold at the end of the
assembly line.  Naturally, the dismantling of the white collar corporate
bureaucracy, causes some unease among the working class.  But there is
Bill Gates to show us that we all really will be millionaires some day.


        Meanwhile, a bourgeoisie bent on control rather than commerce, is
missing the opportunity for the next wave in industrial production.  Jobs
where industrial workers provide the craft and intuition for mechanized
factories are dismissed as too hard for the poor simple-minded worker,
while capitalists drool over unworkable visions of robotic control.  Of
course workers are also considered weak and inefficient because they make
poor flesh cogs in the machines of industry.  So, all that is left for
them is "service" jobs.  The kind that are too menial for machines.


        The "information economy" is a fantasy, because the fact remains that
to have a vibrant economy you need demand for internally produced goods.  The
logic of computerization, far to the contrary of the "80%" idea, is to put
white collar people alongside their blue collar comrades on the unemployment
lines and behind the counter at McDonald's.




        peace


                boddhisatva






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