Re: Book announcement

[Jim Davis <jdav@xxxxxxx>]

In said book, Caffentzis ("Why machines cannot create value, or, Marx's
theory of machines") notes that the significance of the Turing machine is
that, with a few notable exceptions, any mental activity can in theory be
automated.

Whether the technology is yet available to automate a given task, (or deal
with a "sufficient degree of uncertainties"), or whether the technology is
cheap enough to warrant replacing human labor in command and control
positions are separate questions. On the other hand, as Moore's law
continues to hold, and the general consensus is that it probably will hold
for at least another 8 years or so, computing power is doubling every 18
months or so. So new areas of human activity, once beyond the pale of
technology, will be able to be replicated in the technology.

It's not love of workers by capitalists that prompts them to hire workers,
but capitalist love of their easily programmable brains that can react to
"uncertainties", and their marvellously dexterous hands, and less and less
their muscle power -- i.e. their labor power; their ability to work in all
its varied meanings.

An important question, which the original quote is referring to, is -- what
are the broad implications of introducing quantities of computer and
robotic-based production into the overall production mix?

jd


>>> +----------------------------------------------------------------+
>>> A robot can build a car. But a robot cannot buy a car... The
>>> explosion in the development of computer- and robotic-based
>>> manufacturing is seeing the rapid expansion of laborless
>>> production systems.
>>
>>Robots can NOT (presently) build cars. While it is true that many
>>operations in an auto assembly plant can and have been robotized
>>(especially within the paint and body shop departments), an auto assembly
>>plant still requires significant amounts of human laborers. "Laborless
>>production systems" (e.g. flexible manufacturing systems) are mostly used
>>in small batch manufacturing plants rather than assembly plants.
>>
>>Jerry
>>
>
>Correct about the auto assembly line. But the idea of the FMS is NOT
>"laborless production system" in today's business-school textbook. Instead,
>it is even more "labor intensive," in terms of the importance of human
>intervention in the production process, than the comic-book version of
>Fordist assembly line. Small batch manufacturing is the key. Exactly because
>model change and task adjustments are constant affairs, direct workers'
>intelligent initiatives are crucial for those kinds of production. That's
>one reason why "human relations" talks are in fashion in today's business
>schools.
>
>Robots cannot presently build cars, and I don't think it can build cars in
>the forseeable future either. Maybe I am myopic, which is physically true
>anyway, but if we look closely, any material production involves a degree of
>uncertainty which cannot be exhausted by previous rational designs. Thus
>dead labor (machine) can never replace live labor of thinking human beings.
>Just try to design a robot to pick up trash on the floor and feel the pain,
>then you know you'd better have some human being do it. I did not learn this
>from Marx, but from classmates in my master study who work as engineers and
>managers in the Ford plants in the Detroit area.
>
>When I took my quality-assurance and lean-production classes in business
>school a few years back in the US, I am always amazed at the degree of
>agreement of my straight-arrow meat-and-potato professors's ideas and my
>supposedly Marxist ones, such as the irruducible centrality of human labor
>to any kind of production. It seems that only a weird segment of the
>academics (and Sci Fi authors) hold that machine CAN replace human beings.
>The robots-gonna-do-it-all theories always sound like fetishism to me, but
>also always taken as a matter of fact by Daniel Bell & co., and even some
>progressives.
>