Letter: Machinery and Socialism (1932)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent asks us what is our attitude towards those who condemn machine production and want to go back to handicraft methods.

“Some time ago, within the past year, I read an issue of the Saturday Evening Post, one of the most widely circulated weekly magazines in America, and a correspondent, Marcossan it was, gave an account of the character, aims and objects of the Nazi, or National Socialists in Germany in that issue of the Post.

Among the points he listed and described as features of that movement, was one that struck me as having a lot in common with the Socialist philosophy, and it was this : —

The Nazi’s organisation deplore the predominant role that the machine occupies, in this day and age, in the lives of the masses living within those countries that are for the most part industrialised.

They go in for rites and ceremonial functions that are reminiscent of Mediaevalism, as a reaction to the machine age, and they would revive the colourful picturesqueness of the people lived back in the period of the Holy Roman Empire.

However fallacious all this may seem to us, is there not something wholesome and worthy in a resentment against the necessity for being dominated by the machine, both in economic and social phases of life ? Many authorities agree in this; that the machine age has all but done away with a desire in the present generation for the acquisition of culture, i.e., literature, music and art, and the tendency on the part of the younger generation, so far as the development of their mental capabilities go, are all too one-sided, in the direction of motor mechanics and the repair of engines, etc. The types of people who can carve wonderful designs in wood-work, plaster or clay are only to be found in remote districts like the Bavarian Alps, the Black Forest, Sicily, and other places where the spirit of the Middle Ages still lingers on.”

Reply.

It may be as well to start off by explaining that the name used by the Hitler Party in Germany—”National Socialists”—does not justify the assumption that they have something in common with Socialists. Hitler, in the attempt to build up a large working class following, has found it useful to talk in the phrases of his opponents, the Social Democrats. But neither in his mouth nor in their mouths do these phrases betoken knowledge or acceptance of socialist principles.

Nor do we share Hitler’s alleged longing for medievalism and hatred of machine production. That such a hatred should exist is natural enough among workers who knew or have heard from their parents of the easier conditions under which handicraft production was carried on before the craftman’s products were swept off the market by the cheaper products of the capitalist factory. But it is not correct to describe the workers’ subjection to the capitalist as being simply a condition of “being dominated by the machine,” and it is also fallacious to assume that the course of industrial development can be reversed. If it were possible to reproduce the greatly overpraised conditions of the Middle Ages the same developments which undermined feudalism and led to its replacement by capitalism and machine production would be at work, leading on to the same results.

The chief objection, however, to our correspondent’s argument is the belief that the disabilities under which the workers now suffer are due to their subjection to machines. It is true that machine production, like every other form of production, imposes certain restrictions on the producers. It is true, for example, that it is necessary for all the crew of a boat or a train to be ready for work at a stated time, although this may involve considerable discomfort for those who would prefer to stay in bed for another hour. But what of the discomfort of having to get up early to milk the cows ? What of the inconvenience of having to make hay while the sun was shining, instead of at some other time more pleasing to the mediaeval peasant ? Some machine work is monotonous under capitalist conditions (perhaps some monotony is unavoidable under any conditions), but what of the deadly monotony and brutal exhaustion of primitive agriculture, and of housework ?

Machinery possesses two associated possibilities. It will, when socially owned, act as a saver of much unpleasant and exhausting labour, and it will make it possible so to increase the production of articles needed by the population as a whole that the necessary hours of labour will be greatly reduced. When this happens the majority will have opportunities of recreation and self-development now denied to them. It is not the machine which prevents the workers from living full lives, but the private ownership of the machines, along with the remainder of the means of production and distribution.

Editorial Committee.