Editorial: Science and the Future (1942)

Editorial from the January 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the wireless a few nights ago three men were discussing the probable future of man. They were men prominent in their professions, and at least one was a scientist, and we would, therefore, have been justified in expecting to hear something fundamental on the subject—but we didn’t !

The scientist made the interesting statement that the reason why science had made less progress in the investigation of purely human questions as against the tremendous progress in engineering and the like was because scientists, like other men, had to earn a living, and consequently, had to give most of their attention to subjects that promised them a living.

The statement is interesting because, coming from a scientist, it is authentic and illustrates how completely the wages system dominates the work of science. We are often told that science was stultified in days gone by owing to the power of religion and how free it is to-day. But there are evidently serious limits to this freedom.

For a quarter of an hour these three people discussed whether men would grow more intelligent in the next five hundred years or fall back into barbarism. They believed man would progress but they were not certain. One of them anticipated that machines would be perfected to a point where they practically operated themselves, thus leaving man free for creative work such as—gardening !

The assumption evidently being that handling machines was unpleasant work whilst such things as gardening were not.

The fact is that they all missed the fundamental aspect of the question. To those who work for wages gardening is just as irksome as handling a machine. When working a machine is like gardening for a hobby its unpleasant side will have departed. The proof of this is the fact that model engineers are immersed in the joy of their work and nearly every boy is a born engineer and loves playing about with machines.

Machine work, like other occupations, is only distasteful because of the conditions under which that work is carried on—capitalist conditions. Under Socialism all will take pleasure in the work they do, including the handling of machinery, because it will be joyful work and not grinding, painful labour for a wage that does little more than provide an existence.