Science, Capitalism and the New Order (1941)

From the November 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

The British Association recently organised a meeting to “discuss plans for a new order in which science will play a leading part.”

Early in the conference Mr. Eden told the scientists that science had brought about inequalities, selfishness, and unfair division.

Here we have another instance of a professional champion of Capitalism selecting a scapegoat to bear the blame for the evils that Capitalism itself actully produces.

Unfortuntely, the view that science is wholly responsible for some of the grim and sordid features of modern life is held by many members of the working class.

How many workers, for instance, believe that science’s inventiveness has, without pressure from behind the scenes, created the ingenious machinery that has thrown many workers on the scrap heap ? How many believe that the inventing of planes and bombs, and the discovery of poison gases, are the things that actually create war ?

Let us see whether examination will throw light upon the question.

We live in a society wherein a comparatively small section, by virtue of its ownership of the mines, mills, factories, railways, warehouses, etc., is able to acquire a mass of commodities by exploiting the larger non-possessing section of society—i.e., the working class.

But unless each competing section of the Capitalist class can ensure a large and ready sale of their commodities by keeping down, and even lowering, their commodity prices, they will find themselves ousted by other competitors.

Capitalists, therefore, to keep up the sales that will ensure large profits, must undercut their rivals.

This can be done in two ways—by lowering wages, or by reducing the amount of labour spent on the production of their commodities.

The lowering of wages, however, has, from the Capitalist viewpoint, this disadvantage—wages cannot profitably be lowered below the level that will maintain a standard of satisfactory working fitness.

Therefore, in order to reduce the prices of their commodities, Capitalists find themselves mainly reliant upon reducing the amount of labour embodied in commodity production.

The only means of doing this is by displacing human labour by machinery.

Thus we find sections of the Capitalist class competing keenly against each other in the introduction of machinery, by which means alone they can appreciably lower their commodity prices and thus capture the trade of their rivals.

Only the introduction of such machinery will assist in retaining that essential in Capitalist competition—a rate of profit that will prevent being ousted from the competitive field.

Only such machinery, therefore, will be in great demand by the Capitalist class, and the competition to secure this machinery will send up its price and bring a rich reward to the owner of the invention. On the other hand, machinery that will bring benefits to mankind will not be in great demand unless it also aids the raising or maintaining of profits.

Inventors and scientists, therefore, faced by the fact that only the ideas that will fill a Capitalist need will bring ample payment, are, in the main, compelled to concentrate on such ideas. When the competition for trade, fields of exploitation, etc., can be divided by the border-lines of the competing countries, you will find the Capitalists of each country uniting against the menace of being ousted by a Capitalism from outside.

Diplomacy may for a time maintain a tolerating relationship between each country, but so urgent is the need for Capitalist countries to expand their markets, and secure new fields for trade that the strings of diplomacy are overstrained, and finally break, throwing the people of the opposing nations into the blood-drenched arenas of modern war.

When this happens the most urgent need of sectional Capitalism is for its own nationalistic entity to survive against the nations that threaten it. Thus the individualistic competition within the opposing countries is, temporarily, almost abandoned, and every muscle is strained to achieve a greater task for national Capitalism—i.e., winning the war.

In this manner the demand for labour-saving machinery is almost entirely displaced by the demand for machinery most effective in the prosecution of the war; machinery, in short, that would be most destructive against the opposing country.

Once more the demand for certain machinery sends up its price, and makes it the only mechanisation that will bring adequate recompence to its originators

Thus, although certain machinery will certainly throw many men out of work, or bring new horror into warfare, scientists, in order to live, are compelled by Capitalism to create such machinery. Not until Capitalism is ended and replaced by Socialism will there be a welcome for all mechanisation beneficial to society. Only then will inventors and scientists be unrestricted by the question, “Will it be profitable to the Capitalist class?”

Frank Hawkins