Automation: The Technology and Society Raphael Kaplinsky Longman, 1984, 197 pp.
| Published date | 01 April 1985 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/pad.4230050217 |
| Author | James Pickett |
| Date | 01 April 1985 |
186
Book
Reviews
AUTOMATION: THE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY
Raphael
Kaplinsky
Longman,
1984,
197
pp.
This polemical work is disappointing. Its important themes deserve more balanced and
serious treatment than they get. The first part
of
the book contains an extended definition
of
automation, equated to ‘advanced mechanization’, and a very particular view
of
recent
economic history. Contrary to conventional wisdom, ‘the global economic crisis’ (comprising
unemployment and stagnation) is not due to automation. Rather the increasing use
of
automated techniques is
a
consequence
of
the crisis and represents the main response
of
capital to the problems which beset it. The phenomenon
of
long cycles of more
or
less regular
periodicity in economic activity is invoked to explain this overturning of accepted views.
The second part
of
the book reviews the development
of
automation techniques in design,
production and co-ordination. The main argument is that the benefits
of
automation will be
the greater the more entire systems (design, production and co-ordination) are covered.
Hence-given the pressure on business firms-the drive to find (design) the ‘factory
of
the
future’.
The impact of automation is dealt with in the final part of the book. As,
inter alia,
an
example
of
the author’s long-windedness it may be noted that impact here is used ‘as a type
of
shorthand for (the) dialectical interplay between technology and society’. This is such-or
so
the author would clearly like to believe-that its effects are more beneficial for large and
international firms than for small and national ones; that it reduces the skills of labour; and
that
it
has, at best, an indirect effect on the broad masses of the Third World. The forms
taken by automation are those determined
to
serve the ‘needs
of
the dominant sectors in
advanced capitalist and patriachal society’ and
so
seem to result ‘in
a
reduction
of
welfare for
the mass
of
the population, be it in developed
or
developing economies’.
The last chapter, which has a meaningless title-Technology
or
Society?-ends by
informing the reader that ‘we are confronted by the momentum
of
capitalist social relations
and the techniques it develops and diffuses. They threaten our very existence, and the future
looks bleak unless we strike out at the roots
of
their development’.
Many detailed criticisms can be made
of
this book. Among its major defects is a sustained
propensity to assert rather than to reason. The interpretation offered
of
the present ‘crisis’ is
hardly the only one to hand. Yet
no
serious alternatives are considered. The link between the
latest long cycle and automation is not really made clear. Indeed one cannot be sure that
Mr.
Kaplinsky fully understands the significance
of
introducing cycles into his argument. Cyclical
fluctuations take place about a trend, but the trend is ignored. Kaplinsky consequently fails
completely to deal with important topics-is, for example, technological unemployment
higher
or
lower now than one would expect it
to
be
in relation
to
the long run factors that
affect the demand
for
labour (hours)? Moreover, in the nature
of
cyclical activity slump is
sooner
or
later followed by boom. Thus, the majority at least
of
British people
who
even
in
depression are, in the goods and services they can command, better
off
than even before, can
ask: if winter comes can spring be far behind?
JAMES
PICKETT
David Livingstone Institute
of
Overseas Development Studies
Strathclyde
To continue reading
Request your trial