Science and technology developments over the past 25 years have had profound effects on workplace productivity and income. Prevailing wisdom holds that significant levels of investment in plant and equipment and the consequent economic growth lead, in the context of a market economy, to more permanent jobs. The authors contest this claim. They argue that the tendency of technology investment is inherently labor saving, in both goods production and the services. Most new jobs that are being created, primarily in the services, have been contingent, part-time, benefit free, and frequently temporary. Thus there will be a shortage of decent-paying permanent jobs in the future. The authors argue that the premise of economic and social policy must take work as an active presupposition.
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References
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1. Karl Marx, Grundrisse (New York: Vintage, 1973), pp. 701-705.
2.
2. In the United States, nearly 70 percent of women had entered the labor force by 1990. In recent years, many have been able to obtain only part-time jobs.
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For an earlier study of this question, see Ronald Radosh, U.S. Labor and American Foreign Policy (New York: Random House, 1971).
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5. Wall Street Journal, 9 Mar. 1992.
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6. Martin Sklar, “On the Proletarian Revolution and the End of Political-Economic Society,”Radical America (June 1969). This remarkable article provides a theory, from the perspective of political economy, of the end of real capital accumulation. According to Sklar, the major tendency of contemporary advanced capitalist societies was toward an overaccumulation of capital; thus the task of investment was to get rid of this surfeit, to disaccumulate capital. Hence advertising, the production of waste in the form of planned obsolescence, the proliferation of services, and, of course, in the United States, massive military expenditures.
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Paul Thompson , The Nature of Work: An Introduction to Debates on the Labor Process (London: Macmillan, 1983).
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10. Paul Adler, “Technology and Us,”Socialist Review, no. 85, p. 82 (Jan.-Feb. 1986).
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11. Ibid., p. 83.
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12. Idem, “Automation, Skill and the Future of Capitalism,”Berkeley Journal of Sociology: A Critical Review, 33:3 (1988).
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13. Ibid., p. 2.
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14. Ibid., p. 33.
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William DiFazio , Longshoremen: Community and Resistance on the Brooklyn Waterfront (South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey, 1985).
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16. Paul S. Adler, “When Knowledge Is the Critical Resource, Knowledge Management Is the Critical Task,”IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 36(2):92 (May 1989).
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17. Adler, “Automation, Skill and the Future of Capitalism,” p. 33.
18.
On current income stagnation, Frank Levy states, “By 1975 median family income had fallen by $1,700. It gained most of this back by the end of 1979, but fell sharply in the 1980-82 recession and stood at $26,433 in 1984. This sudden break in trend—twenty-six years of income growth followed by twelve years of income stagnation—is the major economic story of the postwar period.”Dollars and Dreams: The Changing American Income Distribution (New York: Norton, 1988), p. 17.
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19. Bennett Harrison and Barry Bluestone, The Great U-Turn: Corporate Restructuring and the Polarizing of America (New York: Basic Books, 1990), pp. 37-38.
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20. Manuel Castells, The Informational City (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), p. 342.
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21. Stanley Aronowitz and William Di-Fazio, The Jobless Future: Sci-Tech and the Dogma of Work (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994).
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22. Adler, “Automation, Skill and the Future of Capitalism,” p. 3.
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23. Feminist Majority Foundation, Empowering Women in Business (Arlington, VA: Feminist Majority Foundation, 1991).
24.
See also Maxine Berg, The Age of Manufacture, 1700-1820 (London: Fontana, 1985).
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25. Robert Gray, “The Languages of Factory Reform in Britain, c. 1830-1860,” in Historical Meanings of Work, ed. Joyce, p. 150.
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26. Seth Mydans, “Displaced Aerospace Workers Face Grim Future in California Economy,”New York Times, 3 May 1995.
