What motivates technical innovation?

[☭World Views]

1. What motivates technical innovation and how does capitalism hinder worker innovation?

I think it has to do with alienation but I'm not sure.

2. How was the Soviet Union able to advance scientifically in such a short period of time?

[Kukulofori]

http://www.infoshop.org/faq/secI4.html#seci411

http://www.infoshop.org/faq/secI8.html#seci88

[JimmyJazz]

1. What motivates technical innovation

The desire to produce the same amount with less labor. That's universal and not specific to capitalism.

In a specifically capitalist system, being able to produce the same amount with less labor is desirable because it gives the owner a temporarily higher rate of profit (temporary because his competitors soon catch up).

[SocialismOrBarbarism]

Patents have been shown to hinder innovation. Capitalism also divvy's up societies resources between many competing companies instead of pooling it all together, which can hinder development of things that would be too expensive for any single companies to research, such as how the state had to develop the computer because it wasn't profitable for any company to do so.

[ckaihatsu]

1. What motivates technical innovation and how does capitalism hinder worker innovation?


Since capitalists make up the composition of society's current ruling class we need to situate technical innovation virtually entirely under the discretion and control of the capitalist ruling class.

In armaments and all other kinds of intention-enabling technologies the ruling class will keep a veil of secrecy around its most prized and valuable capabilities, as long as it can. Any freak inventions that come from the grassroots will be seized upon and gobbled up by controlling interests, while worker innovations will be ignored and/or suppressed since their development could threaten class rule and the subjugation of workers under the wages (exchange value) system.

The *exception* to all of this is when *major schisms* develop among the major factions of the international bourgeoisie, as in world wars. Then there is a *push* to innovation, as with mobile missile capabilities, or number-crunching prowess, which marshalls resources towards developing a cutting edge in warfare instead of the everyday routine of leeching off of established practices.

Competition and espionage activities tend to pierce the veil over time, revealing and sharing the now-developed technologies around broader international circles, later filtering down into more common business markets and finally tailored into consumer products.





2. How was the Soviet Union able to advance scientifically in such a short period of time?


My understanding is that it was by gaining access to Western technologies and then customizing them for their own use.

http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/secrets-of-communist-computing-618217
http://digg.com/tech_news/Secrets_of_Communist_Computing_2


Chris



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[ArrowLance]

When things are easier to make (on average consume less labour) more can easily be produced and the magnitude of value of the product drops. So innovations can greatly disrupt profit flows.

Like was stated earlier, this is good for the developer for a short time until everyone has the technology. But overall its bad for everyone (the capitalists anyway).

[ckaihatsu]

Civilization itself is predicated on substantial innovations, massive works projects that serve as "the next big thing" for rulers to use as hype and as a carrot to lead us along into working for them.

I would argue that the past century or so was about four top-level developments in modern civilization which the bourgeoisie used to ensnare millions and then fight over in their world wars: industrialization, modernization, standardization, and digitization. Could these developments have been enacted in less destructive ways, without the bourgeoisie? Absolutely.

So what's after digitization? Should we wait around to find out, from the likes of corporate raiders? They're obviously not the desired leadership for any kind of decent future for humanity.


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religious empire ==> * ruling class crisis * ==> modern agricultural revolution




Justinian had expended huge amounts of money for wars against the Vandals in the Carthage region and the Ostrogoth Kingdom of Italy. He had also dedicated significant funds to the construction of great churches like the Hagia Sophia. Amidst these great expenditures, the plague's effects on tax revenue were disastrous. As the plague spread to port cities around the Mediterranean, it gave the struggling Goths new opportunities in their conflict with Constantinople. The plague weakened the Byzantine Empire at the critical point at which Justinian's armies had nearly wholly retaken Italy and the western Mediterranean coast; this could have credibly reformed the Western Roman Empire and united it with the Eastern under a single emperor for the first time since 395 AD. It also may have contributed to the success of the Arabs a few generations later in the Byzantine-Arab Wars.[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Justinian





In the basic mouldboard plough the depth of the cut is adjusted by lifting against the runner in the furrow, which limited the weight of the plough to what the ploughman could easily lift. This limited the construction to a small amount of wood (although metal edges were possible). These ploughs were fairly fragile, and were unsuitable for breaking up the heavier soils of northern Europe. The introduction of wheels to replace the runner allowed the weight of the plough to increase, and in turn allowed the use of a much larger mouldboard faced in metal. These heavy ploughs led to greater food production and eventually a significant population increase around 600 AD.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plow#Heavy_ploughs





Europe’s very backwardness encouraged people to adopt new ways of wresting a livelihood from elsewhere. Slowly, over many centuries, they began to apply techniques already known in China, India, Egypt, Mesopotamia and southern Spain. There was a corresponding slow but cumulative change in the social relations of society as a whole, just as there had been in Sung China or the Abbasid caliphate. But this time it happened without the enormous dead weight of an old imperial superstructure to smother continued advance. The very backwardness of Europe allowed it to leapfrog over the great empires.


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national empires ==> * ruling class crisis * ==> industrial revolution




[T]he mere hint of mass involvement in political life was too much for [Burke]. His denunciation, _Reflections on the Revolution in France_, appeared in 1790 and was a polemic aimed at uniting landed property, moneyed wealth and the ‘cultivated classes’ against any idea that artisans and farmers, let alone ‘servants’ and labourers, should rule. That meant rejecting each and every concession to liberal doctrines. Once sympathetic to the abolition of slavery, Burke now denounced abolitionism as ‘a shred of the accursed web of Jacobinism’.62 In a later writing, he insisted Tom Paine deserved ‘the refutation of criminal justice’.63

_The Reflections_ was an instant success among the upper classes — 50,000 copies were sold in England and numerous foreign translations appeared within a couple of years. George III loved it, Catherine the Great was enthusiastic, Stanislav, the last king of Poland, was full of praise. None of them, of course, had any experience of ‘servitude’ or had ever done anything to promote the ‘spirit of exalted freedom’.

Burke’s writings in England were soon matched on the continent by those of de Maistre. He not only insisted that rulers should be ‘separated from the people by birth or wealth, for once the people have lost their respect for authority all government will come to an end’,64 but extended the argument into an attack on the whole basis of the Enlightenment. ‘The greatest crime a nobleman can commit’, he wrote, ‘is to attack the Christian dogmas’.65

[...]

Not merely the revolution, but the very foundations of the Enlightenment were under attack—and this intensified as the advance of the revolutionary armies made all the crowned heads and aristocrats of Europe quiver. They turned to obscurantist beliefs as a bulwark against the spread of reasoning among the masses, and took the most repressive police measures against those who tried to continue the Enlightenment tradition.





Changes were occurring in the ways human beings produced things on a scale that had not occurred since hunter-gatherers first took up agriculture 10,000 years earlier. At first these changes were concentrated in the north of England, the Lowlands of Scotland and parts of Belgium. But they were soon to shape developments everywhere.

They involved a series of interconnected innovations: the employment of complex machines; the making of tools from hardened steel instead of wood, easily bent brass or easily broken cast iron; the smelting of steel in coal furnaces, not charcoal ones which had to be moved as local forests were chopped down; and the use of coal to provide, via the steam engine, a massive new source of motive power to turn machinery.

The combination of the new machines, the new metallurgy and the new energy source increased immeasurably what people could produce. It also cut to a fraction the time it took people and goods to move from one place to another.


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national empires ==> * ruling class crisis * ==> modernism




Totalitarianism of one sort or another was spreading right across Europe.

[...]

Many thousands of people who had fought for a better world found themselves trapped by the machinations of rival states: German Communists were handed over to the Gestapo by Stalin’s police in 1940; Polish Jews fled eastwards from advancing German troops in 1939 only to be imprisoned in the Russian gulag; refugees from Nazi Germany were interned as possible spies in Britain; soldiers escaping from republican Spain were thrown into concentration camps in republican France; Russian advisers to the Spanish republic were executed on their return to Moscow as ‘fascist agents’.





World capitalism went through the most sustained boom it had ever experienced. By 1970 the US economy was turning out three times as much as in 1940, German industrial output was up fivefold on 1949, and French output up four-fold. Italy was transformed from a peasant country into a major industrial power, and Japan leapt ahead to take second position behind the US. No wonder many economic historians today describe the period as a ‘golden age’.

[...]

It was not just a question of higher incomes. Wages could be spent on a range of consumer goods—vacuum cleaners, washing machines, refrigerators, televisions, instant hot water systems. There was a qualitative leap in the working class standard of living. Housework remained a chore for women, but no longer entailed endless hours of boiling and kneeling and scrubbing. Food could be purchased weekly rather than daily (opening the door for the supermarket to replace the corner shop). Entertainment of sorts was on tap in the home, even for those who could not afford the cinema, theatre or dancehall.

[Hit The North]

how does capitalism hinder worker innovation?



Under capitalism, innovation in the organisation of labour takes place periodically and is always geared towards increasing the amount of surplus value which can be pumped out of the labourer. Hence, under capitalism, people work harder and longer than they need to reproduce themselves. Under socialism, worker innovation will be geared towards producing the greatest amount utilising the smallest amount of labour time possible. Under socialism technological and organisational innovation will be used to free us from labour rather than enslave us to it.