Marx's views on scientists/engineers?

[the debater]

I know Marx's primary concern in his writings and in his views was how to liberate the working class and how to "defeat" the bourgeois. Well, something along those lines. But I'm also curious to learn about what Marx thought of scientists/engineers/doctors, etc, etc. Were his views shaped by the times he was living in? Were most hard science people working for the government, or were they working in the free market? :confused: My guess is that maybe that would've affected his views?

[Lord Hargreaves]

Perhaps I am wrong, but I don't think Marx himself said anything about scientists or doctors.

So I'm interpreting your question as instead something like "how does the professional middle class fit into the schema of Marxist political economy and class analysis?"

I guess that the strict answer would be that since they sell their labour for a salary and do not own the means of production, then they are in some sense members of the proletariat. But I can anticipate the inadequacy of that conclusion, since their structural role vis-a-vis capital is far more ambiguous. Engineers are pretty much directly employed to increase the productivity of capital and labour, and the hard sciences contribute in a broader way to technological advancement.

Does any of this help?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

That depends; independent, self-employed professionals such as lawyers and certain doctors are members of the "traditional" petite bourgeoisie. Nurses, lab technicians, research assistants and others who are forced to sell their labour power and do not participate in the extraction of surplus value to a significant degree (indeed, in the mean, surplus value is extracted from them) are part of the proletariat, though they are sometimes part of very high strata, sometimes the labour aristocracy. Professors, doctors, and so on are forced to sell their labour power (usually) but extract surplus value from their technicians, nurses, assistants etc. They are, thus, part of the "sergeant and foreman" stratum. Finally, high medical and university officials - rectors, deans etc. - are for all intents and purposes part of the state apparatus, and more than one enterprising official has become part of the bourgeoisie.

[the debater]

Perhaps I am wrong, but I don't think Marx himself said anything about scientists or doctors.

So I'm interpreting your question as instead something like "how does the professional middle class fit into the schema of Marxist political economy and class analysis?"

I guess that the strict answer would be that since they sell their labour for a salary and do not own the means of production, then they are in some sense members of the proletariat. But I can anticipate the inadequacy of that conclusion, since their structural role vis-a-vis capital is far more ambiguous. Engineers are pretty much directly employed to increase the productivity of capital and labour, and the hard sciences contribute in a broader way to technological advancement.

Does any of this help?

Yes it does, thanks. I guess if the hard sciences are contributing to technological development, that would technically mean that the hard sciences are in line with Marxist ideologies, and are aiding human evolution and advancement. Although perhaps in some cases, it can come down to whose interests you represent. There might be some engineers who work for the oil companies who are going to be pro-oil; others who are involved with renewable energy are probably going to be pro-taking care of the environment, etc.

[ckaihatsu]

[Engineers'] structural role vis-a-vis capital is far more ambiguous. Engineers are pretty much directly employed to increase the productivity of capital and labour, and the hard sciences contribute in a broader way to technological advancement.


I wonder if it would be fair to compare engineers to military roles, in general -- there is a continuum of 'corporate ladder' that exists from the top to the bottom in either case, and the final say would rest with the board and (major) shareholders -- or military brass -- at the end of the day.

So, hierarchical aspects aside, both engineer and military roles tend to deal generally with the most materially / politically *advancing* aspects of the state, and the de facto running of capitalist society / civilization.

From a recent post elsewhere:





(Engineering and design is not typically considered to be 'work' by the standards of a revolutionary leftism since it's more bound-up with ownership and management -- and, in a *post*-capitalist context, would be integral to collectivist co-planning itself.)

[CyM]

More and more of those professions have long ago been proletarianized. In Québec, teachers, doctors and nurses, researchers and lab techs, are all for the most part public employees. They also tend to be a militant unionized sector of the working class.

This would not have been the case generally in Marx's time. They were far more "petit bourgeois" at the time, often owning their own practices, hiring assistants, living off of rich benefactors, etc...

[ckaihatsu]

living off of rich benefactors, etc...


Yeah.... So, um, you *know* any...??


= )

[argeiphontes]

More and more of those professions have long ago been proletarianized.....

Even doctors have been commodified in the U.S. I know one who is basically working in a "diagnosis factory." A highly-paid worker, certainly, but one with little control over work or its intensification. The hospital has clear goals, expressed in minutes spent per patient, kind of like the worker in the slaughterhouse that only gets X seconds per carcass. ;) Not a lot of time for chit-chat or bedside manner. (Not that I don't envy how much this person is paid for this relatively easy work :mad:)

I personally know that as a computer worker, whether systems or development, you're definitely part of the proletariat and should think of yourself as such. In many workplaces you're constantly reminded that IT is now seen as a commodity; people in the industry complain about this all the time, or at least they used to when it first started happening after the first dot-com bust.

No doubt engineers in other disciplines are treated the same way. Not to mention being subject to increasing labor insecurity due to outsourcing, etc, same as other sectors of the proletariat.

So, at least it's *experientially* a proletariat... :)

edit: And as an applied scientist in a corporation, you can be subject to literal expropriation of the product of your labor, in the form of the company you work for owning the rights to your inventions and patents, I suppose.

[Dave B]

I think Karl covered this in volume III although he was focusing on commercial labourers; rather than scientist and engineers; but I think the basic idea still holds.

And it is perhaps still directly relevant to ‘computer programmers’ who as a sector seem to spend most of their time doing commercial work ie banking, finance and stock control systems etc.

The thesis is that the expansion of the public education system will lead to an increase in supply of this kind of intellectual labour power and thus lower the ‘market value’ or in other words the wages you can get for it.

And that the public education system will churn these intellectual workers out like sausages.

I think this kind of labour power as a commodity like any other has been overvalued as has been the commodities it produces.

But it gets a bit complex when specialist labour power produces commodities that reduces the socially necessary labour time it requires to produce something else.

Anyway;


Secondly, because the necessary training, knowledge of commercial practices, languages, etc., is more and more rapidly, easily, universally and cheaply reproduced with the progress of science and public education the more the capitalist mode of production directs teaching methods, etc., towards practical purposes. The universality of public education enables capitalists to recruit such labourers from classes that formerly had no access to such trades and were accustomed to a lower standard of living. Moreover, this increases supply, and hence competition. With few exceptions, the labour-power of these people is therefore devaluated with the progress of capitalist production. Their wage falls, while their labour capacity increases

How well this forecast of the fate of the commercial proletariat, written in 1865, has stood the test of time can be corroborated by hundreds of German clerks, who are trained in all commercial operations and acquainted with three or four languages, and offer their services in vain in London City at 25 shillings per week, which is far below the wages of a good machinist.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch17.htm

The situation in the late 19th century was more complex when it came to ‘engineers and chemists’ etc.



As these often went into partnership, or were bought, with established finance and venture money capitalists as ‘profiteers of enterprise’ and acted as de-facto capitalists eg say Brunel and Stevenson etc?

The following comment by Fred is interesting although I suspect a hint of facetiousness in it;


The patronizing and errant lecturing of our so-called intellectuals seems to me a far greater impediment. We are still in need of technicians, agronomists, engineers, chemists, architects, etc., it is true, but if the worst comes to the worst we can always buy them just as well as the capitalists buy them, and if a severe example is made of a few of the traders among them — for traders there are sure to be — they will find it to their own advantage to deal fairly with us. But apart from the specialists, among whom I also include schoolteachers, we can get along perfectly well without the other “intellectuals.” The present influx of literati and students into the party, for example, may be quite damaging if these gentlemen are not properly kept in check.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_08_21.htm

I am chemist recruited from ‘classes that formerly had no access to such trades and were accustomed to a lower standard of living.’