From: Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM
Date: Fri Apr 08 2005 - 07:26:21 EDT
Hi Ian: Let's talk briefly then talk about your some of the concluding paragraphs in a previous post which you think are still OK. > Hence it appears to follow that future technical progress which > transforms some fixed-capital maintenance costs into wage payments to > self-owning machines will necessitate a revision of Marx's theory of > value to include the possibility that non-human labour is the cause of > surplus-value and therefore exploited when employed in capitalist > firms ... would you accept this conclusion? The futuristic scenario that you present seems to me to ignore what I take to be some basic principles: 1) robots are (currently) a machine tool -- part of the means of production. 2) robots are privately owned. They are overwhelmingly owned by capital and the state now even though they are also slowly becoming means of consumption (luxury goods now, perhaps means of consumption for workers in the future). 3) They are designed and produced by capital (and, in some cases, also by the state). 4) So long as you have capitalism, we can expect that robots (no matter how sophisticated) will continue to take the commodity- form. Given the above, there is no reason to think that robots would _ever_ become autonomous 'self-owning' agents. They are the _property_ of humans -- they have no autonomous standing. As I asked you before, why would the owner of a robot pay the robot a wage? Now you might claim that at some future moment in time robots could become 'self-owning' and self-acting agents. I recognize that plot line! It's a classic science fiction plot that usually ends with the robots turning against their human creators. The mere fact, though, that these issues have been posed over and again in science fiction should tell you that robotic designers, programmers and maintainers will build into these machines ways to prevent these scenarios from developing. It's really not that hard to program even an 'intelligent robot' what _not_ to do, is it? If you insist on an analogy, then slavery is a far better analogy, imo. It is interesting to note that the term 'robot' was first used by Carel Kapek in the 1921 play "RUR" to describe a mechanical man and that the term comes from a Czech word meaning slave. (See a post I wrote on 1/21/04 for more references.) In solidarity, Jerry
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Apr 09 2005 - 00:00:01 EDT