When the chips are down jobs are on the line

Scan page 8

...and so in conclusion, I will den remarkable speed of the silicon immediate processing of our latest Times Newspapers printers march to defend jobs against computerisation involve the application of silicon chips.

Furthermore, it has been claimed that these developments are the guarantee of the future of capitalism, and that any major capitalist nation that falls behind is lost, while those in the forefront have a safe future.

But silicon chip technology is simply a further stage in the development of automation, and its impact cannot be gauged outside the context of the general crisis of capital.

A silicon chip is a computer. It is the latest development of the electronic computer-an innovation of the post-war capitalist boom.

Switches

A computer is essentially a network of switches which can be structured in any way.

Because of this plastic quality the same computer can be programmed to do more than one thing.

A programme is a partic. ular setting of switches to create a pattern which responds in a determined way.

So a particular input produces a definite output.

The samé computer can do any number of jobs-as many as there are programmes written for it.

Early computers were constructed or assembled with electronic valves, later transistors, as the basic switch element.

In general a computer only does one thing at a time-that is, only changes one switch setting at a time The power of a computer derives from the speed with which one switch setting follows another and that speed is granted by the fact that the switching is electronic.

Powerful

The development of the chip was the result of the pursuit of powerful computers, not the desire for small ones:

For the limiting factor in the power of a computer is the time it takes electricity to travel the distance between one switch and your redundancy payments...

another.

The smaller the distance between the switches the faster and therefore the more powerful the computer will be.

The drive to diminish size lead to the use of photographic methods of reproduction rather than assembly from already existing parts.

The pattern of switchelements is etched photographically onto slivers of silicon which are then sandwiched together. Photographic reduction allows microscupic size as well as cheapness.

Even if nine out of ten chips are failures computers can be produced for a few pounds today that would have cost thousands of pounds a decade ago.

Commercial computers currently being installed carry out millions of switch settings a second.

So even if it takes several onstrate he chip in its project .

hundred such settings one after another just to add two numbers together, the actual time taken is negligible.

The chip gives the prospect of enormous computing power very cheaply, and in a tiny package. The first industrial revolution augmented or replaced the muscle-power of human labour with steampower.

• The chip-based "revolution' • would replace manpower in its control or directing functions, offering the prospect of complete automation. However, capital's problems are not solved.

Productivity

In the post-war boom investment meant employment. The increased productivity of new techniques is so great that much more can be produced by many fewer.

The capitalists and their apologists see automation creating a 'leisure problem'.

In capitalist reality the leisure problem presents itself to the working class as unemployment.

If the working class is to defend its living standards then the creation of unemployment on the pretext of chip technology must not be allowed.

While it is in capital's interest that unemployment and speed-up and other forms of 'rationalisation? mark the attempts at recovery, it will become ever more obvious that this is not in the interests of the working class.

Potential benefits

Chip based technology can have enormous benefits for mankind, and marks a further development of the productive forces at his disposal.

But the capitalists can only introduce it along with enormous waste and misery.

Only with the rational allocation of resources under socialist planning can the new techniques be used to the benefit of all.

And only the working class is in the position of both benefitting from the introduction of socialist planning and being able to bring it about.

The Luddites tried to check the social consequences of capital's expansion during the industrial They set to work quite machines smashing the productive system.

It is essential that today the evil consequences of automation are blamed on the out-dated capitalist form of production in which it occurs.

If automation is to be the servant and liberator of mankind rather than an restoration of profitability.

Marx showed that ultimately profits can only be derived from exploitation. While a particular capitalist may through some advantage or other contrive to make a profit by trade with other capitalists, if this were to be the only general source of profits then the overall profits of all capitalists taken together would be zero.

Source of profit

is the exchange between the capitalist and worker that is the source of profit.

The capitalist pays the worker less than the value of the worker's labour adds to the product. The difference is the capitalist's profit.

The more the capitalist lays out in machinery rather than in the employment of labour, the harder it becomes to make a significant profit on the whole outlay.

This inexorable tendency of the rate of profit to fall was first identified by Marx and it is at the heart of the crisis.

The capitalist is forced by the competitive forces unleashed by this crisis to turn to production methods which ultimately make his position as a capitalist more untenable.

This fact is reflected in the reluctance of British capital to re-invest those profits they do make at present. They see no prospect of profits which would justify the amounts of capital invested.

What is required is the restoration of profitability before the new technology can be fully applied. This means that large amounts of capital in the form of old machinery must be written off.

It also means that further amounts of capital be made available to invest in the new machinery.

British capital, which did. not go through the restructuring and renewal which the destruction of World. War II brought to Japan and W. Germany, is caught in the vice of capitalist crisis more than most. It appears that the only way out is through new techniques. But this requires a level of profits unattainable under present conditions.

The only way forward for capital is to change those conditions fundamentally. And this can only be done by exploiting labour more under present conditions.

By unemployment, speed-up, inflation, the working class must take a cut in its living standards.

The difference effected by this cut must accrue to the capitalists as profit.

This alone will provide the basis for capitalist rejuvenation in Britain, not this that technological marvel.

Overthrow

But it is essential in fighting these struggles through that there is the political development which sees the overthrow of capitalism itself as the sole protection of the working class.

It is for this development that Trotsky wrote the Transitional Programme on which the WL fights for leadership in all struggles of the working class.

*No job-cutting tivity deals!

*Work-sharing pay!

*For a sliding scale of wages!

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TOMON 'WERE INA BUT NONE OF US ARE