"ANALYSIS OF THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE PRODUCTION SYSTEM AND THE REPERCUSSIONS IN THE CONSCIENCE OF THE WORKER IN THE YEAR TWO THOUSAND"


In the conclusion of my university diploma dissertation in 1975 on J. P. Sartre's analysis of the relationship between freedom and necessity in the "Critique of Dialectical Reason", I put forward a hypothesis that disputed Sartre's approach and suggested the birth of a real movement that would bury Marxism. An intellectual critique of Marx would not be sufficient to set the old man aside; what was needed was a transformation of production relations leading to a movement of ideas that could abolish the bureaucratised communist movement and the so-called degenerated Marxism. I believe that this hypothesis is now becoming a reality, and pushes me towards a period of analysis and study to further this reflection, and above all to see whether it was possible to achieve a synthesis of the stages that have made up my life from the existential and thought standpoints, and therefore of political practice or non practice. My return to liberal politics pushes me in this direction, as every day I come across former companions who do not understand my choice: they see it as a form of betrayal, a disavowal. I know that it isn't, but I still have difficulty in drawing out this issue: this is for me a repudiation of a past that no longer exists, a society that I no longer want, indeed no-one in Italy wants (with the possible exception of Cossutta) socialist or communist, in the original sense of these terms. At this time I am not interested in petty political issues: I wish to set out from an analysis, be it only approximate, of relations in production, labour and between productive forces, of their characteristics and changes brought about by automation in the training of the work force, culminating in the transformation of the conscience of workers in the year 2000, of their identity, their world, their values, their needs: in short, how they would like to change the world and the one in which they live. While in the past society was clearly divided between intellectual workers and manual workers, with consequent division of social class and living standards, the near (though not immediate) future will witness an exceptional reshuffling of functions, of roles and skills. In the year 2000 factory automation will have reached such a state of progress that the only remaining manual occupation will probably be that of cleaning, and maybe not even that. The situation will be similar in the fields. The selection of labour will be associated to intellectual capacity. The engineering designer of the automatic work line, the machine technician, the personnel manager, the pay office worker, the sales manager, the psychologist, the doctor and the personnel trainer will all belong to the same social class, the only difference between them being their training decided on each one's specific aptitude and skills. For this reason the school of the future will increasingly strive to favour the educational carrier of the most talented, regardless of social background, because the productive system will ensure that each role is played by the most suitable individual. The conservative forces will be those who oppose this process. A new egalitarianism: equal conditions to favour the emergence of the most skilled. Who would be against that? And yet there is opposition: from those who reason to the logic of the Left of the Sixties and Seventies, who see this approach as an attack against equal conditions for all, regardless of skill or function. All this on the assumption that class division has predetermined skills and therefore social injustice: the struggle to remedy the imbalance caused by historical factors is the task of the progressive person. But this logic no longer stands; the situation has been overturned. Granted that today everyone owns one or more television sets, that mass education gives all access to some degree of basic culture, the initial conditions are increasingly similar, allowing the emergence of the specific skills of each individual, regardless of origin. What is ultimately my point? The reason behind the collapse of values and the tension seen in the Left in Europe, in particular in the communist parties, is the transformation of the productive process. These parties have been unable to make a practical analysis of the real situation - some because of inability, some because of fear of drawing the logical conclusions, others because of the nostalgia for a still too-recent past - and are stuck in a Marxist-type approach that has already begun to lose grip, and that is indeed completely useless in coming to terms with modern society and its production systems. That is why the forces of the Left, once called "progressive", have today become conservative, in fact seeking alliances with other conservative forces in society. The term should not surprise: a conservative is someone who wishes to conserve, that is to prevent something from changing. The dwindling number of followers and the change is their function has deprived the movement of the revolutionary object: herein lies the schizophrenia of the socialist and communist movements of our day. What is inappropriately called the post-industrial society is therefore a society in which manual and intellectual labour are combined, while machines completely replace the worker in manual tasks. This is progress. The winds of freedom blow through society and the factory; a new freedom that means the acknowledgement of new conditions. The old must be swept away, together with their bureaucratic structures and unmoving hierarchies: the services sector is spreading, overwhelming all obstacles, transforming our way of living and thinking.
Venezia 23/7/88
(Translation of Mattew Mc Parland)

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