BOOKS
57
there an understanding and an explanation of the factors involved that
provide us with one of our important clues to the development and decay
of capitalism.
It was Marx who demonstrated how modern technology arose on
the foundation of previous discoveries and technical knowledge. Merchant
capitalism and the factory system provided the economic basis for a rapid
development. The revolution in technics was accompanied by a revolution
in the relations of labor to the productive processes that led to a change
in all social relations. The relation of labor to the productive process condi–
tioned the development of machinery. Present trends towards remote control
and automatization of production are goals that are inherent in the develop–
ment of machinery. But the complete fulfillment of the technical revolu–
tion waits upon the realization of a revolution in society when the pro–
letariat will destroy the capitalistic relations of production. Modern
technical developments are acting as an accelerator of the fundamental
contradiction of capitalism-the antagonism between the forces of produc–
tion and capitalist social relations that are acting as a fetter upon further
development.
This is perhaps a simple lesson, but it is one that Mr. Mumford
either does not know, or completely overlooks. Instead of analyzing the
development of capitalism thr0ugh its stages as mercantile capital, indus–
trial capital, and its lasd stage, finance capital, he uses an approach the
practical result of which is to blur over the fundamental fact of con–
temporary society-the class struggle.
Because Mr. Mumford shies away from the class struggle, he can
have such naive notions as that the NRA abolished child labor in the
cotton mills; that Japan invaded Manchuria because of population pres–
sure; or that the infamous Baltimore and Ohio company union scheme of
speed-up is a move "toward a more positive integration of labor."
For Mr. Mumford the class-struggle is a hangover from the "paleo–
technic" age. That is why its misguided exponents push it with so much
"ruthless vigor." From the heights of his neo-technic culture, Mr. Muf–
ford discovers that the proletariat is disappearing, and with this disap–
pearance must go the facts and values "upon which Marx founded his
policies and programs." How Mr. lYlumford deduces this amazing theory
from the faster rate of growth during the twenties of the number of
workers in service industries compared to the rate of growth in the pro–
duction industries, Mr. Mumford never makes quite dear. He can ignore
the fact that in
1930
some
70
per cent of the gainfully employed were
members of the working class, because fundamentally he is not interested
in the realities that confront mankind today.
He likes to play around with verbal puzzles and logical exercises.
This is the only rational explanation one can make of his analysis of war
as an "institutional drama." War veterans will be interested to learn
that when they engaged in combat, war brought "a release from the
sordid motives of profit-making and self-seeking that govern the prevailing
forms of business enterprise." This is not a
surprisin~
statement, since it
