MIND
INDUSTRY
105
fiction that the working class was able to determine the conditions
of its own existence is meaningless; the proletariat
is
subjected by
physical constraint and undisguised force. Archaic methods of mani–
pulation, as used by the school and by the church, the law and the
army, together with old customs and conventions, are quite sufficient
for the ruling minority to maintain its position during the earlier
stages of industrial development. As soon as the basic industries have
been firmly established and the mass production of consumer goods is
beginning to reach out to the majority of the population, the ruling
classes will face a dilemma. More sophisticated methods of production
demand a constantly rising standard of education, not only for the
privileged but also for the masses. The immediate compulsion which
kept the working class "in their place" will slowly decrease. Working
hours are reduced, and the standard of living rises. Inevitably, people
will become aware of their own situation; they can now afford the
luxury of having a mind of their own. For the first time, they become
conscious of themselves in any fuller than the most primitive and
hazy sense of the word. In this process, enormous human energies are
released, energies which inevitably threaten the established political
and economic order. Today this revolutionary process can be seen at
work in a great number of emergent nations, where it has long been
artificially retarded by imperialist powers; in these countries the poli–
tical, if not the economic conditions for the development of mind
industries can be realized overnight.
4
4.) Given a certain level of economic development, industrializa–
tion brings with it the last condition for the rise of a mind industry:
the technology on which it depends. The first industrial uses of elec–
tricity were concerned with power and not with communications: the
dynamo and the electrical motor preceded the amplifying valve and
the film camera. There are economical reasons for this time lag: the
foundations of radio, film, recording, television and computing tech–
niques could not be laid before the advent of the mass production of
commodities and the general availability of electrical power.
In our time the technological conditions for the industrialization
of the mind exist anywhere on the planet. The same cannot be said
for the political and economic prerequisites; however, it is only a
matter of time until they will be met. The process is irreversible. There-
4. The importance of the transistor radio in the Algerian revolution has
been emphasized by Franz Fanon, and the role of television in the poli–
tical life of Castro's Cuba is a matter of common knowledge.
