**The socialist solution to capitalism's problems**

(Reprinted from the July 18, 1998 issue of the People's 
Weekly World. May be reprinted or reposted with PWW credit. 
For subscription information see below)

By Gus Hall

(The following is the third excerpt of a report to the 
Communist Party USA National Board June 27. Gus Hall is 
national chair of the CPUSA.)

Machines replacing human labor on a mass scale will bring 
on the next crisis of capitalism.

Under capitalism the continually higher level of 
productivity is bringing with it an escalating level of 
unemployment and pauperization.

At the same time, it is making the rich richer and 
producing huge profits for  transnational corporations.

The new technology is replacing workers in all basic, mass 
production industries. The havoc created by capitalist use 
and misuse of technology and the ups and downs of the stock 
market are warning signs of crises to come.

The overall wage scale keeps declining as workers are laid 
off from basic mass production industries and are forced to 
find jobs in unorganized, mainly low-wage, service 
industries.

This has been happening for 20 years. The work done by 
part-time workers and  the outsourcing to small shops is 
another corporate scheme to make bigger profits at the 
expense of full-time union labor.

There are also developments and changes that are a direct 
outcome of these processes. Corporate downsizing continues 
apace: layoffs of hundreds of thousands and operations 
moving to lower wage, non-union and sweatshop areas.

Meanwhile, the wages and working conditions of the 
remaining work force continue to decline and speedup and 
forced overtime continue to accelerate. In the last 10 
years corporate profits have risen over 165 percent. 

The unprecedented numbers being thrown into the ranks of 
the unemployed changes the very nature of unemployment and 
of the unemployed. Thus, it raises whole new questions for 
the trade union movement.

Add to this the creation of a part-time work force - using 
especially minority and women workers - and subcontractors 
and consultants on an hourly basis. This increases the rate 
of exploitation and profits because these work   ers 
receive neither benefits nor overtime pay.

The explosive growth of the temporary and part-time work 
force is a prime example of capitalism's misuse of 
technology.

In a rational system of production, under socialism, 
technology would be used to shorten the workweek, while at 
the same time raising the living standard of all workers.

Under capitalism, the higher level of productivity is 
resulting, simultaneously, in a high level of joblessness 
and poverty.

As new technology produces more advanced automated and 
computerized systems, layoffs and plant closings will 
vastly increase. 

Capitalists and management determine whether to release or 
apply new technology based strictly on what is profitable. 
Capitalism distorts what kind of technology is developed in 
the first place.

Technology that makes for a safer and healthier workplace 
or technologies that can clean up production processes are 

only implemented under tremendous pressure from labor and 
consumers. 

Perhaps the biggest distortion of all is the hundreds of 
billions poured down the rat hole of military technology. 
Not only is it wasted, dangerous and even criminal 
technology, but also it acts like a giant ball and chain on 
the economy and on social and human development.

In addition, public education is being attacked, privatized 
and phased out. It is no longer necessary to create a 
better educated and skilled work force, because the system 
no longer needs more mass production workers, but instead 
only a much smaller technological elite.

The underlying question these processes raise is what will 
be the effect of all these negative developments.

The many-sided processes will result in ever-bigger 
monopolies. They will result in the attempted destruction 
of unions, on a global scale. 

They will result in continuing declining wages, closing of 
domestic factories. There will be more foreign factories, 
more export of new technology.

These processes have already resulted in longer strikes, 
more bitter class battles. And the fact is that all the new 
developments and processes put together will not result in 
solutions to the serious problems faced by the working 
class.

They may result, however, in some workers having jobs and 
the rest of the class will be worse off.

All these processes point to the need for international 
working class solidarity, demands for the shorter workweek 
with no cut in pay, for nationalization of monopolies and 
industries, for internationalization of the trade unions, 
for new strategies and tactics in the sharpening class 
struggle.

It has become a life-and-death struggle. In the long run, 
however, socialism is the only solution.

Under socialism a solution will be found for all the new 
problems and crises of capitalism in the interests of the 
working class.

Thus, the socialist solution will increasingly become more 
urgent, more necessary. We have to learn to project the 
socialist solution as the long-term solution to the new, 
concrete problems.

Let's just take a deeper look at how socialism will solve 
the biggest problem facing the working class today, new 
technology.

Socialism and the scientific and technological revolution 
go together.

Only socialism can make decisions to research, investigate, 
discover, invent and apply without considering 
profitability, but only practicability and benefit for the 
people and society as a whole.

Increase in productivity is passed onto the people by way 
of wage increases.  When machines replace workers the hours 
of work are cut, without any real cut in wages.

Under socialism, the work force of a mechanized factory or 
industry would simply be retrained and relocated.

Technology enables society to assign the dirtiest, hardest 
jobs to machines and robots, while humans will increasingly 
do the work that requires creativity and ever-higher 
education.

Technology creates much greater career opportunities and 
greater leisure time for workers.


The costs involved in making such major adjustments in 
machinery, technology and human labor come out of social 
profits that were once privately confiscated, stolen by the 
ruling class through exploitation of labor.

The scientific and technological revolution makes it 
possible to project a new kind of socialist future that was 
not foreseeable until now.

However, short of socialism, we need advanced demands and a 
national, perhaps international conference, called by the 
trade unions, which would come up with ways to prevent the 
devastating effects of technology under capitalism. 

For example, we need a struggle which could include federal 
laws that would place restrictions on the monopolies, stop 
the corporations from stealing all the fruits of 
technological breakthroughs.

We need laws to guarantee commensurate price cuts and wage 
increases as a result of application of new technologies; 
affirmative action programs that would apply to every 
application of new technology.

We need to develop a "Science and Technology Bill of Rights 
for Workers and Consumers" that would eventually become 
law.

It is only through a united struggle of the labor movement, 
the trade unions, of all working people - including on an 
international scale - that the negative effects of the 
technological revolution, of all the negative processes 
sweeping our economy, can be successfully resisted.