“Would Trotsky Wear a Bluetooth? – Technological Utopianism Under Socialism, 1917-1989, by Paul Josephson, 2010
Part I Review:
The title is bookish click-bait, though eventually the
answer is ‘yes’ - Trotsky would. Josephson
claims that all socialists in power – Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Dimitrov,
Rakosi, Ulbricht, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Kim Il Sung - were ‘technological
utopians,’ while Marx and Engels were ‘technological determinists.’ China, Cuba and Vietnam are missing from the
book. He equates these post-capitalist workers’ states with the same tech practices
as under capital, and claims they thought there was such a thing as ‘socialist
technology.’ This relates to the issue
of whether technology is value-neutral. It
is a useful book in its detailed focus on workers’ state technological development, a mostly
unknown and unexplored area.
However there is nothing in Marx that alleges technology primarily
determines history, as class struggle is the real motor inside modes of
production. Nor is his ‘key’ quote from
Lenin sufficient. From a poster it reads
“Communism - is Soviet Power, plus
Electrification of the Country.”
What he misses is the primary role of ‘soviet power.’ Electrification is
clearly secondary in this quote – a ‘plus.’ In a country of oil lamps, horse
power, humans behind plows and hand labor, electricity is actually not
‘utopian.’ It can be a benefit to workers and peasants, though how it is done
is another matter. As the workers’ state
degraded, there were socialists who did become ‘bureaucratic utopians.’ But that is a political question, not a
technological one. Dialectical interplay
between and within different forces seems to be beyond him.
Josephson thinks the 1917 revolution was a ‘coup’ and
continues to call the Soviet CP ‘Bolshevik’ long after it had fundamentally
changed. He complains about Soviet praise for various tools and machines,
without acknowledging that these are both extensions of human labor –
labor which has sustained humanity since the beginning. The question is ‘what’ tools are being
praised. While he doesn’t claim to be
hostile to post-capitalist societies or state-led development, recognizing
their many successes, the book doesn’t read that way. That said, let’s see what Josephson has to
contribute other than allegations against productionist or ‘totalitarian’ Marxism.
Early
On
Josephson has studied post-capitalist use of technology
deeply. His first point is the imitation
and borrowing of specifically American production methods – Taylorism and
Fordism. Lenin and Trotsky famously
elevated Taylorist study, which they considered a corrective to chaotic work
methods and absenteeism by former muzhiks. This was in the context of civil war, poverty
and backwardness. But it ultimately led to militarized work, speed-up and the
Stakhanovite movement. Early on many
U.S. engineers were brought into the USSR to modernize the industrial plant. A Soviet auto factory was built to imitate
River Rouge in Detroit and steel plants were modeled after those in Gary,
Indiana. An immense number of tractors were imported into the Soviet Union from
U.S. companies like Case, International Harvester, Deere and Allis Chalmers until
a domestic industry was developed. Many
peasants did not know how to operate or take care of machinery even after
being trained, so tractors were left to break or rust.
Much of the early technical and electrical plans were to
link workers with peasants in exchange for food. This is the symchka, part of the ‘scissors,’ a unifying material link between
city and countryside. The peasantry was
not a solid ally in the USSR so it made sense to provide concrete incentives. Josephson says scientists and engineers were
heavily involved and organized in the production field at first, far more than in the
U.S. or Germany. The Bolsheviks embraced science and modern technologies – rail, printing presses, telegraph and telephone, film,
photography and beyond. They were not
the false stereotype of the Luddite. Later under Stalin engineers and scientists were suspect as
upper-class ‘wreckers,’ and show trials were held for them in the early
1930s.
 |
| Steam Punk Rendering of a Hero City |
Main
Points
One of Josephson’s main points is the continual Soviet
focus on ‘heavy industry’ to the detriment of light industry and worker, environmental or consumer-facing
issues. Mining, metallurgy, machine
tools, concrete, artificial fertilizer and oil predominated these economies. An example is the terrible phone service in
the USSR that lingered into the 1960s and 1970s. Cramped housing, low level health care,
inadequate transport and a limited supply of everyday items and food are more
examples. Khrushchev began to deal with lack
of housing through large and medium building projects, but only in the 1960s.
Another is his faulting of the Communists, using Trotsky as
an example, for having a ‘promethean’ view on nature. He uses one quote from “Literature and Revolution,” which
poetically described how socialism would move literal mountains. I myself have tried to find references to working
with or protecting nature from Trotsky, and could not, unlike Marx, Lenin and others. Some present Trotskyists also carry this
baggage. Nevertheless the historical
record shows that Soviet efforts around dams, canals, trees, soil, rivers, water,
cotton and oil were as damaging to nature as capitalist ones.
Josephson describes many projects, starting with the first
hydroelectric dam north of Leningrad, along with the first aluminum plant, both
presided over by Kirov. Stalin became
even more enamored of massive projects after the destruction of all opposition
in the 1930s – canals, hydro-dams, the Moscow subway, giant factories,
skyscrapers, whole cities devoted to one industry - while looking down on
muzhiks who refused to ‘modernize.’ This was one of the ostensible motivations
for forced collectivization, to crush peasant ‘backwardness.’ After Stalin died during the ‘thaw,’
monumental buildings were denounced as pretentious, inefficient, ugly and wasteful.
Central
& Eastern Europe Snapshots
One of the problems in the book is a certain dearth of detail.
What are the rates of lung cancer,
industrial accidents, life spans, hours worked, environmental damage, safety
gear, size and quality of living quarters, poverty rates, homelessness and
other metrics for the workers of the USSR and central/eastern Europe related to
technology? Clearly the goals of
cleanliness, safety, comfort and ease were not always being met. He switches to ‘aesthetics’ and obsesses about
a uniform ‘grayness’ in the ‘eastern bloc.’ He claims if you were set down
blindfolded in ANY capital of Eastern or Central Europe, you’d see it. Yet many of these cities had hundreds of years
of architecture prior to 1946 and were not destroyed. Nor were they bulldozed for
‘brutalist’ styles and poorly-made concrete blocks. Many Soviet industrial methods were
imported into the new workers’ states after WWII, including new cities (‘hero’
cities) dedicated to certain industries, or nuclear plants. There was also a needed recovery from capitalist
WWIIs’ infrastructure. Roads, bridges, buildings and
power stations had to be reconstructed quickly. Even he recognizes the
achievement.
In East Central Europe the post-capitalist states adopted: 1., standardized production
goals and standards, not the millions of twists in a market-economy. (Just try to analyze the multiplicity of
complex faucet cartridges in the U.S. to stop a simple leak in a faucet!) 2., an aversion to producing
luxuries or many variations of basics, in pursuit of equality. 3.,
mass production for economies of scale and wide, inexpensive production. 4.,
Large factories, mines, ports and plants built to efficiently concentrate
workers in one place, avoiding the repetition of many work sites. Josephson makes little of Soviet bureaucrats’
autarkic methods in Europe, even through COMECON.
Each country was advised to duplicate what the others were doing instead of creating a
‘common’ cross-border economy, swapping production and products. This was a deeply inefficient nationalist ‘deviation’
so to speak.
 |
| Sztalinvaros in 1956 |
Josepheson describes the construction of a new industrial
“Stalin City” (Sztalinvaros) on the banks of the Danube in Hungary. In 1956 the happy workers there and in every
other industrial Hungarian town came out against the bureaucratic government
and for workers’ control and workers’ democracy. Socialization from above had failed. But is this really only about housing, goods
and working conditions? He addresses the
rebuilding of Warsaw, Poland in a gigantic style, which was 85%
destroyed. A present look at the city
shows modest modernist and older facades, not giganticism. Were they all torn down since 1989? The construction of
the huge Nova Huta Steelworks and a new city is done in a predominately rural
area near Krakow and soon becomes over-crowded, with few human amenities. He
travels to Bulgaria and mentions that many specially created post-war Bulgarian
industrial cities like Dimitrovgrad became toxic waste dumps. The implementation of Bulgarian mega-farms of
10K acres actually was less productive than smaller acreages and soil
treatment, though he says little about soil fertility. In East Germany/GDR another steel/ iron/
cement city, Stalinstadt, was built with Soviet aide. 50% of German production had been destroyed
during the war. They employed the clichéd ‘socialist
in content, national in form’ standards, designing everything around the
factories. The city became a huge site
of air pollution with a familiar lack of shops and housing. In 1953 conditions led to another worker-led
uprising in the GDR. Nevertheless,
Josephson points to the high level of technology achieved in other areas of the
GDR like chemicals, physics and rocketry, but as usual he does not elaborate.
The Bourgeois
Cadres Decide Everything
Josephson hides his opinion on
nuclear power, oil and gas drilling, the car culture, building methods and
materials, the best city planning, meat and clothing production, factory design,
‘green’ tech, artificial fertilizer, water/air use and the like – except that
he sees Soviet methods employed in the ‘West’ too. So it is unclear if he’s an eco-socialist, a
Social-Democrat, just a needling anti-Communist or an ordinary academic who hides
his politics. I.E. the real question
is, what technology should be used and how should it be done?
The value of the book for communists and socialists is it
leads to paying real attention to the issue of technology, its benefits and its
collateral damage, or its complete uselessness and toxicity. Technology is not always neutral. As to the title’s wireless Bluetooth question - certainly
I use it and so do many other comrades. But
do we really need it? I easily lived for
many years without Bluetooth© as did everyone above the age of 25. It was
introduced in 1998. It’s a frill.
(End of Part 1
Review)
Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box,
upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “New
Dark Age – Technology and the End of the Future,” “Scorched Earth – Beyond the
Digital Age to a Post-Capitalist World,” “Fully-Automated Luxury Communism,”
“Shrinking the Technosphere” (Orlov); “Bit Tyrants – the Political Economy of
Silicon Valley,” “The New, New Thing – A Silicon Valley Story” (M. Lewis); “The
Circle and the Snake: Nostalgia and Utopia in the Age of Technology,”
“Democracy, Planning, Big Data," "Art of the Soviets."
And I bought it at May Day Books' excellent cut-out section!
Red Frog
October 16, 2023
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