High-tech capitalism
Y2K glitch shows labor power is still key
By
G. Dunkel
The Year 2000--or Y2K--computer glitch is potentially one of
the costliest and most widespread technical problems ever faced
by the capitalist class. To solve it, the developed countries
are going to spend an estimated $600 billion to $900 billion,
most of it on the human labor power the capitalists would like
to believe is no longer so important.
The problem exists because many computer programs read only
the last two digits of a date. Those programs will malfunction
when the calendar turns over to the year 2000. The two-digit
date was originally used to save time and money, but it means
that many critical programs will not work properly unless they
are changed to a four-digit date.
To get an idea of the complexity and cost of fixing this
problem, consider what was done at the Social Security
Administration. The SSA began planning its Year 2000 conversion
in 1980. Programmers began coding and testing in 1988. They
didn't finish until 1998. Of course, not every conversion will
be that long or complicated, but this gives an idea of what is
involved.
In addition to the large mainframe computers that banks,
insurance companies, the government, the military and other
large institutions use to keep track of their transactions,
computers are also found in VCRs, cars, elevators and machines
of all kinds--from pumping stations in reservoirs to mobile
telephones. These latter types of computers are often called
embedded chips. All must be checked to guarantee they will run
in the year 2000.
Lots of work, but no
new commodities
While billions are being spent to update the computer
systems, no new surplus value is being generated. The source of
surplus value is the unpaid labor of the workers. Karl Marx
showed that capitalist profits come out of the surplus
value.
But fixing existing computer software doesn't create new
commodities to be sold. It's kind of like when the automobile
companies must recall faulty cars and pay workers to repair
them. The capitalists see fixing the Y2K problem as a cost that
is cutting into their profit margins--which isn't to say that
there won't be capitalists who find a way to make profit out of
it.
What the capitalists will get out of fixing the problems is
an economy that will still be running on Jan. 3, 2000. It won't
be more profitable, more competitive, less expensive or more
powerful. It will just run.
This has driven the bosses into a tizzy. They invest to make
more money and be more profitable, while trying to keep
maintenance to a minimum. They don't want to spend megabucks on
paying programmers to spend megahours reading code, making
changes and then testing, changing, testing, changing and so
on.
If they refused to spend to fix the problem, however, the
capitalists would face widespread economic chaos. Telephone
systems, electric transmissions and thousands of other
essential services would be vulnerable to massive
disruptions.
History of the problem
When modern computers were developed in the mid-1950s,
computer memory and disk space were thousands of times more
expensive than they are today. One kilobyte of memory in 1954
cost $25,000. Today you can buy 16,000 times as much for $40 to
$60.
Programmers then tried to save space and compress data in
every way possible. Lopping off the first two digits of the
years--for example, writing 60 instead of 1960--was a natural
step. The first time this would create a problem was 40 years
away.
At that time most information was entered into computers
through punch cards that were limited to 80 characters, making
the two-digit date most practical. However, even after the cost
of disks and memory started to fall and punch cards were no
longer in use, programmers kept using two-digit dates, partly
because all existing programs used them.
Dates are important in most computer programs, even ones
that may not appear to need them. For example, when should a
computer controlling a bank of elevators send spare cars to the
ground floor? During the morning rush, most likely. When should
it shut most of them down? Weekends. These functions are
dependent on dates in the computer software.
Banks use dates to calculate how much money is owed on
loans, how much interest is owed on savings accounts, when a
check was deposited, when funds were transferred and so on.
Bank programs typically verify data by checking dates. For
example, a program would check to see that the date a loan
comes due falls after the current date. What a program does
when it finds an "error" is up to those who designed and wrote
the program. At the very least, it would refuse to process that
record.
Programmers started running into problems with two-digit
dates by the mid-1970s. For example, a 30-year loan taken out
in 1975--written 75--would not be repaid until 2005--written
05. Using all four digits, 1975 comes before 2005. Using only
two digits, 5 comes before 75, and the calculation is messed
up. But two-digit dates were so ingrained into data processing
that they were still in use in some databases created in the
mid-1990s.
Importance of human labor
in computing
Computers have been used to automate millions of jobs out of
existence and to de-skill millions more. In the major
capitalist countries, computers are omnipresent--everywhere
from a loading dock in a warehouse, where they are used to
prepare lists of what is to be loaded and unloaded, to the core
operations of every Wall Street bank.
But without the programs that tell computers what to do,
they are just chunks of iron and silicon. Programs direct the
flow of current through the various components, connect the
components and even direct other programs that process data
from external sources.
Human beings had to write all these programs. They are the
products of human labor. Even though the technology embodied in
computers and programming was used to automate millions of
jobs, the process itself was not automated. It has been
constantly improved and made easier. Tools have been developed
to inspect the code that programmers produce. But the work
still requires programmers.
To modify a program to accept a four-digit year, a
programmer must read the code, make the changes and test them.
For most of the Year 2000 problems, the changes are not very
complicated. However, programs interact and pass data to each
other, so that if a record is now four characters instead of
two, it might create an error if another program expects only
two characters. Testing changes is what really takes time and
effort.
The capitalists were so enamored with technology that well
into the mid-1990s they believed that some whip-smart
15-year-old was going to invent a magic program/potion that
would solve all their Y2K problems. IBM didn't even produce
Y2K-compliant operating systems until the mid-1990s.
While the cost of computer hardware has dropped
tremendously, and continues to drop at the same rate, the cost
of producing software has remained basically the same, if not
increased.
However, programs have an unusual property. They don't wear
out.
The machines they run on, which the programs direct, do wear
out.
Programs become obsolete. For example, they don't recognize
the correct date and have to be changed. They may be incorrect.
For example, some programs don't believe Feb. 29, 2000, exists
because they use the wrong definition for a leap year. No
matter how many times programs are used, they remain the same
unless changed by programmers.
IBM's big technological advance in the 1960s exploited this
property. IBM developed a technique that let programs created
on older machines run a new machine. They called it "backward
compatibility." It is not at all unusual to find programs
running on modern computers that were written in the 1970s or
even the late 1960s. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" was the
motto.
The capitalists like to pretend that technology and
computers can and will replace human labor. They propose that
the constant process of technological innovation will solve all
their technical problems sooner or later--even though making so
many skills obsolete under capitalism means discarding many
human beings onto the margins of society.
The Year 2000 problem has shown that these pretensions are
foolish. The programmers now enjoying flush times while fixing
this bug realize that, sometime early in the next millennium,
most of them will be discarded.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
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