A breakthrough—for whom?

Engineers at Stanford University have made a big breakthrough in laser-beam technology. Their discovery of how to switch a laser beam on and off up to 100 billion times a second is reported in the Oct. 27 issue of Nature. “Such an advance could have broad applications both in accelerating the already declining cost of optical networking and in potentially transforming computers in the future by making it possible to interconnect computer chips at extremely high data rates,” comments the Oct. 26 New York Times.

In the early days of capitalism’s Industrial Revolution, each new discovery set off a wave of optimism about the future, not just among those who felt they would directly profit from it, but among the general public. Scientific progress was welcomed as offering a better future for suffering humanity.

Today, such sentiments are muted. Of course, those with capital who can take advantage of a cheaper, faster way to do something in order to boost the return on their investments get very enthusiastic. And the military, which helped finance the Stanford project through the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, will undoubtedly get first dibs at integrating this new technology into its war-making machine. Hollywood and the “financial marketplace” are other areas of the economy said to have a stake in this development.

But the development of high technology today seems to have little relevance to the problems of millions of people, here and around the world, who are won dering how they will get clean water to drink, enough food for their children, simple medications that they can afford and other basics of life. All these things are fully possible today, without any further scientific breakthroughs, but for many they might as well be on the Moon.

The human brain is an amazing organ. Combined with social organization, it has succeeded in expanding knowledge of the natural world at what seems like the speed of light. But knowledge is not enough to make a better world. In fact, the explosion of technology driven by the need to expand capital, which subordinates all other considerations, is creating ecological disasters that have already made life more precarious for many.

Marxism has viewed the development of the means of production as the engine of social change—but progress does not take place mechanically. The new, more sophisticated tools on which the economy rests strain ever more against the confines of existing class relations, which become more burdensome, more irrational, more destructive, more dependent on repression and social control. All this sets in motion the struggle of the working class and the oppressed—who today make up the majority of the world’s people. It is only their struggles to end this capitalist system that can turn the promise of a better life through technology into a reality.