After the Revolution; (Micro) Chips with Everything, Laurie Carmichael, ALR (1989)

“After the Revolution; (Micro) Chips with Everything”, Laurie Carmichael in Australian Left Review, February 1989

This is one of several items that show Laurie Carmichael’s long term study of technological change and, its implications for working people. The Australian Left Review was the analytical discussion magazine of the Communist Party and Carmichael was a regular contributor to it.
The article features a thumbnail sketch of the 4 major periods of technological change and what happened in its interaction with social relations. It concludes with a reminder of how the emergence of the microchip was shaping and was shaped by the macro-political economy of the times, especially for Australia the replacement of manufacturing by mining, defining Australia, as a prime supplier of raw materials dug from the ground.

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In this article Laurie Carmichael provides a sketch of the 4 major periods of technological change and what happened in its interaction with social relations. He finishes by reminding the reader how the emergence of the microchip was shaping and was shaped by the macro-political economy of the times. For Australia that featured its re-shaping as a prime supplier of raw materials dug from the ground.

Carmichael presents his analysis of “Taylorism” as the major development that shaped the division of labour in metal industry, in manufacturing generally, extending from there through most industries. At the time he ensured the study of “Taylorism” was a feature of union education, starting in the metal workers union and extending into the work of the Trade Union Training Authority. He encouraged union delegates to grapple with its meaning in their own workplace, both how it retarded their own skills development and cultivated incompetent management. Workers’ descriptions of inadequate management were a regular feature of their storytelling in union education courses.

The delegates discussed the impact of mass production technologies and processes on workers, including their health and safety, the job classification system, and its associated pay relativities, reflected in Australia’s industrial awards and side agreements.

Learning resources included the short documentary, “Clockwork”, and Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 film, “Modern Times”.

Carmichael also summarises the brief history of the microchip as hardware and its interaction with software. He briefly suggests that employer control of work suppresses and inhibits the liberating potential of software development that could be controlled by workers for the benefit of society.

Carmichael, with much support and in the face of resistance also, argued that a new award classification system that integrated payment for skills acquired and used would be of great benefit for workers in the near and longer-term future. That led to his great determination to raise the status of vocational education and to its synthesis with “general education”.