6. February 13
[Later nineteenth century thinkers
used Darwinism] to buttress the conservative outlook in two
ways. The most popular catchwords of Darwinism, “struggle
for existence” and ‘survival of the fittest,” when applied
to the life of man in society, suggested that nature would
provide that the best competitors in a competitive situation
would win, and that this process would lead to continuing
improvement. In itself
this was not a new idea, as economists could have pointed
out, but it did give the force of a natural law to the idea
of a competitive struggle. Secondly, the idea of development over aeons
brought new force to another familiar idea in conservative
political theory, the conception that all sound development
must be slow and unhurried.
-- Richard Hofstadter, Social
Darwinism in American Thought
Assignments:
Paulina BORSOOK Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp
Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High-Tech,
pp 1-171.
February 15
Before World War II, technical innovations
on which economic expansion depended were the product of individual
entrepreneurs working at a low technological level. . . . Beginning with World War II, however, innovation became increasingly
dependent on a very high level of scientific and technological
expertise, and on a corresponding investment in an extremely
expensive capital plant to carry out research and development
so that only very large enterprises could undertake such programs.
The problem for innovation then was to produce a large
body of scientifically trained experts with an orientation
toward research as a career, and to provide those research
workers with libraries, laboratories, technical assistants,
equipment, expendable supplies, and channels for communication
of preliminary results. Although
the aggregate resources in the hands of corporations are more
than sufficient, those resources cannot be mobilized by the
usual anarchic and competitive mechanisms of capitalism. .
. . Some method must
be found to pool the individually limited resources of private
producers while resolving the contradiction between the individual
competitive demands for immediate profit and market advantage
on the one hand, and the long-term cooperative nature of research
on the other. That
is, both the cost and
the conduct of research and technological education must
be socialized. . . . It is obvious that only the state can
be the instrument of that socialization.
-- R.C. Lewontin, “The Cold War and the Transformation of
the Academy”
Paulina Borsook Cyberselfish, pp. 172-264
