Re: <nettime> Nobel laureate in economics aged 102 endorses the human economy...

[Newmedia@aol.com]

Brian:
 
> Now, both Sugihara and Arrighi are clearly idealizing the 
> Industrious Revolution, and I am not so sure (at all) that you 
> would find these good things happening in the factories and 
> supply-chains of Sony or the Toyota Motor Company!
 
Does either Sugihara or Arrighi ever mention Tavistock or "social  
psychology"?  Were they part of the "humans relations" movement (i.e. the  title of 
the SOCPSY journal, starting in 1947)?  And, what does  all this have to do 
with "human economy"?
 
How about the "fact" that post-WW II Japan was an *artificial* society,  
largely created and controlled by the same *occupying* "social scientists" who 
 gave us Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
 
Getting people to "cooperate" in groups is the direct result of the work on 
 "morale" that underpinned the STRATEGIC BOMBING of WW II -- including the  
firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo.  It is "psychological warfare" applied to 
 *civilian* populations (so, ideal for a Cold War).
 
The "leader" of much of this was Kurt Lewin at MIT -- the first named by  
Norbert Wiener in his Introduction to the 1948 "Cybernetics" as someone he 
would  *not* work with.  Then Wiener named Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead 
--  two other stalwarts of the "morale" work who he would NOT work  with.  
Eventually, finishing off the "family feud," their  daughter got a *false* 
biography of Wiener published in 2007.
 
In the early 50s, Wiener made friends with Walter Reuther.  Together  they 
made the point that the robots were going to replace the auto-workers, so  
"labor" needed to have a vigorous response.  Then Wiener was told to stop  or 
there would be a HUAC investigation of him and his friends (so he "retired" 
 and stopped making trouble).  And Reuther got Congress to fund the 1964-66 
 "Commission on Technology, Automation and Economic Progress," based 
largely on  Wiener's work.  
 
Then it was ignored -- in favor of "human relations" and the TAVISTOCK  
"grin" -- as Fred Emery et al did their "workgroup" magic at Toyota and the  
UAW hierarchy retired on their "protected" pensions.
 
China, on the other hand, is a *very* different story . . . have you read  
Prof. Wang's book about it?
 
Mark Stahlman
Brooklyn NY
 

#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org