Lunacharsky - Human Engineer

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Human Engineer


Published in: "Controversial problems of Marxist pedagogy", Sat. articles ed. A. Z. Ioanisiani M., Publishing House "Worker of Education", 1930. Given with some abbreviations. OCR Detskiysad.Ru

Wherever we demand automatic movements from the worker, no matter how precise, no matter how fast, no matter how perfect these movements may be, the machine will make them more perfect than a man. The automaton is now achieving extraordinary sensitivity: it can both regulate the machine and regulate itself, stop, start depending on certain conditions of its production process, it can be charged, started, turned on, etc. That is why Marx said that man will certainly be freed, especially under the socialist system, and perhaps even earlier, from all automatic movements.

All this inevitably becomes the property of the machine itself, and then what is a person needed for? - And a person is needed to perform such functions that no machine can perform, that is, for such switching on and off, to which no automaton is able to rise, for such a plastic organization of creative methods, in which a whole series of previously obtained circumstances of an elusive nature, to which one has to respond. A person becomes more and more, in production at least, he is not so much needed by his skeleton, muscles, implicit system, but by his brain. What makes him different from the most magnificent automaton is that he thinks he can solve new problems. The human engineer is the one who cannot be replaced by any machine gun.

Proceeding from this, it can be said that the very development of mechanisms will certainly lead to the elimination of menial work, to the elimination of menial automata, to the triumph of the worker-engineer.

But will it be soon? The industry does not develop as simply, straightforwardly as one might think. We are going through a very peculiar period, which changes all the conditions of present-day production. The point is that the machine performs all kinds of manipulations, and human labor is included in its work as a certain regulator or supplement, and its work is divided into the most primitive movements. This leads to the fact that a person can work almost without any training, he is not required to be particularly crowded. According to this plan, capitalism seeks to reduce the modern worker to the level of a coolie. And so, having taken him in this way, capitalism seeks to put him in a certain place where only a small movement needs to be made, he is included in the production process not as an intellectual part of it, but purely physically, which leads to the degradation of the entire class.

The class tendency is to transform - as it was in the manufacture, as it was in the worst times of the greatest suppression of the proletariat - to turn the worker himself into a servant of the machine, mechanized man. This Moloch-machine, which raises the abilities of a person tens, thousands of times, borders on a fairy tale, in its achievements very easily captivates some people and sometimes even replaces living socialism with the deathly idealism of mechanization.

From this point of view, following the line of admiration for the machine, it is done in such a way that any reflection, any psychology, i.e., in other words, reflexes of the brain of a higher order, in essence, are not needed.

And under these conditions, is not this type of socialism akin to ours - the American ideal, under which in the end everything will be mechanized little by little? And the most subtle problems of production will be solved once and for all by electro-steel methods? The person will become almost unnecessary. At the present time in America and Germany there are several such individuals, the so-called "machine people". These "machine people" are a complex of rather interesting automatisms: you can talk to them on the phone, you can send a certain instruction over the phone by means of a signal, and they react.

Such a man with a heart of steel and an electric will is strong, is a happier being than a man, just because he cannot be unhappy. Here we can recall Tugan-Baranovsky, who said that what nonsense when they say that human labor is the main producing factor; this is not true; this labor can be replaced by a corps of monkeys. But why the body of monkeys, why not a mechanical body, which will not depend on their feelings and other reasons?!

One can, of course, be surprised at all these wonderful projects, but they have nothing in common with socialism. Socialism is an extremely living and human ideal, the triumph of man over life. Socialism, as Engels said, must overcome the contradictions, according to which the person who created the mechanisms would be captured by them. Socialism will put them back in their place, socialism will ride the machine. Here it will be the same thing that happens with our writing: when we start writing, we study, we stick out our tongue from zeal, but then we start writing fluently, unnecessary movements disappear, and writing seems to us the simplest thing.

The same will happen with the car. When everything is mechanized to the highest degree, then the machine will secure the greatest possible amount of free time for man, free him from want, from hard labor, which history and nature have imposed on a human being and from which man seeks to free himself by developing mechanisms.

We are currently experiencing a revolution in the field of machinery, when this ideal, which seemed so close, so easily achievable, has not yet been achieved. And at that time, when it seemed that the prospect of an engineer-machine was so close, at that time in the West a turn was made to split human labor, to turn man into the movements of a machine, and this threatens to degrade the proletariat. This period, if continued for a long time, would have to colossally change the social significance of the worker. The skilled worker would then lose the key to the machine, he would cease to understand it, he would no longer be able to become its master, he would become its servant.

We are facing the same picture. We do not possess such cultural forces as to be able to jump over the stage into which European capitalism is now entering. Therefore, for some time we will have to reckon with the fact that we will not need to educate this integral skilled worker, the master that the factory used to live in, that we will have to deal with a machine that requires elementary auxiliary labor. This is so, if we conclude from this that we must apply all the training of worker cadres to this minimum requirement, this would mean that we have fallen into the captivity of capitalism, that through technology capitalism has taken us by the nose and led us where we cannot go and where the proletariat will not allow us to go, i.e., to the degradation of the worker to the status of labor force.

Capitalism dreams of producing labor power instead of the working class. But we demand political and technical education with sufficient theoretical training, that is, a well-educated worker. This demand is not a chemical demand. We are told: “You can do this in your seminaries: if you can train a jar-maker, a shoe-maker in a few weeks, teach them, and let her make galoshes. Production is a prosaic thing.”

We argue that from the point of view of the labor force, this position is not correct. We firmly insist that, regardless of even the forthcoming social revolution throughout the world, which is not far off and which will completely change the technical conditions in the shortest possible time, we are in the center of a technical revolution, a machine revolution, we are in the so-called mutational period. There is nothing tricky about the fact that the factory that we are building now, by the time we complete it, will already be an old woman.

Until now we have prayed for the back of capitalism, as Plekhanov said, we followed him and considered that the most necessary thing is to produce a worker according to a strong standard.

Marx said that the worker must strive for a polytechnic education, because otherwise he would be a constant victim of unemployment. This worker will only be suitable for this machine. It will look like a key that is only suitable for this keyhole. A little this well has changed - the key is no longer good. But the key can be sent to the factory to be altered, sharpened, but the worker cannot. We cannot take a worker, break him down into bones, take everything apart, change it and put it back together in the CIT. It can't be done!

It will be ruined once and for all because it is made to a fixed standard. You can make an excursion to the field of biology. It turns out that animal species, which from the very childhood, from the very birth, are very strongly adapted to the environment, which have achieved extremely precise adaptation to local conditions, inevitably perish when all the species around them are revolutionized. Now they want to impose on us such a manner of production, the workers of which would be a stable type, when the industry does not allow resistant types. That is why I said to this proposal in one of my speeches:

- It is perhaps possible, but with a note: first make it politically educated for us, guarantee that it can be re-equipped when necessary, and then overtake it. The upbringing of a person must play the role of a holistic individuality here, so that one can switch as necessary to the development of industry. They forget one more circumstance, on which Comrade. Stalin paid special attention. After all, the working class is not only a production worker, but in our country it is also a dictator class. It must generate from its environment the main lines, the main basic anchor points of all our frames in general. We must prepare the next generation for extremely difficult battles and extremely difficult work that will require a huge amount of knowledge, skill, tact, quick action, resourcefulness, a wide view, etc.

A. Lunacharsky.