Opinion Sur
In addition to the land, another relevant, though may be less visible, factor of production is technology: knowing how to produce a good or service. Cultural domination is such that it assumes that capital commands, in such a way it is implied in every government plan that it is enough to have money to have the necessary knowledge in every process, buying everything that is convenient. Natural conclusion: knowledge is an attribute subordinated to capital. If you do not have money, you do not know.
This is an essential obstacle to speak and think in a community where economic democracy is exercised. Similarly to the analysis on land, this is another factor of production that behaves as an attribute rigidly subordinated to capital, violating the elemental idea—which is the base of the capitalistic logic—of the independence of the factors of production.
Many countries have a public system for generating scientific and technological knowledge. In Argentina, universities were the first nucleus; then, they were joined by a powerful web of organizations that were created more than 60 years ago. The CONICET (National Council for Science and Technology), the INTI (National Institute for Industrial Technology), the Atomic Energy Commission, other entities devoted to Fishery, Antarctica, Space, Water as well as a dense web of institutions dedicated to the economy and each of the communitarian dimensions, are all financed by the State and considered as an attribute with national rank, particularly regarding the global periphery.
The necessary discussion is if so much effort does build economic democracy or not. That is: does it transfer knowledge to those who need it regardless of their paying capacity? Or even more transgressor: does it promote the generation of productive knowledge at the social base, with direct participation of those involved?
The answer to both questions is NO, with very few exceptions. For the public system, relevant private actors in science and technology are the large companies, and a small group of small and medium-sized ones, expressly orientated towards high tech fields.
This should not surprise us, as the appropriation of knowledge by capital necessarily leads to conditioning public policies in the same direction. This extends much further, as with the formation of researchers orientated towards competitive fields that reward the singularity of ideas and not their dissemination within the productive field with collective appropriation. Moreover, the analysis of primary profitability gets installed as obvious evaluation criterion but without any collateral social connotation.
This—rather unhealthy—idea has blocked various types of initiatives, those with available knowledge. The reduction of arsenic in drinkable water; the use of natural tints in the textile industry, small milking-yard plants, the utilization of bovine offal, and thousands of other similar initiatives—yes, thousands—are still pending implementation because of the imposition of questions regarding expected profits formulated out of context.
Of course, there are numerous system members who—either for their social sensibility or for their political lucidity—are in disagreement with this orientation but that inexorably have to swim against the tide, not only against the political authorities with pro-market logic but also against the elitism as the most valuable culture.
The result of this conceptual conflict is that those sectors with less assets that need technological improvements the most rarely access them, because they would have to pay for them with money they do not have or—even worse—because nobody does the research they need.
Any attempt at reversing this situation, enhancing the possibility of having the technological factor available for the work force factor without predominance of capital as intermediary, must know and be based on this history.
Some months ago, a draft law was submitted to Congress. It was backed up by various representatives from different political parties, incentivized by a manifest signed by more than 1,000 people, half of which came from Science and Technology system, and if approved it would mark a change in the described scenario. It implies the creation of a trust to fund—case by case—the transfer of technology by the public system towards popular production. This trust would nurture from an additional aliquot in the income tax that largest enterprises pay and it would be an explicit instrument for distribution of resources and opportunities.
Having a law such as the one briefly described above—which is under analysis within the pertinent commissions—would be a supporting point for those researchers that believe it is necessary to go through a transforming path, without entering into all-or-nothing disputes in terms of sectorial policy.
At risk of being reiterative, it seems necessary to insist on the thesis that supports this discussion: if land, technology, work are just tradable goods that capital buys and sells, without being independent factors of production, then, it is inexorable accepted the concentrating path towards which capitalism is leading the world, with its ever more notorious aftermaths of conflicts and injustices, which we are invited to accept in resignation.
The search for an access to land or access to knowledge for those who want to produce is—in such context—a necessary component for keeping the hope of building an economic democracy alive.
* Instituto para la Producción Popular. (Institute for Popular Production)
