A Point of View 2

At an international seminar held in New Delhi in November 2006 it was claimed that military R & D accounted for 10% of all R & D worldwide. This percentage is rising, and literally hundreds of thousands of highly trained personnel are involved in this ignominious endeavour across the world. One can only speculate how much better the world would be were they to apply their talents in other more socially beneficial directions. Yet another argument bearing out the viability of communism has to do with the fact that technological progress nowadays day is increasingly thwarted or misdirected, and consequently, humanity is being deprived of the benefits it might otherwise have enjoyed. This happens in various ways: I have already alluded to the remorseless growth in military production and research. The development of security and surveillance technology is arguably another instance of misdirected technology insofar as it has very little to do with bettering ordinary people’s lives, but a lot to do with protecting vested interests. It is also true to say that some technology may be hampered because it is financially too risky trying to develop it, or because the investment required is simply too large; the development of nuclear fission being a case in point here. Similarly, certain areas of scientific endeavour may be ‘disincentivized’ because the financial rewards accruing from such activity are deemed insufficient, or because the market for the products arising out of this endeavour is considered too small: The warped logic of capitalism’s ‘dismal science’, economics, has it that if people do not have sufficient money to purchase a product, then obviously there is no demand for it, notwithstanding the fact that they may be in

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