So I’m in my first year of seriously reading and from Marx, Lenin, Luxembourg and even more libby books like Republic of Walmart I’ve noticed a reoccurring side theme of capitalism ultimately, like previous econ system has a technological limit. From my brief time as a lab rat I’ve noticed with the whole grant begging and patent system hamstrings science and innovation.
So are there any books that focus on this concept from a Marxist lens of sorts? Bonus if they are written by someone with a more STEM-y background.
I don’t have any book suggestions myself I’m afraid, but if I remember right, the use of the transistor was delayed extensively because of how lucrative it was to sell older and considerably more expensive vacuum tubes instead.
I’m just looking at the Wikipedia article for vacuum tubes now, and it says that transistors/semiconductors were invented in the 1940s, but didn’t really start replacing vacuum tubes until the 1960s. Because technological advancement increases exponentially instead of linearly, who knows what point in technological advancement we would be at today if the switch between the two technologies happened 20-something years earlier.
I’m reading Paul Cockshott’s How the World Works right now (you can find on libgen), it’s probably what you’re looking for. There are a lot of sections about how undervaluing labor’s contribution, and paying extremely low wages, stifles innovation, because the startup costs associated with research, tech, and MOP are higher than the cost of labor. So tech growth has slowed down to ~1-2% even in the relatively high wage countries of the global north, but also in the global south too, because labor is so universally cheap.
This is similar to how the Roman empire had slowed tech innovation because the cheap price of slave labor.
As far as the patent system and grant stuff, I’m sure that even liberal writers have written good works about that.
I’ll be taking a look at that, meets what I was thinking about. I’m really surprised there aren’t more easily recalled works on the subject, maybe its too obvious.
