Automation: no third way feb was once, we are told, a Chinese emperor who instructed his advisers to re- duce all information to the briefest possible summary. Calling for a complete history of mankind, he was handed three sentences: “They were born. They suffered. . They died.” = So long as the technique of production remained at a primitive stage of develop- ment, the fate of the majority of mankind was _ inevitable. However, once the productive forces of society had been raised to the level reached under modern capitalism, the poverty that had hitherto been an inexorable law of nature could continue only as a mani- festation of the actual reality of class-relationships in human society. Poverty — wrote Aneurin Bevan — is no longer some- thing absolute. Poverty is a relationship between what peo- ple see to be possible and what they know is actual. In his book Automation and Social Progress, recently pub- lished in Britain, Dr. S. Lilley writes as only a real expert ean on the nature and extent of the tremendous extension of productivity deriving from in- troduction of new and highly automatic machinery or of pro- eesses which largely eliminate human labor and detailed hu- man control. Dr. Lilley cuts through the twilight haze — romantic to some, and frightening to others which has hitherto shrounded this new phenome- non. Ht makes clear just what it is that distinguishes automa- tion from mere mechanisation, and drives the lesson home with a- wealth of fact and detail. “In mechanisation,” says Dr. Lilley, “the machine takes ‘over the work; but the human operator is still required to exercise detailed control over its operation . . . Automation abolishes that sort of control. In the ideal case the machine completely controls its own actions . . . the human worker is required only to see that the machine is kept in good running order.” The introduction of such pro- cesses, it may be said, began years ago, particularly in fields where the problems of automa- _ tic control were ‘fairly simple. But, as Dr. Lilley points out, not only is automation now seizing upon the most import- “ant spheres of industrial pro- duction, but the character of _ the products themselves is be- ing radically re-designed in order to get the most effective gains from the new methods. What these gains now are, en- - By JACK HENDY and what they may shortly become, is not left to the im- agination. Dr. Lilley gives chapter and verse in, many in- dustries in several countries. In Britain, where develop- ment is far less advanced than elsewhere, the use of transfer machines for machining Austin A40 cylinder blocks enabled one machine with two oper- ators to do the work formerly done by 13 machines and 13 operations. Labor costs were reduced from $3.80 to $1.55 an hour. Automation of this. kind, however, can now be likened only to the first uncertain steps of a toddling child. Whereas the first computing machine, Leo I, did the work of 37 full-time clerical work- ers in four hours, its successor, Leo II, will do the work of 200. It will solve many of the practica] day-to-day problems of management, and will have time left over, during which the services of the machine can be hired ‘out to other firms. In the United States the use of transfer machines by such organisations as Ford’s and General Motors has enabled a few dozen men to produce the output formerly achieved by the employment of hundreds. These machines not only pro- duce the output in a far lesser time, they even inspect their own. product. Automatic production is now being reinforced with the de- velopment of automatic as- sembly. _Even the complex managerial problems of balanc- ing-up production lines, con- trolling stores, and keeping accounts, filing systems, and other business arrangements, can now all be taken care of automatically — with the aid of the computer. Already, in the Soviet Union, there is an autornatic factory producing ball bearings and another turning out pistons. Soviet technologists, however, far from resting content with the automation ‘of present-day methods of production, are pressing on with plans to solve the problems of automating whole factories and eventually of entire industrial areas. It is to Dr. Lilley’s credit that he has not stopped at in- terpreting the world of science, but has gone on to stress the necessity of a struggle for a change in the form of the social world in. which men ilve and work. Undoubtedly some quarters will take Dr. Lilley to task for this, for there is a widely help conception that the pro- per line for the technologist is to behave like a combination of Babbage and Brer Rabbit— “knowing all,” but “lying low an’ saying nuffin’. ” Dr. Lilley points out that the introduction of these hitherto unheard-of advances SA DIOMATION aen R244 x « ONE peer Sy