Book Review - Forces of Production by David F Noble

This book was written by David F Noble about the 'Automation Era' of the middle 20th century. David F Noble presents a series of interlinked case studies of how the Scientist- Entrepreneurial class collaborated with the US Military to give birth to what is now known as the proverbial 'Military Industrial' Complex. Though one of the avowed aims of the Military Industrial complex that influenced the US federal government was 'containing' Communism and 'anti-American' activities' internationally, Noble goes on to argue that there were other, even more significant goals to achieve.

The chief aim was to counter the working class unity which was getting a filip in all the industrial countries especially in the US during the booming Soviet era. The case studies chiefly centre on the famed MIT which kept pressurising the federal government to pump in millions of dollars towards funding 'Research'. And the research was focussed on developing technology that soon will enable mankind to enter the era of the 'Automatic Factory'. The automatic factory was projected as the ultimate stage in the evolution of science and technology, which if attained could totally eliminate the 'error-prone' human component out of the process of production. The MIT and related corporations were successful in manoeuvring the govt to pump a significant percentage of the annual federal budget into the research towards the final 'automatic factory'.

In other words, these institutions were bent on extracting a major share of taxpayer money in order to develop technology that will in turn render the taxpayer totally 'jobless'. Noble highlights the extreme absurdity of the entire process which after a point assumes evil and irreversible implications. The expensive research work carried on in these institutions which initially were centred on reducing 'manual errors' and producing perfect output so as to suit other important industrial needs, rapidly drifted into areas of cost cutting and economising production. And cost cutting, so obvious in the way it means, implied elimination of human wage labour even if the new sophisticated machinery developed by these institutions were extremely expensive and unaffordable to many small and medium scale industries.

The book also reflects the working class reaction to these new developments, the challenges it faced under ineffective trade union leadership and how significant these seemingly minor events had a huge bearing on the course of later, more remarkable developments.

Noble not only records the events but also daringly puts forward the impressions they left on him and does not shy away from making future predictions. The book goes on to make a huge statement that might be summed up as follows - 'No aspect of a capitalist society is independent or meaninglessly preordained. And the aspect might even be as seemingly innocent as Technology. Technology as long as it is in the hands of capital, shall serve only the purposes of its master and any assumptions about its service to mankind in the journey towards overall human prosperity, is nothing more than a dangerous illusion'.

I would recommend the book only to those who are wholly interested in the subject and not certainly for others. There will be a vast amount of dreary statistics and numbers which might be off-putting. But I am sure it is an extremely enlightening work when you really want to know your place in the long chain of human historical phenomenon.

Book Review - Fascism and Social Revolution by RP Dutt

This book was written in 1936 by veteran Communist theoretician, Rajani Palme Dutt.

Dutt tries to trace the roots of Fascism in the gradually 'decaying' branches of capitalism with the help of a wealth of anecdotal evidence. He emphasizes that fascism is just a variant of capitalism, and is the last resort of the big bourgeoisie to save the economy from passing into the hands of the proletariat.

Dutt expounds at length, how the so called Centre - Left movements, in the name of Social Democracy work hand-in-glove with the big bourgeoisie to quell working class insurrections and channelise all their resources at their disposal to betray the interests of the exploited.

The activities of the Social democratic parties in Italy, Germany and even Britain(Labour) are parallelized by Dutt to illustrate how they functioned in very similar ways during the Capitalist Crisis of the late 1920s. These parties are accused by Dutt of complicity in bringing about Fascist Revolutions in their respective countries, often refusing to join ranks with their local Communist parties to form strong political alliances. Dutt contends that there is nothing to be surprised about this, since both the Social Democratic parties and Fascist-Conservatives represent only the interests of the same class - the big bourgeoisie.

The reader can draw similar conclusions about the workings of the Congress party in India whose policies of crony capitalism and soft Hindutva have often fuelled the rise of the Fascist Hindu Right, represented by the Sangh Parivar. Both the supposedly opposite parties have involved themselves in clinching massive governmental deals for their big cronies (Reliance, Tata) thereby betraying the interests of millions of voters, most of whom belong to the working class.

Dutt, sounding like an eternal optimist, reposes so much faith in the potential of the International Proletariat whom he predicts will soon blow the Fascist offensive into smithereens and establish their own dictatorship, bringing the bloody battle to a very fine end.

The book written soon after the ascension of Hitler to power does not enjoy the comfort of looking into later events such as the German Holocaust, WWII and the much later dissolution of the Soviet Union.Also the cultural aspects informing the development of Fascism in each country are ignored altogether and hence the book fails to give a comprehensive analysis of Fascism, as it proclaims to do.

However, Dutt very much succeeds in establishing that no movement other than the Proletarian Left has a proper understanding of the Fascist danger and hence the only weapon to ward off these evil forces of reaction is the ever reliable weapon of Communism. Fascism, in Dutt's perspective is a practice, totally without the backing of a proper theory, a fact which even Hitler acknowledged. One may be reminded of the development of Eugenics, during the time of Hitler, which was nothing but a State funded research endeavour to develop a Nazi theory of evolution to counterbalance the well rounded Darwinian theory.

I would recommend the book certainly to those who want to know the economic origins of Fascism including those who are alert enough to spot similar signs in India.

2.O, Shankar and his 'Vision'

I loved the title sequences. It has been long since I had a seen a full 3D film that 2.0 was working for me very well. As long as the novelty of the visuals lasted, what I was seeing on screen was 'escapist' fun.

But my social media exposure, I realised was slowly spoiling the film for me. I was being assured that I knew the story already and the biggest intended surprise that Akshay Kumar's character, the Shankar's version of Salim Ali, was the antagonist/protagonist. But the film arrives at this point only at the interval.

And the second half has a very ordinary flashback but the story's core looked very honest that Pakshirajan's (Akshay Kumar) untimely death did feel a bit tragic. And soon the film shifts to the much publicised final 'stadium' showdown and all trademark imagination of Shankar is let loose.

When the end credits started rolling, it felt nice to have passed more than a couple of hours really well and I thought I would recommend the film to families in my neighborhood. A large portion of the first half had made good use of the 3D device, as a result of which even normal scenes looked fun. The possessed Vaseegaran- Chitti conflict on the road was also very well imagined, reminding me of my favourite Anniyan climax.

But nearly an hour after the film ended, I tried to recall something special to write about the film and to my surprise, there was nothing at all to be found. The 500 crore budget and the three year heavy technical stuff, I realised, had failed totally to leave any deep impressions on me, which was not quite an unfair expectation when you talk about Shankar's films.

Shankar, over his 25 year old career, has made just 11 films. The amount of technical effort that goes into the making is often said to explain the very long gestation period of every film of his. He is often said to be a great imaginator, Tamilnadu's version of say, a James Cameron. But if you try to do a very cursory analysis of his oeuvre, you may find that the magnificence of his imagination has always been restricted to the film's song-and-dance portions. Otherwise, the intense impact his movies have left upon us are solely because of the core strength of his stories and the efficiency of his screenplays. Shankar's films can easily be called 'political' films, working very much within the masala format, as a result of which these films must not be analysed very 'seriously'. His films, if anything are the reel equivalents of our much beloved pulp stories, which do have a strong emotional-political core, though the solutions they offer to the 'political' problem need not necessarily be practicable.

To simplify, we need to acknowledge that Shankar stays in our minds mainly because he has made genuine films on contemporary political issues and these issues, in turn, have served well as robust engines to propel the racy thrillers which he had always wanted to make, at the end of the day. And only as adjuncts to this masala-thriller construct, the so called 'Shankar Imagination' products have served and much of them can be spotted only among his totally disparate, yet exotic song-and-dance sequences.

Endhiran was the first and only film where his 'imagination' neatly dovetailed into the story's premise and as a result of which the film, for all its flaws, looked very much like one of a piece. No sequence could be recalled without sensing the technical wizardry involved in its realisation and this is how, as a film buff I want Shankar's work to be remembered.

But strangely, the same cannot be said of 2.0. Though there is so much CG work involved in every scene, none of the 'wizardry' is impactful to be remembered even though the scale of the film is almost three times that of its predecessor.

Shankar's inability to write crisp and flavorful scenes that might serve as a proper scaffolding for the visual effects to stand and speak for themselves, is so evident throughout the film. Even for situations that sound so juicy and are innately exciting, much of them borrowed from the first film, Shankar struggles to ground them properly and hence none of them manage to create the desired impact. To give an example, when Chitti is ordered by Vaseegaran to be upgraded to the rogue 2.0 version, I expected the scene to explode with long bottled up energy brimming with naughty nostalgia. But nothing other than ARR's music works during the scene and Rajni is left all alone to fend for himself, when actually he is expected to be sashaying through his predatory duties, having gotten morphed into his favorite beast avatar.

All this could be attributed, in retrospect, to Shankar's failure to find a proper writer post the demise of his long time associate, Sujatha Rangarajan. I now find myself more comfortable to contend that only Sujatha was supplying ammunition to Shankar's tanks and hence his campaigns before and after the legendary writer's death differ so much in terms of intensity and achievement. One may be reminded of how bloated and exhausting, Vikram's I was, even if the cast and the crew were in top form.

I have been seeing reviews of 2.0 with some of our Tamils thumping their chests for having surpassed the Telugu speaking Bahubali franchise, in terms of imagination and accomplishment.

To illustrate the indispensability of Amarendra Bahubali to the existence of Magilmadhi kingdom, even if the king was the powerful and menacing Balvaldevan, Rajamouli conjured up a magnificent, largely dialogue-less sequence at the interval block. As one of my friends described it, that sequence at exactly the half way mark of the film felt very much like the peak, a roller coaster is supposed to touch, where the rider can no longer help feeling dizzied and breathless. I am wondering how many reams of paper Shankar would have needed to illustrate the same scenario, had he been sentenced to direct a timeless magnum opus like Bahubali, which a high net worth 2.0 is nowhere near.