Moloch

“Moloch: Mass-Production Industry as a Statist Construct”

by Kevin Carson

“The decentralizing potential of small-scale, electrically powered machinery was a common theme among many writers from the late 19th century on. That, and the merging of town and village it made possible, were the central themes of Kropotkin’s Fields, Factories and Workshops. With electricity “distributed in the houses for bringing into motion small motors of from one-quarter to twelve horse-power,” it was possible to produce in small workshops and even homes. Freeing machinery up from a single prime mover ended all limits on the location of machine production. The primary justification for economy of scale, as it existed in the nineteenth  century—the need to economize on horsepower—vanished when the distribution of electrical power eliminated reliance on a single source of power.”

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~ by rechelon on October 25, 2011.