The Radicalisation of Science

Abstract

OVER the last five years there has been a clear shift in consciousness of many scientists-especially science students-of the role of science and technology in contemporary capitalism. This movement has been concentrated in the U.S.A. and Britain, the two most scientifically advanced Western countries, judged by such formal criteria as percentage of GNP spent on science, or numbers of papers published or Nobel prizes per head of the population. Significant developments however have also occurred in Belgium, France, Italy and West Germany. The movement has embraced scientists and non-scientists alike in a variety of shifting and uneasy alliances of old and new left, liberal concern over actual or potential scientific abuses, explicitly Marxist attempts to analyse the contemporary functions of science and technology under capitalism, and libertarian, anti-scientific, or even frankly reactionary attacks on the rationality of scientific method and the anti-human quality of technology. The movement is still in rapid development and has few obvious historical parallels. This article attempts an analysis of its directions and future perspectives. As actors as well as observers in the movement, our account will focus on those aspects which we have most detailed knowledge of and which seem to us most relevant; hence this article mainly discusses Britain and to a lesser extent the U.S. and W. Europe. No reference to the interesting parallel developments in Japan has been made, an omission which reflects our own ignorance. Three major themer have, in varying degrees, been reflected in most of the groupings and debates that have occurred in the past few years. I. The abuses of science This is perhaps the broadest area, ranging from concern over environmental issues such as non-returnable bottles, DDT in mothers' milk and penguin fat and the 'population explosion'; through fears of potential scientific advances such as genetic engineering, psychosocial 105 * First as the National Union of Scientific Workers. *Needl.iam himself, in his foreword to the new edition of Science at the Cross Roads, has stated that the Hessen paper was not perceived as very relevant even by the Marxist scientists when it was first given. By the end of the war, the autonomy of science had become a myth *In its early days the A.Sc.W. had two grades of membership, one for scientists, the other for technicians, and there had been serious debates as to whether technicians should be admitted at all. * Maoist students in Britain were to revive the cult of Lysenko as a "Peoples' Scientist" in the late 1960s. **That is, the presence in a single cell of double the complement of chromosomes-a situation that occurs particularly in some plants, and represents a favourable springboard for the development of new varieties.