Norbert Wiener Quotes
Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic conditions of slave labor.
Wiener, Norbert. Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. Technology Press, 1948, p. 27.
Jefferson was one of the first political and economic thinkers to express concern over the “wage slave” concept of the industrial revolution. This was one of the major reasons that he was not in consonance with Alexander Hamilton in his economic vision for America. While we followed the Hamilton direction, there are still issues of maintaining freedom and independence for an employee in modern nations and economies.
This fascinating quotation is very frequently quoted out of context. For example even in modern times some Southern slavery apologists quote this passage stating that Adams saw no moral difference between slavery and employment of the lower classes. And anti-capitalists have claimed that this was an attack on capitalism as no better than slavery for many workers. Neither is true. The debate was on the head taxes that states should pay to the central government. Southerners were claiming that they should not have to pay per person taxes on slaves. Adams position was that they should pay in that there is no practical difference in the work and working conditions very often. If slaves should be exempted from the head tax, so should the poor, lower class workers like the fisherman in New England. He always maintained at huge moral difference between a poor free worker and a slave even thought their working conditions might be similar.
Sinclair had written an expose of the meat packing industry – the Jungle – which used as its setting the Armour meat packing factory. It changed the way the public thought about the industry, the role of government and regulation. President Roosevelt took up the reform role, and got Congress to Regulate the quality and cleanliness of the meat packing industry. Sinclair, however not only wanted that reform, but also wanted the labor wages and conditions reformed. He referred to the Armour plant as the fortress.
Ruffin is more widely known as the man who fired the first shot of the Civil War.
Niles, a Southern editor was none the less anti-slavery. Other than the gross immorality of slavery, he saw that the economics of the institution actually inhibited the economic development of the South very early. Efficiency of machinery and organization of work and labor saving inventions were not as badly needed in a slave economy where human labor was so inexpensive. While in the North and most of Europe, there was skilled, but expensive, labor of freemen. This motivated all to improve processes and technology and increase productivity. There was much less motivation in the South and the slaves who actually understood the work had no way to experiment and were not allowed to read or write so the South was almost economically and technologically stagnant in comparison to the free labor states.
the Bolshevik Communists of Russia Zenzinov was often a critic of the Bolsheviks.
Of particular interest is his point about the immigration of cheap, foreign labor in addition to presenting unfair competition to the American worker also regards him in society’s view and his own. It was a tremendous loss of dignity for now a free working man was no better than an ignorant, compliant Chinese coolie. This loss of dignity has been a problem to which politicians have not been very sensitive.
Norbert Wiener was an American mathematician and philosopher. He was a professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher in stochastic and mathematical noise processes, contributing work relevant to electronic engineering, electronic communication, and control systems.
