Editorial: Taking Control of Technology
Technology is a weapon that enables a tightly ordered system of control. Inverting it depends on struggle in which technology can be an aid but never an agent.
Issue 141
Cutting Wires
Aug – Sept 2024
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A Just Transition Means Resisting AI
There can be no just transition without challenging the AI apparatus that is accelerating the social and environmental crisis, writes Dan McQuillan.
Large Language Steam Engines
Kate McCurdy explores how LLMs do and don’t threaten workers in the here and now.
Technological Change and the Scottish Economy
Technologies are reshaping economic activity, as they always have done. Stephen Boyd offers five approaches the Scottish Government should take towards technological change.
AI and Centralisation in the NHS
Unions have a struggle on their hands to reverse the privatising, AI–driven, centralising trends in Scotland's NHS, writes Drew Gilchrist.
Red Lines for Labour
General Secretary of PCS Fran Heathcote sets out the union’s bargaining position as the new government comes to power.
Scotland Can’t Afford Privatised Social Care
With a solid collective bargaining strategy in place, workers would be prepared to do what it takes to de-privatise the Scottish care sector, writes Robyn Martin.
The Deterioration of Construction Jobs
The Scottish construction sector needs an overhaul and unions have to do the heavy lifting, writes Davy Brockett.
Teacher Numbers are Not a Luxury
The further cuts announced to teacher numbers will leave staff with no chance of meeting students’ needs, writes Jane Gow.
Why Colleges Have Been Cut To The Core
Scotland does not value the college sector, and that needs to change. That is the conclusion of a new paper from the Jimmy Reid Foundation on Further Education in Scotland, by John Kelly and Dave Watson.
Long Live the Popular Front?
The left coalition in France has demonstrated a capacity to compromise, sticking to its fundamental commitments and rejecting Macron’s Machiavellian moves. Fraser McQueen asks, can it holds its ground for the long term?
Democratic Autonomy: the Rojava Example
Jennifer Clapham reports on how the Kurdish Democratic Union Party draws its strength from the people.
Gaza and Lebanon: Is Britain Sleepwalking To War?
There are dangerous parallels between Britain’s support for Israel and its war-mongering stance ahead of the 1914 war, writes Chris Sutherland.
Workers of the Cloud, Unite!
Xabier Villares reviews Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, by Yanis Varoufakis (Penguin, 2023).
The Evaporating Protest Left
Coll McCail reviews If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution, by Vincent Bevins.
What Was To Be Done?
Ronan Scott reviews The Workers’ Committee: An Outline of its Principles and Structure, by J. T. Murphy.