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发布时间：2006-06-23 17:06     点击：

　　In Forces of Production, David Noble examines the transformation of the machine-tool industry as the industry moved from reliance on skilled artisans to automation. Noble writes from a Marxist perspective, and his central (5) argument is that management, in its decisions to automate, conspired against labor: the power that the skilled machin- ists wielded in the industry was intolerable to management.

　　Noble fails to substantiate this claim, although his argu- ment is impressive when he applies the Marxist concept of (10) "de-skilling"-the use of technology to replace skilled labor-to the automation of the machine-tool industry. In automating, the industry moved to computer-based, digi- talized "numerical-control" (N/C) technology, rather than to artisan-generated "record-playback" (R/P) technology.

　　(15) Although both systems reduced reliance on skilled labor, Noble clearly prefers R/P, with its inherent acknowledg- ment of workers' skills: unlike N/C, its programs were produced not by engineers at their computers, but by skilled machinists, who recorded their own movements to (20) "teach" machines to duplicate those movements. However, Noble's only evidence of conspiracy is that, although the two approaches were roughly equal in technical merit, management chose N/C. From this he concludes that auto- mation is undertaken not because efficiency demands it or (25) scientific advances allow it, but because it is a tool in the ceaseless war of capitalists against labor.

　　1. The author of the passage is primarily concerned with

　　(A) reexamining a political position and defending its validity

　　(B) examining a management decision and defending its necessity

　　(C) analyzing a scholarly study and pointing out a central weakness

　　(D) explaining a trend in automation and warning about its dangers

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