ABSTRACT
Some left analysts in Britain have heralded information technology (IT) as a major catalyst of new modes of production and distributionsometimes referred to as ‘post-Fordist’.1 The new ‘flexible’ modes of production are seen, in part, to have been ‘achieved through new technology, and the introduction of programmable machines’.2 Beyond this, the new technology is seen as creating ‘New Times’—dictating the framework for-or, at least, the parameters of-a new politics. What is striking about this reaction to IT is its treatment of the nature and form of technological change in Britain as inevitable and incontestable. While the contributors to Marxism Today and the segment of the British Communist party with which it is associated have provided an extensive analysis of the ideological dimensions of the hegemonic programme of Thatcherism, the specific form of the take-up of new technology in Britain is treated as a neutral backdrop to political strategy. More accurately, it is taken as a matter not of contestation, but of adjustment on the Left and the Right.
