Robert M. Young Online Writings
'Science, Technology, Medicine and the Socialist Movement' 216k
This is probably the best rendition of the labour process perspective on science and other forms of expertise which was developed by the Radical Science Journal Collective in the 1970s and 1980s. This long essay was written in response to a scurrilous attack on he work of the RSJ Collective by Hilary and Steven Rose, who mounted a number of such polemics against us. The one in question appeared in The Socialist Register, 1979, under the comradely (!) title 'Radical Science and Its Enemies'. In addition to this sort of attack, they went around saying that we were reactionaries and that one member of our group was a CIA agent. This Old Left technique of discrediting people with whom one disagrees by any means necessary characterized their relations with many of the non-orthodox Marxists and other leftists in Britain and led them to withdraw from the main radical science organization at the time, the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science, which they had been instrumental in founding and of which Hilary Rose was at one time chairperson. We approached The Socialist Register for the right of reply, which was given, but when we submitted the essay they refused to publish it. They had sent it out for review by a pal of the Roses, and he recommended against publication. The RSJ Collective set up a sub-group to think through the best version of our overall position that we could muster. To the best of my recollection the group included Mike Hales, Les Levidow, Pam Linn, Maureen McNeil, Tony Solomonides and me. I did most of the writing up of the final version, and Mike Hales did the rest. The essay was published in Radical Science Journal No. 11 (1981), 3-70.