62 SOCIAL SCIENTIST without any commensurate benefits accruing to them by way of higher real wages. There has been and will be spontaneous resistance to automation by industrial workers and white-collar employees both in public and private sectors. In this connection a fact must be emphasised, lest they are misunderstood and misinterpreted. The working class struggle against automation is not against the machine as such, but against the way in which it is being used by the owners of property against the workers. We know that computer is a wounderful creation of modern science. It can do within fraction of a second complex and multiple calculations. But the whole trouble starts when it is used by the owners of property and wealth to increase their income and dominant economic power. In this society controlled by capitalists and landlords, and polluted by sheer profit considerations and naked exploitation, automation in the hands of monopolists and big business can only intensify exploitation, escalate unemployment, retrenchment, fatigue and work-load. In a historical prespective science and technology is a boon to humanity. But whether it serves the larger interests of the masses of the toiling people or not is determined by the property relations prevalent in a society. Only in a society where the means of production and distribution are socially owned, can science and technology, of which computer is one of the most potent instruments, usher in an era of prosperity and plenty to the toiling masses. In socialist society computers have been placed at the service of the working class by reducing their working hours, boredom and fatigue and releasing their creative energies towards cultural pursuits, as well as, by laying the material foundation for a glorious future for generations to come. On the other hand, under the capitalist system computers have become a cruel tool of intensified exploitation. It has been the experience all over the world that wherever industrial and commercial activities are in the firm grip of a few monopolists and oligopolists, computers have been used to squeeze out more surplus value out of labour while at the same time creating more of crisis and insecurity for the working class and thereby turning technological progress as a scourge on the toiling masses. Apart from strengthening the grip of monopolists in advanced capitalist countries, computers and associated technological processes have become instruments of international exploitation, for stren-thening the domination and control of the imperialist powers over the developing countries. The inevitable entry of computers in the developing countries has been used by the foreign monopolists, their native collaborators and other domestic big monopolists and oligopolists to dis^ place labour and close all doors of employment. Instead of helping to reverse this process the various committees and commissions appointed by the Government have only helped to escalate the ivasion of computers in the Indian economy under the pretext of increasing the productivity and