Early in our natural history,
tools were distinct from people; yet, as farming communities swelled
their leaders grew ever more supreme
and began to consider coworkers
as merely another form of tool,
much as we now think of computers.
This relationship between ruler and tool persisted,
even as a more productive order, capitalism,
was waxing ascendant.
Eventually, factories and corporations evolved
in which the latest set of lords,
the owners and managers, felt no more obligation to their flesh and blood tools- also referred to as “workers” or “cogs” -than to their metal machinery.
As a result, like robots in a sci-fi novel,
the worker-tools rebelled,
protesting, often futilely, they were not tools
but truly, that like their rulers,
they too were human.
And so, these worker-tools unionized
and, in the ultimate case, were organized into a Soviet Union.
In this Marxist utopia
party theorists proclaimed that, as all productive citizens were equal,
worker-tools no longer existed.
But right off the assembly line,
the Soviet revolutionary canon
produced sanctimonious tyrantsand it soon became obvious that the laboring masses
were living in a tools paradise.
As time went by, this Soviet Union
grew inordinately bureaucratic and consequently, less efficient
than its capitalist rivals;
accordingly, with a push in the right direction,
the Soviet masters stumbled on capitalism.
And so, with capitalism triumphant
and rapidly converging with modern information technology, a revolutionary new millennium
of tool making began.
While many workers became “white collar”
or toiled in service industries;
in a real sense, the ensuing class of rulers grew international in scope,
enriching and ruining economies
by market/currency speculation
without the least concern for workers,
much like a lofty bomber crew
that never stews over who’s below.
And so, with the parallel diminution of unions,
the world regained its former ruler-tool relationship.
Thus, our history ends;
happily, on a positive note
with a savvy economic orderthrottling down the information highway
like an elegantly tooled vehicle,
its soundly ground engine cogs meshing quietly underneath.
