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Directions: Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions as follows:

Passage

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 argument is that management, in its decisions to automate, conspired against labor: the power that the skilled machinists wielded in the industry was intolerable to management. Noble fails to substantiate this claim, although his argument is impressive when he applies the Marxist concept of “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, digitized “numerical-control” (N/C) technology, rather than to artisan-generated “record-playback” (R/P) technology.

Although both systems reduced reliance on skilled labor, Noble clearly prefers R/P, with its inherent acknowledgment 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 “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 automation is undertaken not because efficiency demands it or scientific advances allow it, but because it is a tool in the ceaseless war of capitalists against labor.

Question for Practice Test: Reading Comprehension - 96
Try yourself:Which of the following best characterizes Forces of Production as it is described in the passage?
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Question for Practice Test: Reading Comprehension - 96
Try yourself:The passage suggests which of the following about N/C automation in the machine-tool industry?
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Question for Practice Test: Reading Comprehension - 96
Try yourself:The author of the passage is primarily concerned with
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Question for Practice Test: Reading Comprehension - 96
Try yourself:The author of the passage commends Noble’s book for which of the following?
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Question for Practice Test: Reading Comprehension - 96
Try yourself:Which of the following best characterizes the function of the second paragraph of the passage?
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Question for Practice Test: Reading Comprehension - 96
Try yourself:Which of the following phrases most clearly reveals the attitude of the author of the passage toward Noble’s central argument?
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Question for Practice Test: Reading Comprehension - 96
Try yourself:According to information in the passage, the term “de-skilling” refers to the
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