How Design of Medium Inhibits Growth

Every transistor radio is, by the nature of its construction, at the same time a potential transmitter; it can interact with other receivers by circuit reversal. The development from a mere distribution medium to a communications medium is technically not a problem. It is consciously prevented fro understandable political reasons. The technical distinction between receivers and transmitters reflects the social division of labor into producers and consumers, which in the consciousness industry becomes of particular political importance. It is based, in the last analysis on the basic contradiction between the ruling class and the ruled class--that is to say, between monopoly capital or monopolistic bureaucracy on the one hand and the dependent masses on the other.