The Moonspeaker:
Where Some Ideas Are Stranger Than Others...

Thoughts on "Technological Change" (2026-02-23)

Wellcome Trust image of a mid to late nineteenth century toothpaste pot via wikimedia commons, under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license." title="Wellcome Trust image of a mid to late nineteenth century toothpaste pot via wikimedia commons, under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

In the course of hs lectures on "Reading Marx's Capital," specifically in his series on Volume 1, he refers to technological change. Technological change is one of the factors affecting the productivity of labour and therefore how much profit capitalists may extract from the workers completing the labour. It seems to me that the usual understanding of what "technological change" refers to is changes in the tools used to make commodities for sale. To this day the canonical examples are machinery that automates away labour, jobs, and quality of the product. The famous early examples all the various spinning and weaving machines brought in quite overtly to increase production while throwing people out of work, even if the product was of such poor quality the factory owners left it to sit and rot. In their view, breaking any ability workers might have to resist being exploited was worth any short term price. Now, whether or not we all agree about why and how machinery was brought in during industrialization, still, the points about automation and increased speed and mass of commodity production are not contested. But, somehow in his discussion of technological change, Harvey briefly mentions as an example, different types and brands of toothpaste. Now, while I think this simply must be a mishearing on my part, it ends up being a rather interesting one. Different types of toothpaste could be an example of a technological change intended to improve the commodity, although we must always ask "improve for who and for what?" It would not surprise me to learn that some vaunted change in toothpaste formulation was not intended to improve its efficacy in cleaning teeth and maintaining oral health but to make the stuff run faster through the pipes and nozzles in the machines filling the standard toothpaste tube. And there is another question raised. Is advertising itself an expression of technological change, in terms of the packaging and labelling of, in this case, toothpaste? For the purpose of this thoughtpiece the idea is stay close to the immediate commodity, rather than wandering off into the broader advertising industry and such.

As the illustrating photograph suggests, there is real technological change when it comes to toothpaste packaging. Originally, if a person bought it ready-made, it came in the sort of shallow small jar typical of creams in the same period. But toothpaste is after all a paste, which combines dry ingredients with a liquid, rather than a cream which usually combines a distilled oil or similar with a base animal fat or similar. While polishing paste for dishes and cutlery didn't present a major problem when packaged in shallow or deep jars as long as their tops were not too narrow because they were applied and used with a cloth, toothpaste didn't work so well, especially once toothbrushes became the standard for cleaning our teeth. Getting enough toothpaste on the brush and not making a thorough mess was far more difficult until the squeezable tube came along. So that definitely counts as a technological change, with applications in many other areas. Until very recently, these tubes were made of metal, so they needed to spiffing up to prevent them from rusting and to help counter any tendency to brittleness as the tube was squeezed, bent, and eventually folded or crushed as it was emptied. Furthermore, toothpaste sellers wanted to ensure their brands were recognizable and difficult to detach from the tube. Okay, figuring out how to paint and later attach water-resistant paper labels, then plastic labels and then the shift to plastic tubes, those are all technological changes. Those changes would then influence changes in machinery to cut out as much direct human handling to apply the newfangled labels and fill the tubes.

Okay, but what about the toothpaste labels, how they changed with time and therefore advertised the toothpaste. Does that really count as "technological change"? It really seems to me that it doesn't. The printing and application of the labels certainly can be reframed as examples of technological change. A person designing new labels periodically for use is an example of application of industrial art design, which has lost the majority of its detail and elaboration since the late nineteenth century, in part because it is a mass product now, militating against encouraging people to keep the emptied packaging. The growing move towards enforced obsolescence by adopting cheap packaging resistant to reuse and too ugly once emptied indicated most emphatically that the packaging was not to be a status symbol acting as a more or less subtle advertisement in the home or office. On top of that, today there is minimal difference between the different brands and kinds of toothpaste available. Even such novelties as gel toothpastes and alternate flavours like cinnamon have all but vanished. Most of the time, with exceptions from "healthy" and "organic" companies, you can pick any flavour you like as long as it's mint. There are various gimmicks and claims about what is supposed to differentiate the toothpastes in other ways ("whitening," "for sensitive teeth," "prevents cavities," etc.). In my experience even the dentist is not too specific when it comes to toothpaste recommendations, except for brands claiming to be good for sensitive teeth and warning people off of habitual use of whitening toothpastes.

I still don't see how merely having different brands or types of toothpaste represents any sort of real technological change. Combining different flavourings, altering levels of flouride or adding peroxide are not new ideas at this point. Merely changing the appearance of packaging is not a real technological change either. Since the packaging is constantly less forthcoming in terms of useful information, if we stretch and consider design of the content of the labels as technological change, there has been little if anything meaningful on that score either, except for the packaging to get worse.

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