It seems to me that Marx demonstrated 138 years ago not only that technology (or 'forces of production') can be distinguished from 'relations of production', but that they must be, if socialism is to be a possibility.
He showed that the *illusion* that capitalism and technology were synonymous was one of the central ideological claims that served to shore up the existing society.
Furthermore, he gave a compelling account of how, under capitalism relations between people assume the form of relations between things, giving rise to the illusion that people are put out of work by machines.
It was Marx who criticised the luddites for blaming technology for the ills of capitalism. 'It took both time and experience before the workpeople learnt to distinguish between machinery and its employment by capital, and to direct their attacks, not against the material instruments of production, but against the mode in which they are used.' (Capital I, p 404, Progress ed.)
Sadly the insights of the labour movement in the nineteenth century were a high point from which we have fallen back. The disappointed Marxists Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse imagined that they were enriching, and making more sophisticated Marx's analysis. Drawing on the Nazi philosopher Heidegger, they argued that alienation was implicit in the technology itself.
This Adorno-Horkheimer critique of technology passed as oh so radical in German and American universities in the sixties and seventies - 'look not only capitalism is oppressive, but the very technology itself is too'. But in the end it was just a counsel of despair. Marx's scientific socialism was replaced by a hippy romanticism that was unhappy with industrial society and the masses it gathered. It was a step backwards, not forwards.
Yes and no. Technology, since capital has taken over, has also developed as a 1) a means of replacing workers and 2) as a means of controlling workers. In other words, technology has developed not simply to satisfy human needs and improve the quality of our lives but ALSO in order to increase profits and support the expansion and rule of Capital. I do not believe that tools are just neutral. I think that we need to look at our technologies and think through what has called them into being and how they affect our lives: positively as well as negatively.
To say that those who question/criticize technologies are nostalgic luddites, just won't do. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20050828/c3c41451/attachment.htm>