Marx+on+Technology+and+Revolution

=Marx on Technology and Revolution =

 Marx’s discussion of large-scale industry is a thorough analysis of the function of machines in the sphere of production. Although rich in detail and history, Marx brings clearly into focus an underlying logic guiding the process of mechanical integration and organization, a logic that his contemporaries failed to see. At the same time, this logic links the issue of industry to other major themes in the Marxian corpus. First among these issues is the role of technology in the revolution of the working class. Although at the expense of the detail of this chapter of //Capital//, we would benefit greatly by dwelling on this connection with Marx’s other works, particularly the //Grundrisse//, where he is more explicit about the importance of industry for the creation of a utopian society, and by considering a few possible problems with his revolutionary vision.

The Origin and Role of Machines
In the fifteenth chapter of //Capital//, Marx discusses the development and impact of machinery and large-scale industry. The integration of machines into the sphere of production is the next necessary step for the capitalist logic. The work force had already been divided and organized like an army under the manufacture system of production. Thus, the capitalist had initially gained an advantage over his competitors when he increased the productivity of his legion by fusing the actions of each individual worker into the activities of a single collective worker. However, such an advantage can only be temporary as his competitors adopt similar tactics. Now he must find new methods of increasing productivity to regain that lost advantage. The capitalist therefore attempts to increase the rate of production of the collective worker by introducing into the process machines capable of surpassing the productive power of any one human being.

 Marx defines a machine as “a mechanism that, after being set in motion, performs with its tools the same operations as the worker formerly did with similar tools” (Marx, //Capital//, 495). The motive force of this instrument is irrelevant for a basic understanding of the purpose of the isolated machine but, as we shall later see, not for the understanding of modern industry. The most striking difference of the machine is that the “number of tools that [it] can bring into play simultaneously is from the outset independent of the organic limitations that confine the tools of the handicraftsman” (495).

 The immediate benefit to the capitalist of introducing the machine into the process is the reduction in the necessary labor-time in the production commodities. Thus, a greater part of the working day can be spent on the production of surplus value. If a worker can produce the value of her wages with a machine in less time than without the machine, the capitalist has all the incentive he needs to employ the machine. But the capitalist reaps further benefits. The production process requires far fewer human laborers while still exceeding the productivity of the manufacturing system. Thus, fewer workers need to be paid. The machines make the labor less physically strenuous and they require little skill to operate, thereby making women and children just as eligible for work. The superabundance of labor-power created by both the massive layoffs and the inclusion of women and children in the work force drives wages down. The capitalist can then pay those workers still on the payroll even less than before.

 Furthermore, the lack of skill needed to operate a machine eliminates the value of the individual worker. An obstinate or rebellious worker can be replaced with minimum inconvenience by any other worker more willing to cooperate. The machine is therefore “the most powerful weapon for suppressing strikes, those periodic revolts of the working class against the autocracy of capital” (562).

 From the worker’s perspective the machine can only be seen as the material manifestation of the capitalist’s domination. Besides the lower wages and precarious livelihood, the machine system transforms the factory into a world of torment. While the physical strenuousness of labor may be reduced, the conditions of the workplace worsen: longer hours, deafening noise, intensified pace of production, and hazards presented by the machines themselves. Most important perhaps is the further alienation of the worker from the labor (552). The monotonous repetition of movement and mentally taxing concentration deprive the worker of any gratification from the activity of producing. “The wearisome routine of endless drudgery in which the same mechanical process is ever repeated, is like the torture of Sisyphus; the burden of toil, like the rock, is ever falling back upon the worn-out drudge” (Engels, quoted by Marx, 548).

 The alienation of the worker only increases as the complexity of the machinery increases. As the tools wielded by the machinery become larger or more specialized, the machines are linked together to form a complete system of production, powered by a single source or “prime mover.” This is the hallmark of modern large-scale industry. The forces of nature are harnessed to the yoke of capital to create an automaton that can accomplish tasks of “Cyclopean” magnitude (507). Yet, applying natural sciences to the practical problems of production removes the resulting processes further from the individual worker. Under the system of manufacture the tasks were divided according to what an individual human being could do most efficiently. In modern industry, however, the problem is solved without reference to the abilities of a human laborer at all. “Here the total process is examined objectively, viewed in and for itself, and analysed into its constitutive phases” (501). The process of production is then conceived and implemented in abstraction from human beings. The purpose of the worker is to be “merely [the] conscious organs, coordinated with the unconscious organs of the automaton” (544). Once we have reached this level of sophistication in production, we cannot think of the process simply as isolated machines working in conjunction. Instead, Marx proclaims:

Here we have...a mechanical monster whose body fills whole factories, and whose demonic power, at first hidden by the slow and measure motions of its gigantic members, finally bursts forth in the fast and feverish whirl of its countless working organs. (503)

Technology: Alienation and Liberation
Although Marx primarily portrays technological advancement in Capital as a weapon wielded by the capitalist against the worker, he suggests a more intimate relationship between capital and technology. Capitalism can only come into being if an appropriate degree of technological advancement has occurred, whether that advancement takes the form of the division of labor or application of natural science to production. Thus, the division of labor that made the manufacture process of production possible is a technological improvement that allowed capital to overcome the limitations placed upon it by the social conditions of that time. Similarly, capital seeks to transcend any limitation in the sphere of production by continually improving the means of production, transportation, and communication. The construction of automatic machinery, railroads, highways, telegraph and telephone networks all result from capital’s effort to shatter the fetters of its social arrangement and all result in an upheaval in that social arrangement. As Marx explains in //The Communist Manifesto//,

 The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society....Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. (Marx, //Selected Writings//, 225)

 The pace of the upheaval of social relations is only intensified when capital impresses natural science into service. Technology and capital have always been in a dynamic relationship in which one is continuously spurred onward by the other: the development of capital “presupposes a definite historical development of productive forces (science being included among these forces), and on the other hand accelerates and compels this development” (375). Even though the increase in the productivity of machinery is directly proportional to the increase in the alienation of the worker and her dependence on the capitalist, Marx believes that in enlisting the service of technology, capital has unwittingly created a Frankenstein monster that will inevitably cause its own downfall. As machinery is perfected and made increasingly automatic, the worker is increasingly eliminated from the production process. At most, the worker is required only in a supervisory role. Thus, the source of the capitalist’s wealth, the appropriated labor of the working class, is eventually eliminated as well. In suitably dialectical fashion, capitalism must therefore give way as the predominant social arrangement because it succeeds in undermining its own foundations. In Marx’s words,

 As soon as labour, in its direct form, has ceased to be the main source of wealth, then labour time ceases, and must cease, to be its standard of measurement, and thus, exchange value must cease to be the measurement of use value. The surplus labour of the masses has ceased to be a condition for the development of wealth in general....Production based on exchange value therefore falls apart, and the immediate process of material production finds itself stripped of its impoverished, antagonistic form (380).

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;"> Marx so firmly believes that this transcendence of capitalism through technology is the necessary condition of the emancipation of humanity that he argues that the past revolts of the proletariat failed because this condition had not yet been attained, and that other revolutionary leaders need to be chastised for not understanding this aspect of the revolution (377).

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;"> By carefully noting that technology is neutral in the struggle between classes and that scientific achievements serve the socialist and the capitalist equally well, Marx reveals a deep optimism that the collective labor of humanity will inevitably liberate the species from the domination of other humans and the domination of a hostile nature. We may in fact say further that Marx considers science and technology to be “positive” in the sense that it represents the accumulated intellectual labor of humanity in general—that is, of the species. Therefore, as the individual capitalist exploits the productive power of the individual worker, industrial capital exploits the productive power of the entire species. However, as the collective knowledge of the species, science can serve no other purpose but to ultimately shatter the fetters of servitude, whatever the ends this knowledge is made to serve in the meantime.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;"> The collapse of capitalism brings “the pre-history of human society” to a close (390). In its place a society will be instituted where the automated forces of production serve the interests of all members rather than a few. The amount of necessary labor time required to meet the needs of society will be reduced to an absolute minimum, leaving the remaining time for the pursuit of non-alienating activities such as education, arts, sciences, and so on (380). The kind of division of labor that led to dehumanizing, repetitive tasks will likewise be eliminated. Thus, the proletariat will be the inheritors and benefactors of the accumulated knowledge of the species, science, and its material offspring, technology.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;"> Or will it?

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">Pessimism in the Advanced Industrial Society
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">We may legitimately wonder about the inevitability of Marx’s revolution. The requirements of a highly efficient and automated sphere of production is attainable, as is evidenced by the rapid advance of robotics and computer automation in industrial manufacture. Likewise, we need not stretch our imaginations to say that we actually have the technological ability to provide decent nourishment for all the planet’s inhabitants. But we can ask, as Herbert Marcuse does in //One-Dimensional Man//, whether these achievements will bring us closer to liberation or bring us further under the sway of those who control their use. The answer to this question depends on whether technology can make the attainment of class consciousness for the workers impossible. For Marx, even if the economic and productive conditions for liberation has been reached, no true revolution is possible without the proletariat, who represent the majority of humanity, attaining a consciousness of themselves as a class. As Marcuse puts it, “All liberation depends on the consciousness of servitude...” (Marcuse, //One-Dimensional Man//, 7).

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;"> In the past capitalism has responded to crises such as overproduction in a number of ways: destroying the means of production, conquering new markets, or more efficiently exploiting already existing markets (Marx, //Selected Writings//, 226). Marx believes that this simply stalls the inevitable and that crises in the future will be far more severe and difficult for capital to overcome. Marcuse, however, suspects that the power that technology provides to capital makes the efficient exploitation of existing markets so complete that the class antagonisms threatening to tear society apart can be effectively and indefinitely contained. This containment is accomplished by reworking the inner needs of the members of society to correspond to the external needs of the system. The members of society are induced to see the perpetuation of the status quo as necessary for providing the means of subsistence and a sense of freedom. As a result, individuality and the ability to think critically are gradually eradicated and replaced by the artificial needs of consumer society. The means for this total integration are indoctrination and behavioral control, by which the working class is pacified and made to willingly accept the conditions of servitude. The proletariat is no longer the bearer of values that contradict the capitalist; thus, they can no longer be the historical agent of revolution (Marcuse, “Liberation From the Affluent Society,” 278).

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;"> Such indoctrination is the result of applying science and technology to the task of dominating not nature as such, but human nature. Psychology, behavioral and management sciences, and mass media are all marshaled by capital to wage war against the possibility of an alternative societal arrangement. “Thus, the cultural apparatus parallels the economic and political apparatuses to produce mass society, one in which its participants can no longer conceive alternatives to the present social order, much less devise an effective politics to oppose it” (Stanley Aronowitz, //Science as Power//, 131).

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;"> But Marcuse wants to press a more controversial point. When capital impresses science into service, we do not witness, as Marx believes, the subversion of something inherently liberating. Instead, modern science, as developed under impetus and aegis of capitalism, is in itself a logic of domination perfectly compatible with capitalism. In Marcuse’s words,

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;"> ...science, by virtue of its own method and concepts, has projected and promoted a universe in which the domination of nature has remained linked to the domination of man....Nature, scientifically comprehended and mastered, reappears in the technical apparatus of production and destruction which sustains and improves the life of the individuals while subordinating them to the masters of the apparatus. Thus the whole rational hierarchy merges with the social one (Marcuse, //One-Dimensional Man,//166).

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;"> Marx had argued that technology can serve the capitalist and the socialist equally well. Marcuse, pointing to America and the Soviet Union, argues that the capitalist and the socialist can serve technology equally well. When society is divided and administered according to an instrumental rationale, this rationale pervades the consciousness of its members. Instrumental rationality, dubbed one-dimensional thinking, becomes the process that guides and legitimates all social endeavors, as capitalism had done previously. Society then perpetuates and reproduces itself according to this instrumentality. What results is a society qualitatively different than the one with which Marx was familiar. “The world tends to become the stuff of total administration, which absorbs even the administrators. The web of domination has become the web of Reason itself, and this society is fatally entangled in it” (Marcuse, 169).

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;"> Marcuse in the end is not entirely pessimistic. He holds onto orthodox Marxian ideals and argues that if we can break out of the domination of one-dimensional, instrumental thinking and subordinate technology to the goal of liberation, we can effect the radical break envisioned by Marx. Thus, in the face of historical developments not anticipated by Marx, Marcuse offers a reconstruction of classical Marxism. But Marcuse warns that the possibility for the kind of qualitative change in society called for by Marx is constantly diminishing, and if we do not work quickly to maintain even the possibility of Marx’s utopia, we will find forced upon us Huxley’s dystopia.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;"> Works Cited <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">Aronowitz, Stanley. //Science as Power.// Minneapolis: University of Minnesota <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;"> Marx, Karl. //Capital//. Volume I. Trans. Ben Fowkes. New York: Vintage Books, 1977. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;"> Marx, Karl. //Karl Marx:// //Selected Writings// Ed. David McLellan. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1977. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;"> Marcuse, Herbert. “Liberation from the Affluent Society,” in //Critical Theory and Society//. Ed. Stephen Bronner and Douglas Kellner. Routledge: New York, 1989. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 130%;"> Marcuse, Herbert. //One-Dimensional Man//. Boston: Beacon Press, 1964.

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