The Origins of Technocracy: Heidegger and Marcuse

Abstract

The essence of Marx’s account of the relationship between capitalism and technology boils down to the following. The M-C-M relation is able to become the dominant mode of social and economic intercourse only because of capital’s capacity to transform itself from commodities into surplus value. Initially this relationship is facilitated by innovations in handicraft manufacturing; the concentration of labour in one place, the increasing complexity of the division of labour and the use of simple machinery to facilitate the production of exchange values and a relatively stable rate of profit. This state of affairs however is disrupted by the bourgeoning competition which capitalism introduces into civil society; each individual capitalist will inevitably try to reduce the amount of labour time it takes for him to cover the cost of the wages he pays to his workforce. In the end the competitiveness of the market means that only those capitalists who can afford to deploy automated systems to increase the rate at which commodities are produced, will survive. Marx therefore conceives the impact of machine technologies in terms of their intensification of the labour process — that is, in terms of their reduction of the socially necessary time it takes to produce the means of subsistence.